Brandeis University

Brandeis University is a private research university in Waltham, Massachusetts, about ten miles west of Boston. It was founded in 1948 and named for Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis, as a nonsectarian institution under Jewish sponsorship after World War II. The campus is a single hilltop site rather than a multi-college federation, and the graduate enterprise is small next to Boston's larger universities.

Instruction runs through the School of Arts and Sciences, the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, the Brandeis International Business School, and the Rabb School of Continuing Studies. Life-science research is anchored by the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center. Graduate work is concentrated in neuroscience, biochemistry, physics, social policy, Jewish studies, and international economics.

Enrollment is about 5,500, with roughly 2,000 graduate students and a substantial international share for an institution of this size. Faculty number several hundred. Alumni include journalist Thomas L. Friedman, political activist Angela Davis, and actress Debra Messing.

Doctoral programs are research-intensive with close supervision in small departments. Heller offers the M.P.P., M.B.A., and related social-policy degrees; the business school offers M.A. and M.B.A. pathways. The calendar is semester-based. Ph.D. students typically receive multi-year aid; professional master's students more often pay tuition. Waltham sits on the Charles River, and graduate students use commuter rail and buses into Cambridge and Boston for labs, internships, and archives.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Brandeis University lists 83 graduate programs across 25 subjects: 46 master's programs and 22 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in biology, music and business & management.