From Hogwarts to Brown

It has been perhaps the most obsessively scrutinized college decision process ever endured.Emma Watson, the British actress who plays the bookish but valiant Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies, has confirmed, after months of speculation and rumor, that she will attend Brown this fall.Watson’s decision became public when ‘Potter’ star Daniel Radcliffe told the U.K.’s The Guardian newspaper about his co-star’s college plans in a July 4 interview. The actress herself verified her impending matriculation at Brown in recent interviews with MTV, Paste magazine and other media outlets.2525;">As early as August 2008, The Daily Telegraph, one of Britain’s biggest papers, was reporting on the high results of Watson’s A-level exams.With such stellar grades, Watson was expected to attend Oxford or Cambridge, following in the footsteps of her parents, not to mention generations of talented English teens. But in September, the Telegraph quoted Watson as saying she had applied to a few American universities as well.