Is Johns Hopkins still desirable?
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
Yale, Columbia, and Chicago have done just fine with their locations in the not-so-distant past. Hopefully that portion of Baltimore will continue to improve. Hopkins also has the benefit of the name recognition that its med school and hospital provide. It was a popular school for kids in Mountain View and Palo Alto, CA to look at when I was out there. |
Anonymous
I lived in Baltimore and nothing about it is "fun." |
Anonymous
Undergrads in Baltimore (includes kids from Loyola and Towson) hang out in Fed Hill and Fell’s Point. It is fun, but maybe you are not. |
Anonymous
I don’t know what Pp’s kid didn’t like about Hopkin’s location, but it surrounded on one side by Charles Village, area where students and professors live as well as young professionals in row houses,, Remington - where the hipsters live, and Guilford/Roland Park, two of the nicest single family home neighborhoods on Baltimore. It is a completely gentrified area of Baltimore. The hospital and medical school are across town in a definitely less upscale part of Baltimore. |
Anonymous
I live in Baltimore and I guess you just didn’t get invited to the fun stuff. Sorry! |
Anonymous
| Do students go there for anything but bio or pre-med? The preferred majors are so biology heavy. |
Anonymous
Of course, for a long time, international studies was the second most popular major (still may be, I don’t know). Writing seminars is popular and one of the top writing programs in the country. Engineering and Econ are also popular majors as are the other hard sciences. Public health is another, supported by the strength of the public health grad school. |
Anonymous
| I know fine arts are well respected there, too |
Anonymous
Yes Curtis is excellent, and I think Hopkins makes double majoring or taking music classes as a nonmajor very doable. My kid liked Northwestern until she realized she couldn't take any decent music classes or lessons without being a dual degree student. Bummer. |
Anonymous
Must be tough getting from a 9 am history class in Baltimore to the 10am music class in Philadelphia though... |
Anonymous
I think they meant Peabody, which is Hopkins affiliated and in Baltimore. |
Anonymous
| DS is applying ED at JHU. Was concerned about the no fun reputation but after asking around seems convinced that it’s more about the pre meds which he is not. Will likely go Greek if admitted. 20+ kids apply from his school every year, 1-2 get in. |
Anonymous
| You guys are idiots. It’s also top ranked in public policy, economics, etc.. It’s hospital and medical research are world renowned, but it’s global policy program is renowned world wide too. |
Anonymous
|
Hopkins is obviously a very good school, but it's particularly renowned for MD. I'm sure there's some advantages that pre-meds have as well due to having two major medical research universities located in the city, in both research and shadowing opportunities.
Beyond pre-med, it's not particularly known for anything else academically or career-wise. It does not have a big tech/engineering culture and isn't a hotspot for tech startups, incubators or recruiting into top tech firms. It doesn't have the network or history of recruitment into Wall Street finance firms and Big 3 consulting firms and its MBA is extremely mediocre. It's not particularly renowned for political activism although that's a positive. It doesn't have a law school although that's probably another positive. The last two points probably lead to the lack of Hopkins alumni in Congress. A lot of the high ranking that Hopkins gets is due to programs that undergrad students get zero access to because it's in a different city altogether and requires car + commute time to access. The federal government's Applied Physics Lab is run by Hopkins and brings in the biggest federal research dollars along with the medical school, but it's in Laurel - a 30 minute drive minimum during non-commute hours. SAIS is Hopkin's graduate school for international relations, is among the best along with Georgetown's and Harvard's, but it's based in DC - an hour drive minimum during non-commute hours. With the APL, perhaps Hopkins undergrads get some benefit with the few professors that teach in both locations, but the greatest benefit of top professors is working directly in their research labs. With SAIS, the top professors all live in DC and do not professors care much about teaching undergrads in a city an hour away. The campus is mediocre with a very cramped quad. The architecture is mediocre. The city is the worst out of all the top universities. Not because it's boring, but because it's outright dangerous and rundown. There's relatively safe development near the harbor, but it is a small area and everywhere else is terrible. What could be amazing night-outs turn out to be outright dangerous. The lack of Division 1 sports and terrible Greek Life is an advantage as far as I'm concerned. Baltimore has major sports teams with the Orioles and the Ravens. Greeks are about 30% of the population which is the threshold where they dominate the campus culture, which is unfortunate. |
Anonymous
What ranking are you using? The public affairs school is ranked 35, same as UMD. Its Economics program is ranked 22, same as UMD. https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-public-affairs-schools/public-affairs-rankings?_sort=rank-asc https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings?_sort=rank-asc It's ranked 4 for Global Policy and Administration Programs, but that is for the graduate school SAIS which is based in DC, 1 hour away during off-peak hours by car. SAIS professors live in DC so the undergrads in Baltimore get little to no benefit from the graduate school. |