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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]JHU medical school and some graduate programs are top totch.  But the undergraduate student population is so so, especially if your kid is not into sciences.[/quote]

30,000 applications and 9.2% acceptance rate...how are the undergraduates, so so?[/quote]

My anecdotal and longish-ago experience as a TA in the humanities was that I had several international students whose English was not good enough to participate in class at a proficient level or do college-level writing and a ton of science majors who weren't interested or invested (they were taking the course to fulfill a requirement). It just felt unbalanced to have so few humanities students who were interested and engaged in the material.[/quote]

I taught there in a non-science field and had some really excellent undergraduate students (a couple are now tenured profs at Georgetown and Yale, others have really interesting careers in law, media, arts — and those are just the ones I know about).  Aside from these standouts, there were a lot of competent pre-professional kids and I never had a course (including the intro course in my discipline) where I encountered students who lacked the language skills to participate in discussions.  Obviously this, too, was years ago.  But in the past few years I revisited JHU as part of my own kid’s college search.  My strong impression was that the things I valued (really excellent liberal arts faculty, scale, libraries/museums) were still there and significant improvements had been made in stuff that had been kinda substandard (dorms, study space on campus).  There’s also a new 4 year undergrad research mentorship program that looks great and builds on, for me, what was Hopkins’ strong suit at the college level — [b]the opportunity for academically-oriented undergrads to BE EXPLOITED  as jr grad students FREE LABOR.  [/b]Kids we met on/through the tour were smart, well spoken, focused on the right things).  Not a school for everyone, but really great for some kids.  And seriously underrated by people who think of it only as a (pre-/) med school and/or who are scared of Baltimore.[/quote]

Fixed it for you.
Undergrads working at their unpaid internships to the point of not having time to do their school work, sleep or socialize does not impress me. But I see that it impresses you. [/quote]

No, I’m in a liberal arts field and was talking about faculty mentorship for undergrads who wanted to take grad courses, do independent studies, undertake research projects of their own, combine BA/MA programs, etc.  And also that, at least when I was there/in the departments I knew best, grad students themselves were welcoming to undergrads with similar academic interests and the fact that so many undergrads lived off campus (like grad students) made socializing easier.

FWIW, my science major kid at a different school (that shares the junior grad student vibe) has been TAing as an undergrad.  TAing has always been paid.  Also doing self-directed research (combination of supported by department with summer grants or for course credit).  I think it can be a tricky balance between coursework and teaching/research for undergrads (all my TAs and RAs at Hopkins were grad students on fellowships), but I also recognize that different students learn in different ways and the apprenticeship model may serve some kids better than classroom instruction.

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