Portal:Rhode Island/Selected article/10

Brown University is a private university located in Providence, Rhode Island, and a member of the Ivy League. It was founded in 1764 as the College of Rhode Island; it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in New England and seventh-oldest in the United States. Brown was the first college in the nation to accept students without regard for their religious affiliations. Academically, Brown consists of The College, Graduate School, and Alpert Medical School. The New Curriculum was instituted in 1969, eliminating distribution requirements and allowing any course to be taken on a satisfactory/no credit basis. In addition, there are no pluses or minuses in the letter grading system. The school has the oldest undergraduate engineering program in the Ivy League (1847). Pembroke College, Brown's women's college, merged with the university in 1971.