<p>I have planned trips to visit both of these schools within the next few weeks. Hopefully my visits will make the decisions clear, but I’m afraid they won’t. Either way, I’m looking to get some other perspectives on my options.</p>
<p>Below I have listed some of my general thoughts about each school.</p>
<p>Northwestern:
- Costs $8k per year less than JHU, though JHU is still affordable
- Evanston/Chicago > Baltimore
- Stronger engineering school overall and stronger university overall (?)
- Students seem more diverse and interesting
- Better fit on paper (not sure if this will be true once I visit)
- Easier to obtain another major, minor, and/or certificate
- More flexibility within the curriculum (ability to take interesting classes)
- Nervous about adjusting to Chicago winters (esp. as a SoCal resident)
- Quarter system: too faced paced (?), breaks do not align as well with other colleges, internships, etc.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins
- #1 BME program in the country
- Research opportunities seem stronger than NU’s
- JHU Med School/Hospital as a resource for research/internships
- Stronger BME faculty (top researchers in the field)
- Worried about pre-med/biology dominating the academic climate
- Environment seems more competitive and less inviting
- Social scene doesn’t seem as lively
- Safety concerns (Baltimore)
- Farther from home (longer and more expensive flights)
- Students at NU appear to have more diverse academic and extracurricular interests</p>
<p>Would I be crazy to turn down JHU BME for NU? I’m really torn. I am pretty set on studying BME, obtaining a PhD, and pursing an academic career, so JHU seems like the obvious choice. The resources, students, faculty, research, etc. within the BME program seem astounding. But, I think Northwestern may be a better fit and NU is obviously still an amazing school.</p>
<p>Note: I also posted this in the JHU forum to see what responses I get.</p>
<p>if you’re completely set on BME, Hopkins is just too good to pass up. Otherwise, Northwestern is probably better; besides BME, most of NW’s engineering departments are stronger than JHU’s</p>
<p>Both NW and JHU have pretty bad winters, so I wouldn’t take that into account. JHU is known for its heavy competition/cutthroat environment–you’ll probably find less of that at NW. Because the NW student body is so diverse(journalism+theatre+engineering+science, etc. majors, as opposed to mainly premeds at hopkins) you’ll probably have a better time at NW. If I were you, though, I’d go with hopkins since its BME programs are really just too good.</p>
<p>Since you are set on getting a PhD, do know that NU has the Integrated Science Program (ISP) that you can apply for and this major focuses on in-depth science courses and offers tons of opportunities for research. And students passing out of ISP typically enroll for grad studies in top schools.</p>
<p>"Because the NW student body is so diverse(journalism+theatre+engineering+science, etc. majors, as opposed to mainly premeds at hopkins) you’ll probably have a better time at NW. "</p>
<p>I’m only posting here if others are making similar decisions, but you can’t say one school will garner a better time than the other unless you’ve attended both. The OP and others facing this situation should visit and gather first hand accounts by themselves. JHU is also pretty diverse and is hardly “dominated” by premeds.</p>
<p>The premed majors (bio, chem, neurosci) hardly dominate the majors above. You see plenty of diversity in JHU with students majoring in humanities, physics, math, social sciences (economics, international relations), etc. likely in similar distributions as NU.</p>
<p>Also, the winters are not comparable. Maryland rarely has winters in single digits let alone below zero freezing which happens in Chicago. JHU in that regard has better weather.</p>
<p>Actually, the distributions are significantly more balanced and diverse at Northwestern. Here are some of the obvious differences:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>At JHU, the ratio for science to humanities majors is a whopping 4:1. There are as many public health studies majors as all the humanities majors combined. At Northwestern, English and History are much more popular (both programs confer about 60-80 degrees each year).</p></li>
<li><p>At JHU, international studies and econ dominate the social sciences. At Northwestern, econ majors outnumber all others for an obvious reason but there are still plenty of people in poli sci and psychology (each conferred about 100-150 degrees each year).</p></li>
<li><p>At JHU, the total of French/German/Italian majors is only about 5 per year. At Northwestern, that number is 20.</p></li>
<li><p>At JHU engineering school, BME & chemE are far more popular than others and those two programs account for 1/2 of the engineering school. At Northwestern engineering school, the distribution is a lot more even. The two most popular programs, BME and Industrial engg, account for just 1/3 of total engineering majors.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>5.JHU has virtually no music, communications/theater, education, or journalism majors. At Northwestern, the schools of communications, journalism, education, and music confer about 340, 160, 100, and 80 bachelor degrees each year, respectively. That’s about 1/3 of the Northwestern student body.</p>
<p>@ChaChaanTeng You have to remember that NU also has almost twice as many undergrads than JHU… therefore of course you will find more majors in certain departments. Its called a proportion.</p>
<p>@JHU518
JHU and NU are roughly the same size if you consider just the college of arts & sciences and college of engineering (5150 vs 5800). Those “extra” at NU are primarily from the specialty schools (education, music, communications, and journalism). That’s part of the what makes Northwestern more diverse. </p>
