About 18% of respondents have a relative who attended or is currently attending Brown, similar to spring 2023. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision limiting race-conscious admissions, the University has formed a committee to examine legacy, early decision and test-optional policies.
During the undergraduate application process, the University “will note when an applicant has a parent who has graduated from Brown,” according to its website.
The Herald’s fall poll asked students: “Do you have a parent, grandparent or sibling who attended Brown? Check all that apply.” Because the poll allowed respondents to select multiple legacy relationships, these numbers add up to more than 100%.
Over half of poll respondents indicated that they do not receive financial aid from Brown. The University’s financial aid packages for undergraduate students include grants and scholarships but not loans. The elimination of loans from undergraduate financial aid packages was made permanent in March 2023 following the completion of a fundraising goal as part of the Brown Promise initiative. Last year, Students for Educational Equity launched a financial aid resourcewebsite to help prospective students navigate the financial aid process. According to the University’s 2022-2023 Common Data Set, financial aid was awarded to approximately 45% of full-time undergraduate students, a slight increase from the approximately 42% of students who received aid in 2021-2022.
Since 2022, the University has covered the cost of tuition for most students from families earning less than $125,000 by eliminating home equity from financial aid calculations. The University also announced plans to implement need-blind admissions for international students beginning with the class of 2029.
Prior to fall 2022, The Herald did not collect specific data on mid-year graduates. The University welcomed 1,699 students as part of the class of 2027, and approximately 40% of them participated in The Herald’s first-ever poll for incoming students.
Women are more likely than men to complete four years or more of college and earn a bachelor’s degree, according to Statista. In the 2022-2023 Common Data Set, the University reported that 50.8% of full-time undergraduate students were women and 49.2% were men. According to the Office of Institutional Research website, the University reports gender statistics according to a gender binary consistent with federal requirements.
In The Herald’s fall 2023 poll, 3% of poll respondents identified as nonbinary, and 1.8% identified as genderqueer, similar to figures from The Herald’s spring 2023 poll. According to the Pew Research Center, about 3% of Americans ages 18 to 29 identify as nonbinary. The Herald’s poll results presented here sum to over 100% because the poll allowed respondents to select multiple gender identities.
According to the University’s 2022-2023 Common Data Set — which categorizes race and ethnicity differently than The Herald’s poll by excluding race and ethnicity details of international students — just over 44.6% of degree-seeking domestic undergraduate students who identified their race were white and non-Hispanic, 22.2% were Asian, 13.8% were Hispanic or Latino and 9.6% were Black. 0.43% identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native, and 0.21% were Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. The University reported the racial identities of 4.8% of all students as unknown in the CDS. The CDS counted students who identify as two or more races and not Hispanic — 7.4% of all students — in a separate category.
According to the University’s Diversity Dashboard, the percentage of students from historically underrepresented racial/ethnic groups — defined as “African American/Black, Hispanic/Latinx, American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander” by the University — has increased slightly in recent years.
In the fall 2023 poll, about 58% of respondents identified as straight, compared to nearly 63% in spring 2023. About 16% of respondents identified as bisexual, 6.4% as gay, 6.4% as queer, 5.3% as questioning or unsure, 2.9% as lesbian, 2.2% as asexual and 1.6% as pansexual.
Because the poll allowed respondents to select multiple sexual orientations, these numbers add up to more than 100%.
Approximately 14% of respondents identified as first-generation college students, similar to the 15% of students from the classes of 2027 and 2026, but a slight decrease from the 17% and 18% of students admitted to the class of 2025 and 2024, respectively.