Brown v. JHU

[bonanza]

<p>

I’m not sure I trust JHU’s crime statistics. For example, there was an off-campus murder in 2005 that was not reported in the OPE statistics.

</p>

<p>Don’t be so cynical. The definitions used in those reports are not made up by Hopkins, but are generated by federal regulation. All universities use the same definitions. If you look at the report, you will see that “Off Campus” crime crime refers to crimes that are off the campus, but in University or student-group (i.e., fraternities and sororities) owned or controlled buildings. The murder that occurred in January 2005 was in the Charles Apartments which, at the time, was privately owned. The building was subsequently purchased by the University although it is still not official university housing. If the same crime happened today, it would be reported as an"off-campus" crime but it didn’t qualify for that treatment in 2005.</p>

<p>I live near Brown and can tell you that, although the area looks safe, it has more than its share of problems. The Thayer St. area (the "collegetown type area adjacent to the campus) attracts many people from outside the immediate area–some of whom are looking for trouble. Property crimes (burglary and robbery) are common, as are assaults and sex crimes. Brown students have the reputation of being rich and not very careful–hence they get targeted. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the area is unreasonably dangerous. Its not–I go there all the time. But I am saying that Charles Village and Hampden are no more dangerous. </p>

<p>The Hopkins campus has much better security than the Brown campus and it is also more separated from the community than the Brown campus is. Thus, on-campus crime at Hopkins is very low----lower than Brown. </p>

<p>Now, without a doubt, Baltimore is a more dangerous city than Providence. But Homewood is in a relatively safe area of Baltimore. Frankly, although few would admit it out loud, I suspect that the reason many people from the suburbs feel less safe around Hopkins than Brown is the fact that there are more minorities around Charles Village than you will ever see around Brown.</p>

[IBclass06]

<p>

@&lt;em&gt;idk&lt;/em&gt;

lol ok i just looked at these rankings … they are from 1995. are all the nrc rankings from 1995…in that case isnt nrc useless until the new rankings come out sometime between now and september?

Outdated but not useless. They’re certainly better than making claims with no support. </p>

<p>

@bonanza

The Hopkins campus has much better security than the Brown campus and it is also more separated from the community than the Brown campus is. Thus, on-campus crime at Hopkins is very low----lower than Brown.

I agree. Graduating from a college with a distinct “bubble” feel to it, Brown felt oddly integrated into Providence. I didn’t feel unsafe there, but I only stayed for a week – so I’ll trust your experience over mine. </p>

<p>Personally, I think they’re both great schools and in fact were my top two choices for graduate school. The OP can’t go wrong with either, really.</p>

[cdz512]

<p>

I agree. Graduating from a college with a distinct “bubble” feel to it, Brown felt oddly integrated into Providence. I didn’t feel unsafe there, but I only stayed for a week – so I’ll trust your experience over mine.

JHU has an literal bubble with their gates. So that’s probably why you felt not integrated to Baltimore.</p>

[ljbw]

<p>Since you’ve visited, I say go with your gut and pick Brown. There are a lot of rumors/misperceptions about both schools though. I had a friend in high school who was certain she would apply ED to Brown. It has a reputation for being a hyperintellectual hippie bubble, which she was attracted to, but ultimately found it to be misleading. She thought it was full of the same privileged, preppy kids as the rest of the Ivies. She ended up at Vassar and loves it there. Brown may be slightly easier to get into than Harvard or Columbia, and have less strenuous degree requirements, but the atmosphere is the same (just in a less exciting city). Not that that’s always a bad thing, but a lot of people who look at Brown specifically out of the Ivies are looking for a different experience. Hopkins’s rep as a supercompetitive pre-med-focused place where fun goes to die is largely untrue as well. I’ve had nothing but good experiences with other students in my classes. BME students in particular do collaborate a lot - I believe there’s some BME classes that do in fact require a good deal of group work.</p>

<p>I also have a friend at Brown who loves it there. If you think you’d be happiest at Brown and would resent going to Hopkins for the science reputation, go to Brown! The unhappiest people I know at JHU are here because they felt pressured into going to a “not fun” school because of its academic reputation and came in with a negative attitude. With the right attitude though Hopkins can be a great place to be.</p>

<p>With that in mind, here are some reasons you might want to reconsider Hopkins:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Much stronger opportunities in the sciences. In addition to classes, there are ample opportunities to do groundbreaking research, on campus or at the medical school, even in fields outside of your major.</p></li>
<li><p>Unless you really hate humanities/social sciences/writing, Hopkins is a better place for you to explore different areas of academia. Distribution requirements are really not that bad. For engineering, I believe, you must take 30 credits (about 2-3 classes a year) in humanities or social sciences, including 2 writing-intensive classes. A lot of Hopkins’s departments, even the smaller ones, are truly world-class. I came here because I had like 5 different majors I was interested in, and Hopkins had strong programs in all of them… and then I ended up majoring in something totally different and just as awesome.</p></li>
<li><p>There is more stuff to do in Baltimore! The actual campus life at Brown is probably more involved, but if you have a sense of adventure and don’t get bogged down by the study-mania around you you’ll have way more fun at JHU. Student life is what you make of it, and I’ve found my time exploring the beautiful, weird, artsy, and occasionally sketchy Baltimore to be infinitely more rewarding than any time in some gross frat basement or collegey bar or a cappella show or sports game. Baltimore’s not for everyone, but I absolutely adore it here and truly consider it my home.</p></li>
</ol>

[ilovebagels]

<p>

1. the Ivy cache

</p>

<p>It’s cachet</p>

<p>And yeah, Brown’s faculty is unquestionably less impressive than JHU (heck, most faculties are). But I honestly do not know whether that affects undergrads or not…I can understand both sides…</p>

[WealthOfInformation]

<p>I think the students at Hopkins are much more dedicated to scholarship but also want a fun academic place. </p>

<p>I never got the sense that Brown was an intellectual place like Hopkins.</p>

[IBclass06]

<p>

@WealthOfInformation

I think the students at Hopkins are much more dedicated to scholarship but also want a fun academic place. </p>

<p>I never got the sense that Brown was an intellectual place like Hopkins.

