Brown University is a highly esteemed private university located in Providence, Rhode Island and is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1764 as the College of Rhode Island, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in New England and seventh oldest in the United States. Pembroke College, Brown University's all women's college, merged with the College in 1971.

Brown was the first college in the nation to accept students regardless of religious affiliations. The school also has the oldest undergraduate engineering program in the Ivy League (1847).

The Brown "New Curriculum," instituted in 1969, eliminates distribution requirements and mandatory A/B/C grades (allowing any course to be taken on a "satisfactory/no credit" basis). Moreover, there are no pluses (+), minuses (-), or grades of D in the grading system.

Since 2001, Brown's current and 18th president has been Ruth J. Simmons, the first African American president and second female president of an Ivy League institution, as well as the first permanent female president of Brown.

The school colors are seal brown, cardinal red, and white. Brown's mascot is the bear and the varsity sports teams are called the Brown Bears. The costumed bear mascot named "Bruno" makes appearances at athletic games. The use of a bear as the University's mascot dates back to 1904. People associated with the University are known as Brunonians.

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Admission to Brown is extremely competitive, with an overall admissions rate of 13.8% for the class of 2010. The class of 2011 had an admittance rate of 13.5%. The regular decision acceptance rate for the Class of 2010 was 12.6%, and the regular decision acceptance rate of the Class of 2011 was 12.3% The admission rate for the class of 2012 was 13.3%. Brown will begin using the Common Application starting in the Fall of 2008.

More than one-third of the members of the Class of 2010 scored above 750 on the verbal or math sections of the SAT I: Reasoning Test. Approximately 15 percent of the students in the Class of 2010 graduated number one or number two in their high school classes. Students come from all 50 states, as well as 62 countries.Brown University Office of Admission facts and figures

The 2008 U.S. News & World Report rankings rate Brown tied with Stanford as the seventh most selective college in the country. According to a study entitled "Revealed Preference Ranking," by three Harvard, Wharton, and Boston University economics professors, published in December 2005 by the NBER, Brown ranks seventh (between Princeton and Columbia) in the country when students are choosing which of the schools to which they are admitted to attend. Brown ranks fifth when the Revealed Preference Ranking method focuses on students interested in humanities and social studies and seventh for students interested in the sciences and mathematics. A notable fact is that Brown ranks ahead of all the Ivy League schools other than Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. According to a 2007 Princeton Review survey of colleges, Brown is the fourth most selective college in America, and Brown's students are the happiest.Fact: date=April 2008