Johns Hopkins — Bad for undergrad experience?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my undergrad there in the early 90s. Not premed. It’s not a school with a lot of hand holding but that was fine with me. I have nothing to compare it to but I went to plenty of parties, had interesting friends , smoked weed, the usual college stuff. And while Baltimore gets a bad rap the Charles Village area where most students live is great ( and so much nicer now!). It’s certainly not for everyone, it’s culture is pretty pre-professional, but it certainly wasn’t miserable.

Are you me? Had the same experience in the 90s. I have a fondness for the quirkiness that is JHU experience of and Baltimore.

Pp - oh good glad I’m not the only one! I totally have a soft spot in my heart for Baltimore end even though I didn’t really know how to take advantage of the all the resources that Hopkins offered got a great education there. I’m not in the area and hadn’t been back until a couple of years ago when I was back for a meeting so went to campus to walk around. It has changed so much - in great ways! Though i barely recognized Charles Village, it’s gone pretty upscale.

I was teaching there then and in a short-distance relationship where we alternated weekends between his place in DC and mine in Baltimore and both of us really enjoyed (and still enjoy) the quirkiness. At the time, there *were* a lot of suburban undergrads who seemed scared of city life. But the undergrads I knew best seemed to be happy (they also tended to be pretty academically-inclined but those are the type of undergrads that faculty are most likely to get to know). I think that UChicago is kind of a parallel for some undergrads. Similar scale, grad-orientation, urban environment, accessible profs, more off-campus living than @ Ivies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my undergrad there in the early 90s. Not premed. It’s not a school with a lot of hand holding but that was fine with me. I have nothing to compare it to but I went to plenty of parties, had interesting friends , smoked weed, the usual college stuff. And while Baltimore gets a bad rap the Charles Village area where most students live is great ( and so much nicer now!). It’s certainly not for everyone, it’s culture is pretty pre-professional, but it certainly wasn’t miserable.

Are you me? Had the same experience in the 90s. I have a fondness for the quirkiness that is JHU experience of and Baltimore.

The three of us probably know each other because I read this and thought...same. Except I attended mid-to-late 90s.

I will say that it is an excessively nerdy school full of very earnest people. The pressure is real there, but I thrived on it. I liked the fact that I could smoke some weed, drink and party on weekends and not get crap for spending the rest of my time at the library on weekends studying because that's what everyone else was doing. Hopkins people are very quirky and like to think out of the box. I think the people who hate it do not like the intense academic environment of the place. It is for real really, really hard but I had a fantastic, rigorous education with professors who really cared and knew my name. I also loved that, as an elite university, I lived in the dorms with so many different kinds of people: NBA player's kid, a volunteer firefighter, the winner of teen jeopardy, a rich Chevy Chase girl (new for me, I thought that was an actor), and so much more.

Other than STEM, the most popular major is International Relations, which is very well-regarded. I did well for myself post-Hopkins and rode the name for a good decade, getting great jobs at big-name places before really establishing my professional reputation. I loved my time at Hopkins and still have a group of close friends from my Hopkins days who I consider life-long friends.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: I was a grad student there in the early 200s and thought it seemed miserable for undergrads then (based on being a TA). I said I'd never want my kids to go there.

However I've met some undergrads who graduated in the last 10 years who are very positive about their experience and say it was a great place to go to college. I think the campus and campus life have improved in the intervening years, definitely, but on the other hand college students don't have another experience to compare it with.

I was also a grad student in the late 90's and I was disappointed that Johns Hopkins did essentially nothing to guide these highly impressionable young adults in any way from a social development stand point. So many of the kids were highly focused on grades and competition, fighting for every point (even if they already had a 98% and were clearly WRONG on the 2%), grade grubbing. We even had students cheating the second semester of their senior year in final exams outside of their major area - RIGHT IN FRONT OF GRAD STUDENTS in our department. There was no moral compass. For other kids who were bright or were athletes, it could be hard (I was a mentor to these kinds of students). This was very different from the undergraduate school I went to, where the school, at least, talked about honor, and tried to lead/guide students by emphasizing character. Hopkins lacked all of this for their undergrads. But - it's been 20 years so things may have changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:JH is a great school, but Baltimore seems like an awful place to live.

I'm the 90's grad student above - living in Baltimore was far from awful. I did learn/experience things I haven't encountered in other places I've lived, some good - some bad.

[Anonymous]

I was a medical student there in the late 90's. I always felt badly for the kids who had come from Hopkins undergrad. They were all biochem majors (or similar) and acted like they had fought a war through undergrad to get one of Hopkins undergrad--> Hopkins med spots. And I imagine the truth wasn't very far off.
(i.e. 4 years spent toiling underground at the MSE (Milton S. Eisenhower) library. Ack.

Meanwhile many of us who came from elsewhere were not science majors in undergrad and many people had a far more laid-back college experience.

[Anonymous]

I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

I'm a prior responder who was an undergrad. Honest question - what are people thinking other colleges offer as far as "guardrails for social development?" Full disclosure I didn't strongly encourage my dd to apply to Hopkins when it came time because I knew she was looking for a different sort of school, but pre-meds are going to be a pretty competitive bunch at any highly selective school. I was IR (international relations) at Hopkins, I'm not a particularly competitive grind-y person, the environment was great for me. Hopkins is not a big rah-rah school spirit type of place, and it leans more pre-professional than intellectual (in hindsight I wish I had known that before going.) But I had some amazing professors, brilliant classmates, and honestly I also had a lot of fun in college.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did my undergrad there in the early 90s. Not premed. It’s not a school with a lot of hand holding but that was fine with me. I have nothing to compare it to but I went to plenty of parties, had interesting friends , smoked weed, the usual college stuff. And while Baltimore gets a bad rap the Charles Village area where most students live is great ( and so much nicer now!). It’s certainly not for everyone, it’s culture is pretty pre-professional, but it certainly wasn’t miserable.

