Is John's Hopkins still miserably competitive for undergrad once you are in?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Only for lacrosse, the D3 sports are held to high standards.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Only for lacrosse, the D3 sports are held to high standards.

I know a D3 admitted test optional last year. (family member of mine). He had decent grades from a fairly grade inflated public but a crummy SAT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Only for lacrosse, the D3 sports are held to high standards.

I know a D3 admitted test optional last year. (family member of mine). He had decent grades from a fairly grade inflated public but a crummy SAT.

Do you mind sharing the sport? My student is track.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition. As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above.
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

PP - my kid while recruited probably would have made it without the hook-1590 SAT, 4.5 weighted GPA with a ton of APs and non-athletic ECs. I guess my point was my kid is a nerd who happens to be athletic (their own descriptor) and had a great experience. My take as a parent is why would you pay the price if it t wasn’t something of value. In my kids experience we believed there was.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Only for lacrosse, the D3 sports are held to high standards.

two athletic recruits in 3 years from our private: Scoir is by year so it is obvious and they were the only jhu admits those years:
1410, 1450, non-lacrosse, both top 20% but not top10% (school announces the top 10% a semester before the next group). The other years JHU unhooked were all 1500+ and all ED. They WL every RD who tries, even the Vals and sals who get into multiple ivy types RD.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Be careful. There are multiple stories on other sites of athletes not doing well in at JHU and similar level of school when they had scores well out of range. Often they get pushed to super easy majors that may not align with their goals. Better to pick a school that is academically closer, at least scores on the 25th%ile, unless they truly do not care what they major in and will not care if the majority of students are far smarter

[Anonymous]

Campus police are located at all schools, rural, suburban and urban.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Only for lacrosse, the D3 sports are held to high standards.

two athletic recruits in 3 years from our private: Scoir is by year so it is obvious and they were the only jhu admits those years:
1410, 1450, non-lacrosse, both top 20% but not top10% (school announces the top 10% a semester before the next group). The other years JHU unhooked were all 1500+ and all ED. They WL every RD who tries, even the Vals and sals who get into multiple ivy types RD.

their 25th percentile is 1530 (yes you read that right). from my
own experiences in D3 recruiting for kids, Hopkins wanted 1500 scores for tennis

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition. As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above.
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .

have to disagree with this. Caltech, Harvard, MIT and now Hopkins bas reinstituted test scores because they found not all students were up to par due to test optional. There’s no way 75 percent of the class is scoring over 98th percentile on SATs when less than 65 percent even submit scores at ivies and other schools. It is less intellectual because grading is easier and content is dumbed down for students that should t be there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition. As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above.
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .

have to disagree with this. Caltech, Harvard, MIT and now Hopkins bas reinstituted test scores because they found not all students were up to par due to test optional. There’s no way 75 percent of the class is scoring over 98th percentile on SATs when less than 65 percent even submit scores at ivies and other schools. It is less intellectual because grading is easier and content is dumbed down for students that should t be there.

Example at Harvard: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/3/new-math-intro-course/[img]

Caltech example showing students are performing worse on the same exams:

https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/04/26/letter-sat-reinstatement/#faculty-petition

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid (recent graduate) absolutely loved their time there. From what I could tell, it could be a grind if that's what you want but there were plenty people and groups that were welcoming and friendly if you wanted to find them. My kid also felt like they in fact had others that took their studies seriously unlike HS and they liked that, ie going to class and studying actually mattered. My kid was also a recruited athlete so definitely had a friend group that was super social. All in all it was a great fit for my kid and they loved their time there.

Not OP but following, have a potential athlete but his scores are not near the 25th percentile. Does JH make any concessions on scores with athletes? Some schools do and some do not. Not sure where JH lies. This is anonymous so my hope is you can be honest about your student's experience since no one know who you are. Maybe they hold your feet to the fire on scores, maybe they do not.

Be careful. There are multiple stories on other sites of athletes not doing well in at JHU and similar level of school when they had scores well out of range. Often they get pushed to super easy majors that may not align with their goals. Better to pick a school that is academically closer, at least scores on the 25th%ile, unless they truly do not care what they major in and will not care if the majority of students are far smarter

PP with the recent recruited athlete grad. I saw this on my kids team. Teammates came declaring STEM majors, started to struggle and switched to Econ or Writing/English. Know your kid. Mine happened to be a very book smart athlete (common sense/street smarts is still a work in progress. )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition. As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above.
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .

have to disagree with this. Caltech, Harvard, MIT and now Hopkins bas reinstituted test scores because they found not all students were up to par due to test optional. There’s no way 75 percent of the class is scoring over 98th percentile on SATs when less than 65 percent even submit scores at ivies and other schools. It is less intellectual because grading is easier and content is dumbed down for students that should t be there.

DP. Actually if you pull up pre-test optional SAT ranges the JHU 25th%ile is 1480, very similar to most of the other T15 privates: that was the 98th %ile in 2019. So about 75% 98-99th %ile is spot on. Mine is at an ivy that ranks in the top 10 and has very similar grade distributions to the above post, including the description now vs the early 90s (when DH attended). Other alum parents discuss it on parent pages--C's are rare now, but our kids still pull late nights and long weekends trying to get around the mean on notoriously difficult exams in Calc, chem, CS, and the dreaded Econ, which apparently were the lowest means years ago. It seems quite reasonable JHU as a top 10 would be fairly similar SAT ranges (pre-TO) and they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition. As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above.
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .

have to disagree with this. Caltech, Harvard, MIT and now Hopkins bas reinstituted test scores because they found not all students were up to par due to test optional. There’s no way 75 percent of the class is scoring over 98th percentile on SATs when less than 65 percent even submit scores at ivies and other schools. It is less intellectual because grading is easier and content is dumbed down for students that should t be there.

Example at Harvard: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/9/3/new-math-intro-course/[img]

Caltech example showing students are performing worse on the same exams:

https://tech.caltech.edu/2024/04/26/letter-sat-reinstatement/#faculty-petition

The math intro course added to Harvard has been discussed in detail on this board: it is a watered down PRE-precalc course for the least prepared, less than 10% of the harvard class. The left tail of the distribution has likely fallen off the past three years with TO and other equity admissions, but the non-hooked students admitted to ivy/t10 is not likely significantly different and certainly they do not take that new easy math course! The average unhooked ivy student took AP or IB calculus in high school starts in the equivalent of BC calc. Tests need to be reinstated everywhere but it is a gross exaggeration to say the unhooked student population of these schools is dumber and less intellectual/barely keeping up compared to 3 years ago.