Dear Members of the Brown Community,

Over the past five months, an Ad Hoc Committee on Admissions Policies, composed of senior Brown faculty and Brown Corporation members, has examined Brown’s undergraduate admissions policies to ensure they align with our community’s commitments to excellence, access and diversity. I asked this committee to study whether Brown should alter its Early Decision policy; reinstate a standardized test score requirement; and modify existing preferences for applicants with family connections to Brown.

After extensive analysis and thoughtful deliberations, the committee submitted its report to me in February, and I have accepted its recommendations:

• Brown will continue to offer its Early Decision option, which is attractive to prospective students and has contributed to efforts to enroll an undergraduate class that is both highly qualified and diverse.
   
• Starting with next year’s application cycle (effective for the Class of 2029), Brown will reinstate the requirement that applicants for first-year admission submit standardized tests scores (the SAT or ACT, except in the rare circumstance when these tests are not available to a student). This will accompany enhanced communications to students and school counselors emphasizing that test scores are interpreted in the context of a student’s background and educational opportunities.
   
• Current practices for applicants with family connections — including “legacies” and children of faculty and staff — will remain unchanged while we continue to consider a range of complex questions raised by the committee and seek more input from our community.

I continue to be proud of Brown’s strong track record of national leadership in cultivating diversity and inclusion as core tenets for sustaining academic excellence. I am committed to ensuring these values are reflected in the way we build our student body. The decisions we have reached regarding Early Decision and standardized test requirements remain true to these values, and continuing to examine family connections is the right decision for the complicated questions this issue raises for our community.

I have shared on the Office of the President website an executive summary of the committee’s report, which provides details about the recommendations and their rationale. I will not attempt to capture the breadth of the committee’s analysis here, but I want to highlight some of the compelling points that informed my decisions.

Early Decision

Currently, Brown has one binding Early Decision (ED) round of admission, followed by a Regular Decision (RD) round. The primary concern about binding ED programs nationally, which has been expressed by some policy makers and in the media, is that students accepted in ED rounds cannot compare financial aid offers across schools and secure the most competitive award. This, in turn, may discourage low- and middle-income applicants from applying in the ED round.

I was persuaded by the committee’s conclusion that this broader concern does not apply to Brown. Our financial aid offers are very generous, and online calculators give students and families good estimates of their cost of attendance at Brown. The fact that 60% of ED applicants express an intent to apply for financial aid indicates that applicants are confident that, if admitted, they will receive the financial support they need. And Brown has consistently high levels of diversity among students admitted in the ED round.

Reinstating Testing Requirements with “Testing in Context” Outreach

Like many schools, Brown suspended its requirement to submit standardized test scores during the COVID-19 pandemic, when testing centers closed. With the closures of the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, I believe that reinstating standardized test requirements for first-year applicants (although not for transfer or Resumed Undergraduate Education applicants) will help Brown identify promising students from the fullest range of backgrounds.

The committee’s analysis shows that test scores provide valuable information on the ability of students to succeed at Brown. Also, the committee’s report makes a compelling case that being “test-optional” can disadvantage talented students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who are often from high schools that are less well known to our Office of College Admission. Test scores offer an important piece of information among a prevalence of A grades, and for less-resourced high schools that might not offer programs and activities that allow students to distinguish themselves.

For decades, Brown has followed a "whole person approach" to admissions, in which test scores are one — and only one — piece of information that is assessed within the context of the opportunities and experiences available to each applicant. Because of this approach, applicants may be helped by test scores that are high relative to students from similar backgrounds, even if they are low relative to Brown’s published median scores. Being “test-optional” diminishes our ability to identify these talented students.

The committee underscored that, as we return to required standardized testing, it will be important to communicate clearly to students and high school counselors about our commitment to consider test scores “in context,” so that students with less access to educational opportunities that could boost their scores are not disadvantaged.

Pursuing Further Analysis about Family Connections

At Brown, applicants for admission who have one or more parents with a Brown undergraduate degree (“legacies”) and those who are the children of faculty and staff benefit from advantages in the admissions process. In the Class of 2027, 8% are legacies, and 1% to 2% of students every year are children of faculty or staff.

The question of whether to retain family preference in admissions inspires deep emotions among many in our community. And, as the committee’s report shows, there are valid reasons for both keeping and eliminating these preferences.

I agree with the committee’s view that we should take more time to probe these issues and collect information from a broader range of faculty, staff, alumni and students. We have an opportunity to balance data-informed analysis with a greater understanding of the range of personal experiences and perspectives related to family preferences. This will help inform an ultimate decision.

In Closing

I encourage all members of our community to read the executive summary of the committee’s report. I also invite all students, faculty and staff who have an interest in engaging on these issues to attend the next Brown University Community Council meeting on March 20, where we’ll discuss the decisions arising from the committee’s work. The meeting will be held from 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in the Kasper Multipurpose Room in the Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center.

Finally, I want to thank the Brown faculty and members of the Corporation of Brown University who have worked so diligently on the ad hoc committee. This group — co-chaired by Trustee Preetha Basaviah, Class of 1991 and MD Class of 1995, and Provost Francis J. Doyle, III — has been deeply thoughtful in its commitment to developing recommendations that balance analysis with the core values of our community. I appreciate the contributions the committee will continue to make to this work as we engage our campus regarding family connections.

Sincerely,

Christina H. Paxson
President