Brandeis University Top Questions

There's a feeling of exclusivity everywhere on campus.. For the most part the campus is not welcoming or friendly at all..

My favorite memory of my Brandeis career is the first time I climbed to the roof of the castle. The castle is insane; they built it from the outside in so nothing really connects the right way. While we technically shouldn't be able to get to the roof, one of the towers is accessible by a metal ladder in a closet, a tunnel, and a wooden ladder. It's dark and the ladder doesn't feel particularly stable, so many of the people in my group were scared that they would fall. No one did, of course. The school would have closed the passageway a long time ago if it wasn't safe. The top of the castle was wonderful. It was fall, so it was nice and cool out. From one side of the roof we could see the skylines of Boston, and from the other we could see across cammpus. My group--a large portion of the girls from Reitman 2 plus me--stayed up there for nearly an hour, talking and playing games like Mafia and Telephone. It was Thursday night, no classes the next day due to a holiday, and we had SO much fun.

The best thing about Brandeis is how small the community is. You would think that if you went to a small school you wouldn't get to meet as many people - that's definitely not the case! At a small school, when you meet someone once, you're likely to see them again, and get the opportunity to build a real relationship with them. At a big school, you can get lost in the crowd, and if you meet someone cool, you really have to put effort into seeing them again. Here, you run into them. It makes hooking up kind of awkward, because you will see the person again, and it's likely a friend of yours has hooked up with the same person. So dating here isn't great. But you will make a lot of friends, and close friends.

Brandeis is located 9 miles outside of Boston. Boston is an absolutely WONDERFUL city, from the food to the theater to the... everything. I love it. However, it's not always easy to get to. There's a commuter rail station right next to campus, but it costs $4.75 to get into Boston. There's a free shuttle bus from Brandeis, but it only runs Thursday nights, Friday nights, Saturdays starting at 3:30, and Sundays starting at noon. Any other time you need to get into Boston, you have to pay. A lot. Waltham itself is pretty boring. There's one main street which has a wonderful ice cream place, some cool stores, and plenty of food places. However, there's really nowhere to go late at night. Even the ice cream place closes before midnight. There ARE things happening on campus, but often not when you really want something to do. Food at Brandeis also stinks. Sherman, the all-you-can-eat dining hall, is wonderful if you keep Kosher, but the food is awful and many of my non-Jewish friends avoid it at all costs. Usdan is better, but it's still college food. Both dining halls have very weird (and annoying) hours, especially on the weekends. There's a C store, too, but there aren't many things you can use your meals on in there. Same goes for Einstein's; you can't even buy a bottle of apple juice on a meal there. The Student Union is trying to change this, but who knows what'll happen?

People are incredibly accepting and incredibly smart, by and large. I love the character of the place; you know you're at a great university, but people still have humility. The professors are wonderful, and academically it's stellar. Campus life gravitates around cultural expression and community activities, instead of simply getting drunk and passing out. People have real interests here, and they're not in school just so that they can go on to earn lots of money.

School is a little bit too small. I've hooked up with someone at a party...and then someone I hooked up a month or so later admitted to seeing me hookup with the person at the other party. Creepy. However, situations like these are just coincidences and there are always new people to meet. I really like Waltham...lots of interesting stores on Moody St and around the town. It's also moderately flat and good to run around! Administration is a bit iffy. There have been some issues where Brandeis staff, administration, and police apparently violating students rights and potentially being racist. Police don't patrol to find drunken kids walking around but beware...Brandeis security officers do not have as lenient of a policy on streaking as one may think or have heard about. hehe

Brandeis is a great school and has a good reputation as being a solid academic institution. The classes are great and the professors are so passionate. I personally like the size of Brandeis, I feel that there's enough people, but not overwhelmingly so. It's so close to Boston which is great if you take advantage of it, I personally go into Boston about once a weekend which is a nice change to get off campus. There is some school spirit but you have to find it.

LOVE Brandeis. Almost everything. Great size, great location, great people. But most people from home say- well, from high school, "Where's that?" and from synagogue, "You'll meet nice Jewish boys!" But we're right next to Boston, we have a great size, and I think most of us really like being here. There's a lot of complaints about the party scene. Unusual? The Jewish population. It's insane. Everyone here knows what I mean when I mention keeping kosher, Shabbas, etc. Either they are Jewish, or they know so many Jews that they know it all. Wonderful.

The best thing about Brandeis, in my opinion, is the academics. There really are some world class faculty and opportunities for learning here... that is, if you apply yourself. I know that I have grown as a person simply because I was exposed to so many new ideas upon coming to Brandeis. If I could change one thing it would be for the campus to open up to possibility, or at least as much as I have. That's not to say I'm soo perfect and soo accepting, but I feel like people have been trained to say and act a certain way here and anything that challenges or questions that is suppressed or worse- both in and out of the classroom. The size of the school is very nice; people from my home town have never heard of it, though, so there is really not alot to say in that regard. I'm working on a thesis right now, so I spend most of my time in the lab or doing homework in the campus center. When I go out on weekends, the best bet is to just go into Boston and find something fun to do, or go to a party on campus. Waltham isn't really a college town unless you are way into the Indian restaurants on Moody stret. The administration is okay- they run the behind the scenes well but really goof up on certain things, like shutting down parties and soical events or censoring students and taking their club money. If they could just hire a good PR person to tell them not to do that, they would be fine. School pride...? Only on certain days. I think we have more pride when we bring a famous speaker to campus than when we win a basketball game. Is there anything unusual? Everything is unusual about Brandeis- we live in castles, we get two spring breaks, the most popular event on campus is liquid latex. The list goes on.

Brandeis has always struck me as odd because there's really no such thing as class identity. I know seniors whose closest friends are sophomores, etc. And as I've been here over time, I've come to think that it's better this way. We choose our friends based on our common interests -- classes, clubs, etc -- instead of whoever happens to be put on our floor freshman year.