Brandeis University

Date: Oct 23 2005
Major: Unknown (This Major's Salary over time)
Brandeis likes to think of itself as being modeled after the University of Chicago because it is a very good small research university. That is certainly true; the faculty is good, and the educational opportunities are really only limited by one's initiative. The faculty often work closely with undergraduates on special projects or pure research; this enables students with initiative to prepare themselves for the most rigorous graduate schools out there. For example, I know Brandeis graduates who went to Johns Hopkins for medicine, MIT for physics and mathematics, Harvard for history of science, medicine, biochemistry and public policy, Georgetown, UCLA and Columbia for law, the University of Chicago for business, public policy, law, philosophy, and Yale for applied physics, No doubt about it, one can get a superb education there.

The difficulties that one can encounter at Brandeis stem from being a member of an underrepresented minority group. Brandeis - when I was there - was overwhelmingly Jewish (around 70% or so). There was a clear demarcation line when it came to interactions of any kind. Many black students - the very, very few that were there (the University currently has a paltry 1-2% black population, and slightly higher numbers for latinos) - simply were ignored by the vast majority of the Jewish white students. Many black students felt like Ellison's 'Invisible Man' when they were at Brandeis. When I would encounter white students around campus who were in classes (which are quite small) with me, they would ignore my greeting or return it with a very terse, chilly response that sent a very clear message: DON"T TALK TO ME. My experience was not unique. Curiously, the smallness of the classes exascerbated the problem because if there were only 5 people in the class and the other four refused to talk to you, it made for a very lonely and painful experience. It also made difficult courses harder because I would be locked out of study groups completely. I would do all the work alone, while the other students would work together—teaching and learning from one another. This situation took a heavy toll on me and most other black students. Most blacks who started there left the school permanently - long before graduation. Such attrition made life for those of us who were foolish enough to persevere instead of transfer out even harder.

By the time I graduated I had paid a terribly high price for what was an outstanding education; it took many, many years of psychotherapy to recover from the grueling emotional scars that I sustained as a Brandeis undergraduate.

I have since gone on to earn three graduate degrees at one of the finest universities in the world. My success in graduate school had as much to do with learning to cope with blatant hostility and racism at Brandeis as it did with the superb education that I managed to eke out of a tortuously oppressive situation.

Brandeis would have to commit to a major overhaul where minority student and faculty retention is concerned in order for the dreary experience that awaits prospective black and latino students to be transformed into what ought to be a mostly positive experience. However, there is no reason to believe that such a seachange will occur in this century.

My advice: black and latino students, if you can get into Brandeis, you can get into other very fine schools that are much more palatable experiences for minority students, i.e., Tufts, Williams, Johns Hopkins, Wellesely, Case Western, Northwestern, etc. Don't risk your best years on a place that will likely be a traumatic and damaging experience.