Admission impossible: Influx has school in flux

Crowded Brown carves dorms out of peculiar places

French doors, a 25-inch TV, a full kitchen, and plenty of floor room greeted freshmen Jean Herbert Harris (left) and Bobby Farnham when they opened the door to their dorm room at Brown University. (photos by John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)

PROVIDENCE - They guessed wrong. Brown University officials, facing the most tumultuous admissions season in memory, accepted an unusually high number of applicants, then dipped deep into the school's waiting list for even more, hedging their bets to fill the freshman class.

They thought they had to. Other Ivy League schools had scrapped their early admissions programs and, like Brown, dramatically increased financial aid for middle-class applicants. Years of prior forecasts were obsolete.

The result: More students accepted than Brown officials thought possible. In fact, so many enrolled this month that Brown has the largest class in the history of the storied institution.

That explains why freshman Jean Herbert Harris said his jaw dropped when he saw his room - a majestic double converted from a former lounge with a 25-inch television attached to a wall and French doors leading into a full-sized kitchen. And it also explains why sophomore Maria Gordon is squished into a linoleum-tiled triple with a stove, oven, and sink lining one wall of her bedroom.

"This was a volatile year to say the least," said Jim Miller, Brown's dean of admissions. "You don't really know until move-in day what's going to happen. Our housing folks had to scramble a bit."

Brown housing officials assembled 25 makeshift bedrooms in a week to accommodate an extra 55 freshmen. They removed couches and tables from dorm lounges to make room for extra-long twin beds and bureaus - leading some residents to grumble about disappearing common areas.

Even as Brown scrambled, other schools breathed a sigh of relief, acknowledging that this could have been them.

In Keeney Quadrangle, a sprawling three-story brick dormitory complex that's home to a third of the freshman class, eight of 10 hall lounges and kitchens have been converted to bedrooms for 16 students.

Harris's room is more than double the size of the others lining the dim corridors.

"I was shocked," said the 19-year-old from Los Angeles. "I just looked around in awe. I didn't know what to think."

Harris and his roommate, Bobby Farnham of North Andover, discussed buying a futon to fill out their massive suite. The room could easily have housed four students, but Brown places freshmen in doubles.

The pair has quickly become the envy of the hall.

"Some kids invaded our room and tried to make cookies one night," Farnham said. "We're trying to keep a low profile. We don't want to turn into a party room and have people in here all the time."

Some older students didn't fare as well in the housing lottery.

Gordon, a 19-year-old from Westbury on Long Island in New York, and two friends share a room converted from a kitchen in Gregorian Quadrangle. She found it strange at first to live with kitchen appliances. A roommate moved her desk, bookshelf, and wardrobe between their beds and the appliances.

The arrangement is supposed to be temporary, Brown housing officials said, promising to move students as soon as regular rooms open.

"It's kind of unsettling not knowing when we're going to be moved out," said Gordon, who has grown fond of her unconventional room because she loves to cook and bake.

But she said some of her dorm mates, who got off the university meal plan because they expected to cook in the hallway kitchen she is now living in, are annoyed that they have to lug their groceries to other floors.

Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services, said her office has not received many complaints from students. Most have been understanding of the unusual situation, which college officials do not expect to happen again.

"Our aim is to restore those kitchens and lounges to community use as soon as possible," Klawunn said.

What happened at Brown could easily have occurred at other Ivies, said admission directors at several schools. Many universities saw a record number of applicants, exacerbated by Harvard's and Princeton's decisions last year to end their decades-old early admissions practice; hundreds of top students who would have known by mid-December where they were going entered the general applicant pool.

Throwing more uncertainty into the mix, more than 20 schools, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth, and Brown, introduced generous financial aid initiatives last winter that heavily influenced students' first picks.

"This past year has been unlike any we have ever experienced in the history of selective higher education," said William Fitzsimmons, Harvard's dean of admissions, who has assembled freshman classes there since 1972. "The truth is, there's no way we could tell what would happen with any accuracy."

With less flexibility, such schools as Harvard, Princeton, and the University of Pennsylvania decided to admit fewer students and draw from their wait lists to fill out the freshman class - a practice discouraged by the National Association of College Admission Counseling.

"By going to your wait list, you upset the apple cart because those kids have already responded to other colleges," said Joyce Smith, chief executive of the association based in Arlington, Va. "It creates a domino effect among other colleges."

That prompted Brown, which admitted 186 more students than the previous year, to take another 50 from its wait list in May; Miller said he expected to lose dozens of students who got off the wait lists at other top-tier schools. That never happened.

Brown ended up with 1,540 freshmen, a 3.7 percent jump from previous years.

Eight freshmen live among older students after being squeezed out of first-year residence halls - a situation that has made some feel isolated.

Sammy Feldblum, a freshman from North Carolina, was stuck in King House, home to a co-ed literary fraternity.

"I was kind of weirded out," Feldblum said. "I didn't know what kind of person you'd have to be to join a society designed for people who read a lot. I'm not a part of it, and I don't plan on becoming a part of it."

What worried him more, though, was not being able to bond naturally with other freshmen. "In other dorms people just leave their doors open and everyone would come meet them," he said. "It was so easy. I had to travel around to meet other freshmen, rather than have the mountain coming to Mohammed."

Meanwhile, Farnham and Harris, the roommates living in a Keeney Quadrangle lounge, are content in their palatial digs.

"We're going to try to stay here all four years," Farnham said.