The John Hay contains a diversified, functional collection, distributed more or less evenly among the main scholastic departments. In the John Carter Brown Library is housed a fine and widespread selection of Americana, ranging across the years from the reports of early explorers to contemporary comments and fiction. Although mainly a showcase, the Annmary Brown Memorial Library boasts one of the largest collections of incunabula (books published between 1474 and 1500) in the country.

Perhaps the best-known Brown library is the divisional Physical Sciences Library. Stocked to supply the University's big, exceptionally strong Mathematics Department, it contains texts on pure math, its application, and its history. An evidence of the library's strength and completeness is the location of the headquarters of the American Mathematical Society across the street from the Brown campus. Recently the Math department mailed its six millionth microfilm of a rare text to an interested person.

But if Brown generally stands aloof on its strengths, it must compete with other Ivy Group colleges in the matter of admissions. Dean of Admission Emery R. Walker allows himself a few comparisons, which he sums up with, "We can match 'em with any college." But Walker ignores comparison when he is selling Brown to a candidate.

The Caliber of Atmosphere

It is the singular peculiarities of the Providence institution he stresses, not its standing in relation to the large universities. Naturally, unity of spirit, small classes, and extracurricular activities are influential in a candidate's decision. About a fifth of the 3,000 applicants are accepted each year. A slight edge, 55 percent, of the incoming class is maintained by public school graduates.

Brown's financial aid system is identical, on a smaller scale, to Harvard's scholarship plan. Each applicant's ability to meet costs is considered in the same way; financial need as computed in trial cases was determined identically under both the Brown plan and John U. Monro's Harvard formula. Scholarship grants range from $200 to $1500, and about 170 out of 600 applicants receive aid. The gross scholarship fund approaches half a million dollars annually.

Dean Keeney feels the same way about the faculty members as does Walker about the caliber of the student body. "They teach at Brown because they like the atmosphere," he says, acknowledging the lower wage scale. There is complete freedom to do research work at Brown, but being a relatively small college, it occasionally loses men who require a broader scope in their particular fields.

An Interlocking Social Life

The small classes and the opportunity for close student-faculty contacts prejudice many excellent professors in favor of Brown. There is no doubt in the Brown man's mind that these special advantages more than offset the ability of more generously endowed institutions to attract teachers.

Students too have received more encouragement to attend Brown since President Wriston's arrival--mostly in the form of a new, L-shaped quadrangle of interlocking dormitories and fraternities which centers around the College's central eating-place, the refectory.

Until the completion of the quadrangle in 1951, Brown's fraternity men were spread our over the Providence hillside in dilapidated buildings with leaky roofs, faulty plumbing, and often inadequate study facilities. Food was purchased in small, expensive lots and varied considerably in quality. But most important in view of the College's stress on close community life, the members of the different fraternities and those who lived in dorms did not mingle freely enough.

Everything is different now. A statue of Caesar Augustus raises a benign hand--to which the Brownies have taped a symbolic dead pigeon--over the central area of the quadrangle, where frat brothers and dormitory men mix constantly in their daily routine.

The feeling of excitement and exploration which has infected the student in his studies extends to social activity. Dormitory facilities are second to those of the fraternities only in social functions and the dorm resident is frequently seen at fraternity functions as the guest of a boy who may live only a few doors down the hall from him, but separated by a swinging door.

A Difference of Dining

As soundproof and functional as modern engineering can make them, the building units are ordinarly divided into three sections: two fraternities with a dormitory section between them. The heavy metal partitions which separate the three are movable, allowing the fraternities to expand or contract according to their yearly membership without loss of money or space to the College.