<p>I focused mostly on the proportion. But given the college of arts & sciences are not that different in size (800 vs 1,000, the 20 vs 5 in Italian/German/Spanish is already “normalized”. For some reason, JHU students just seem more skewed toward narrower set of majors. </p>
<p>an extra 650 students is also not insignificant. Definitely try to use proportions in your arguments as opposed to raw numbers.</p>
<p>Take JHU’s engineering versus NU’s:</p>
<p>JHU Enrollment Percentages (NU in parenthesis):</p>
<p>BME 29% (17%)
Chem E 18% (12%)
Applied Math 8% (1%)
Civil 4% (7%)
Comp Sci 8% (8%)
EE 5% (5%)
Industrial N/A (19%)
Comp engineering 3% (3%)
Mech E 13% (15%)
Environmental: 3.5% (3%)</p>
<p>Tell me what you see above. How do you justify NU being more diverse simply because more JHU students major in BME or chem e? That’d be like me arguing JHU is more diverse because applied math has 8% of majors versus 1% at NU. Your statements are a bit arbitrary. Take out industrial engineering from NU’s engineering (which JHU doesn’t have) and redoing the percentages would result in numbers closer to JHU’s as well for a true apples to apples comparison. </p>
<p>I encourage you to apply to McKinsey where we can do this type of numerical debate in person. I’ll be on NU’s campus soon.</p>
<p>I didn’t say 650 was not insignificant; it is and it means 1/3 of the student body is in something other than arts & sciences or engineering. That’s what makes NU a pretty diverse place.</p>
<p>The “applied math” number is more like 3% at NU because the statistics department is not in the engineering school; in addition, many students interested in applied math/statistics are in Math Methods for Social Sciences (MMSS) instead. But regardless, your percentages show that at JHU, BME is by far the most popular. At NU, not one engineering major stands out like this. Curiously, even materials science is arguably the strongest department at Northwestern, it has less than 10% of the total.</p>
<p>I was aware of the Peabody but it’s a bit confusing to me. Isn’t it a conservatory school? Is it on JHU’s main campus? It seems like JHU excludes it from its undergrad admission or enrollment stats.</p>
<p>I don’t see the need to take out industrial engineering from NU’s engineering. The offering is part of the diversity. </p>
<p>I forgot to mention that in 2012, there were 364 med school applicants from JHU and 279 med school applicants from Northwestern even though Northwestern is bigger (1300 vs 2000). The presence of premeds at JHU is definitely more prominent. Also, at JHU, the engineering majors to arts&sci majors is roughly 1:2 whereas at NU, it’s 1:3. Because engineering schools has far fewer departments, it means proportionally, more students gravitate toward smaller number of departments at JHU, hence less diverse. As mentioned earlier, the ratio of science to humanities majors at JHU is a whopping 4:1; at NU, the ratio is significantly less (I am too lazy to compute the exact number). There’s nothing wrong with being less diverse and it’s probably something to do with the perception of where the school’s strength lies (even JHU has many great departments in arts and sciences), the range of disciplines the school offers, the prominence of premeds, and the culture, etc. </p>
<p>You will get a great education at both, but you’d probably enjoy your college years much more at NU. You only get to go to college once. You should pick NU. You can go to JHU for your graduate work if you want.</p>
<p>“You will get a great education at both, but you’d probably enjoy your college years much more at NU. You only get to go to college once. You should pick NU. You can go to JHU for your graduate work if you want.”</p>
<p>You should pick NU?</p>
<p>OP, please visit. You won’t get anything but biased answers on these forums, be it from JHU or NU. At least on the JHU front, we don’t resort to baseless accusations on other universities. It’s funny when people try to differentiate between NU or Cornell or Hopkins or Duke or Vandy. </p>
<p>They are more a like than not. All these pedantic debates result in splitting minute hairs. All i know is none of the above are Stanford or Harvard or Yale. Let’s leave it at that.</p>
<p>Blah2009, Vandy isn’t in the same league as those other 4 schools in my opinion. Its job placement, graduate school placement, and research opportunities are not similar. Duke is closer to Stanford than Vandy is to Duke based on postgraduate success (recruitment at the best firms banking/engineering/consulting, admission to elite biz/law/med, winning prestigious fellowships and grants, etc.).</p>
<p>After visiting both schools, I have decided to attend Northwestern.</p>
<p>I preferred the location, overall campus culture (felt more collaborative and less cutthroat, didn’t feel as dominated by premeds, students seem more involved in organizations), more diverse intersection of students (more even distribution of majors, thriving arts scene, students seemed to have more varied interests), and the NU’s academic and extracurricular offerings and student body seemed stronger.</p>
<p>I really like JHU, and especially the BME program, so it was difficult to turn it down, but I am happy with my decision. Thank you for all of the advice!</p>
<p>My son also chose NU over JHU engineering, although he is not interested in BME. Northwestern offers co-ops and the McCormick school has its own job placement office whereas engineering placement at JHU is handled by the general career services office. A look at the recruiters who visited job fairs at both schools last year shows NU grads to have far more opportunities to interview on campus. We were also really impressed by the opportunities at NU for engineering students to begin working on real client based projects the first year.</p>