Are you me? Had the same experience in the 90s. I have a fondness for the quirkiness that is JHU experience of and Baltimore.

The three of us probably know each other because I read this and thought...same. Except I attended mid-to-late 90s.

I will say that it is an excessively nerdy school full of very earnest people. The pressure is real there, but I thrived on it. I liked the fact that I could smoke some weed, drink and party on weekends and not get crap for spending the rest of my time at the library on weekends studying because that's what everyone else was doing. Hopkins people are very quirky and like to think out of the box. I think the people who hate it do not like the intense academic environment of the place. It is for real really, really hard but I had a fantastic, rigorous education with professors who really cared and knew my name. I also loved that, as an elite university, I lived in the dorms with so many different kinds of people: NBA player's kid, a volunteer firefighter, the winner of teen jeopardy, a rich Chevy Chase girl (new for me, I thought that was an actor), and so much more.

Other than STEM, the most popular major is International Relations, which is very well-regarded. I did well for myself post-Hopkins and rode the name for a good decade, getting great jobs at big-name places before really establishing my professional reputation. I loved my time at Hopkins and still have a group of close friends from my Hopkins days who I consider life-long friends.

Another undergrad from the mid 90s here! (As is my DH. Probably outing myself )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

I doubt it, I went to one of those and it was a totally different environment, at least then. But the "social development" involved a lot of posturing, status-seeking, and heavy drinking, so I'm not sure it was better really.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

I'm a prior responder who was an undergrad. Honest question - what are people thinking other colleges offer as far as "guardrails for social development?" Full disclosure I didn't strongly encourage my dd to apply to Hopkins when it came time because I knew she was looking for a different sort of school, but pre-meds are going to be a pretty competitive bunch at any highly selective school. I was IR (international relations) at Hopkins, I'm not a particularly competitive grind-y person, the environment was great for me. Hopkins is not a big rah-rah school spirit type of place, and it leans more pre-professional than intellectual (in hindsight I wish I had known that before going.) But I had some amazing professors, brilliant classmates, and honestly I also had a lot of fun in college.

By this I mean some sense of moral compass. Yes, pre-med is cut throat and schools are competitive. But even in highly competitive environment, a school has ability to help mold expectations of undergraduates as students and as community members. Having honor codes and genuinely speaking about (and acting on) doing your best, while still being a supportive community member can go a long way. It is possible to study hard and be successful without it being at the cost of others. While I was there (and NOT in a pre-med or engineering field), I never saw the university emulate a community minded posture, to discourage the rampant grade grubbing, to place any value in an honor code. I wouldn't have wanted a large number of those kids to EVER be my doctor, or coworker, or employee. (Obviously, there were nice kids who were naturally this way with the help of their own good nature and upbringing from their families). My undergrad school was very very different. Community was valued from the top down but so was academic excellence.....for the sake of learning - not to get ahead of everyone beside you. Work hard, be honest, don't cheat.... don't stab in the back.

I'm not talking about whether kids had fun or went to parties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

I doubt it, I went to one of those and it was a totally different environment, at least then. But the "social development" involved a lot of posturing, status-seeking, and heavy drinking, so I'm not sure it was better really.

Thanks...

[Anonymous]

I think that people who are extremely driven and status conscious are not always generous and socially motivated. They want to win, at all costs.

I found Hopkins to be a greedy institution. For Public Health school, I attended Michigan and Hopkins. Michigan prof's really were motivated to help people for the most part. They really stressed that we should work with the community and understand their needs. Hopkins faculty were all about bringing in grant money and getting more and more national/international recognition. They LITERALLY taped the covers of their book jackets on their office doors. The public health training at Hopkins was MUCH less idealistic. It was disillusioning and I felt sorry for young students entering the field who had those types of role models.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous[b wrote:]I think that people who are extremely driven and status conscious are not always generous and socially motivated. They want to win, at all costs[/b].

I found Hopkins to be a greedy institution. For Public Health school, I attended Michigan and Hopkins. Michigan prof's really were motivated to help people for the most part. They really stressed that we should work with the community and understand their needs. Hopkins faculty were all about bringing in grant money and getting more and more national/international recognition. They LITERALLY taped the covers of their book jackets on their office doors. The public health training at Hopkins was MUCH less idealistic. It was disillusioning and I felt sorry for young students entering the field who had those types of role models.

All the more reason to drill this in at an impressionable age.

I was lucky that our grad department was not cut throat or obnoxious as Public Health, although you either made it or you didn't. I did observe what you describe at PH and setting it up as a grant driven model doesn't help matters. Your story matches up to my general observation that Johns Hopkins does not invest any effort to generate community minded leaders. They are ok with full out competition and the ugliness that comes along with that. I found that highly disappointing for the undergrads and didn't enjoy working with those who fully leaned into this behavior.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm one of the grad student responders above and have a related question - would the issues with competitiveness and lack of guidance/guardrails for social development occur at all highly competitive schools (HYPSMC plus T10/T20) or is this unique to Johns Hopkins (or JHU plus "some" others). Would like to steer my child away from even considering such schools in their small set of "reach" schools.

Wash. U. seems a lot like Johns Hopkins in some ways, but I never really felt that I was competing with other students all that much. Maybe other students were cheating, but I never heard about cheating.

[Anonymous]

I was an earlier poster who was a happy, social Hopkins undergrad. Not aware of any cheating when I was there, not does Hopkins have a reputation for such. The grad students on the undergrad campus were pretty nerdy themselves, and not really people I would take advice from with respect to any social aspects of college life.