Brown vs Dartmouth: Two Ivies That Pick Students Differently

If both are on your list, you already know what you want: a college small enough that professors learn your name. Brown and Dartmouth both deliver that, which is exactly why the choice is hard. What separates them is temperament, not quality — one built its identity around letting students design their own path, the other around a tight, intensely social campus in the New Hampshire woods.

Brown admits 5.4% of applicants and Dartmouth 6% — close enough to treat as equally reaching. The real differences are elsewhere: they disagree on how to weigh nine parts of your application, Dartmouth is far cheaper for families under $110,000 and more expensive above it, and Greek life involves roughly a quarter of Dartmouth students against a twentieth at Brown.

By the Admissioned team· Data: Common Data Set 2025-2026 · College Scorecard

At a glance

The decision matrix

Both schools meet 100% of demonstrated financial need, graduate about 95% of their students and send them into the top 3% of American colleges for earnings. Picking between them on prestige is a waste of effort. These are the differences that actually show up in a student’s four years.

Admissions: what each school says it values

Both are Early Decision schools, so an early application is binding at either. Brown drew 48,904 applications to Dartmouth’s 28,230 — 20,674 more for a class only about half again as large — and admitted 2,638 students against 1,699.

The more useful signal is what each school tells the federal government it weighs. Of the 18 application factors both schools rate, they agree on nine and disagree on nine. Brown rates more of them at the top of its scale.

Each school’s own rating of how heavily it weighs each factor, from its Common Data Set filing. Only the 9 factors they rate differently are shown — they agree on the other 9.

Read down that table and a pattern emerges. Brown calls character, class rank, extracurriculars, test scores and talent very important where Dartmouth calls each of them merely important. Brown also weighs interviews, first-generation status and alumni relations one full step higher. If your case rests on something outside grades and scores, Brown’s stated process gives it more room.

Test ranges diverge more than the admit rates do. Brown’s middle 50% runs 740–780 on reading and 770–800 on maths; Dartmouth’s runs 720–770 and 720–790. 61% of enrolled Brown first-years and 69% at Dartmouth submitted an SAT score, so the ranges describe only those students. Neither figure says whether a score is required of you — testing policies change year to year, and both schools’ current rules should be checked directly.

Financial aid: the averages hide the real story

Brown’s average net price is $25,184 and Dartmouth’s is $29,519, which makes Brown look like the cheaper school by $4,335. That average is misleading, because the two schools are generous to completely different families.

Broken out by household income, Dartmouth is dramatically cheaper below roughly $110,000. A family earning $30,000 to $48,000 pays $489 a year at Dartmouth against $2,031 at Brown. From $48,000 to $75,000 it is $2,695 against $5,858. From $75,000 to $110,000, $8,534 against $16,219 — Brown costs nearly twice as much.

Above $110,000 the ranking flips. There Brown charges $44,937 and Dartmouth $52,036, making Dartmouth the more expensive option by $7,099. If your family sits on one side of that line or the other, it is worth more than any difference in the admissions statistics.

Average first-year grants follow the same shape: $71,873 at Dartmouth against $65,370 at Brown. Graduates leave Dartmouth with a median $17,500 of debt and Brown with $11,428 — both far below the national median, and Brown’s among the lowest in the country.

Campus life: the sharpest difference between them

Dartmouth is a Greek campus and Brown is not. 26% of Dartmouth men are in a fraternity and 29% of women are in a sorority. At Brown the same figures are 4% and 2%. Nothing else in this comparison separates the two experiences so completely, and no ranking captures it.

Scale differs too. Brown enrols 7,910 undergraduates to Dartmouth’s 4,715, yet runs the smaller classes: a 6:1 student–faculty ratio with 67.4% of classes under 20 students, against 7.9:1 and 61.3% at Dartmouth. Both are residential almost to the point of totality — 99% of Brown students and 100% of Dartmouth students live on campus.

Outcomes

Ten years after enrolling, the median Dartmouth student earns $97,434 and the median Brown student $93,487. Both sit in the top 3% of American colleges. Dartmouth’s edge of $3,947 is real but modest, and worth weighing against the fact that Brown spends $42,520 per student on instruction to Dartmouth’s $32,539.

Bar length is the share of US colleges each school beats on that measure; the tick marks the national median. Price and debt are inverted, so a longer bar is always the better outcome. Coverage varies by measure — each line states how many colleges report it. Source: College Scorecard.

The mobility figure deserves attention. Students arriving from the lowest-income third of families are earning a mean $109,000 at Dartmouth and $96,800 at Brown a decade after they started. Both are top-3% outcomes nationally, and both are the strongest argument for applying regardless of what the sticker price says.

The same two schools, eight ways

This is the scatter view from FitFinder, loaded with just these two schools. It opens on “Borrowed Time” — median debt against median earnings — where both land deep in the upper-left. Use the dropdown to change what is plotted; “Where the Tuition Goes” and “A Fighting Chance” are the two worth going to directly for this pair.

Go deeper on each school

• Brown: the full profile
• Dartmouth: the full profile

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