Interesting…I got the opposite impression. As a Classics major, I felt the pre-professional vibe more keenly at Hopkins. </p>

<p>Brown has a higher PhD production [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062118154-post2.html]rate[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062118154-post2.html]rate[/url</a>] per capita than Hopkins, for what that’s worth.</p>

[_idk]

<p>^</p>

<p>…quality over quantity…lol</p>

[peachyogurt]

<p>you’ll get a much bigger boost by applying to jhu ED. </p>

<p>but to be honest, if you can get into jhu BME (warning: there’s no guarantee you’ll get into the program even if you’re accepted ED, so beware! the school may lock you in that way…that would really suck) then you may have a good chance at brown, too. of course i can’t predict this stuff because brown definitely emphasizes personal qualities over grades, scores, etc. </p>

<p>i’m headed to jhu this fall, but i applied ED to brown. i don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything but i really wish i could be heading to brown instead.</p>

[YanksDolphins]

<p>As someone who also applied ED to Brown, you’ll quickly see that Hopkins is far better than Brown.</p>

[piggybank]

<p>says someone who never took classes at brown…</p>

<p>im reading this thread and you guys are fighting over a silly question.</p>

<p>Just step back and take alook for a second. All the brown students defend brown and all the JHU students defend JH. What does that say? It says both schools are good enough for their students to want to defend it. If brown sucked, the brown students would agree with the claimsa nd if JH sucked, the JH students would be complaining!</p>

<p>I guaruntee you guys that if those who attend brown attended JHU instead, they would be defending JHU instead and vice versa.</p>

<p>This is a silly debate, its like comparing a ferrari with a lamborghini, you’d be happy with either one</p>

[cdz512]

<p>But I like Maserati…
jkjk</p>

<p>Piggybank makes a really good point though. College should be a place where one is happy. It’s suppose to be your choice at which college you should attend, not others.</p>

[RML]

<p>You’re going to major biomedical engineering, so go for JHU. Based on some anecdotes of some friends who have gone to either school, there’s really no difference between JHU and Brown for undergrad. JHU is every bit as good as the lower ivy school and a lot better than some of them in some majors. JHU has also a much wider name recognition internationally, if that matters to you.</p>

<p>I’d go with JHU. It’s a fantastic school and probably one of the top 10 globally. I can’t say the same thing for Brown, although Brown is popular for undergrad (specifically for liberal arts) in the US.</p>

[methionine]

<p>I am attending Brown this fall, but was also admitted to JHU’s BME program and was seriously about to attend JHU (I filled out the response form and even had the stamp on the envelope and everything!)… but then decided to go to Brown at the last minute. Like you, I am very interested in biological sciences and the like and will probably major in computational biology or neuroscience.</p>

<p>Like another poster already wrote, it depends on what you want to do with your degree and how set you are on doing BME. If you want to do research or go into industry, BME looks really impressive and I’d definitely go with that-- I wouldn’t worry too much about the supposed harsh grading and whatnot; BME is outstanding. For medical school or even maybe a MD/PhD program, I think Brown undergrad is perfectly fine. (But I wouldn’t go to Brown to major in biomedical engineering, even though it offers it.)</p>

<p>There seems to be less diversity in the BME group of kids (a lot of Asian, Indian, and Caucasian kids… at least in the facebook group), but from what I understand, BME kids still interact with the rest of their classmates and all so I guess that isn’t too big of an issue. However, several friends of mine at JHU has told me that “while the academics there are great, the people supposedly weren’t as amazing” in more or less those words. It’s anecdotal, so don’t take this too seriously-- I went to an Open House at JHU and I thought the people seemed really nice.</p>

<p>I chose Brown for some of the reasons you mentioned: I think that the open curriculum is a great idea, and I think an undergraduate education should still be a time of exploration, not specialization (that’s the point of grad school ). Brown offers just that, whereas if you look at the JHU curriculum on the website somewhere, you’ll see that it’s pretty much all planned out and without much room for picking and choosing. That makes sense, for BME is an engineering program, which means that there will naturally be many more requirements. But I wasn’t that sure I wanted that in my undergrad years. I guess it’s JHU/BME for rigorous academic training, and Brown for exploring and expanding horizons, etc.</p>

<p>As for the intellectual feel thing, there are more and less intellectual people everywhere. But I personally got the impression that Brown had an overall more intellectually fun atmosphere than JHU did. JHU seemed way more preprofessional.</p>

<p>Finally, it’s true that JHU, especially BME, has a bigger name than Brown… but I don’t think that should be a major factor at all in your decision. Both are really great schools and you’d probably love it wherever you go. :)</p>

[_idk]

<p>^so this post got me curious. i looked up brown’s bme requirements: [Division</a> of Engineering](<a href=“http://www.engin.brown.edu/Undergrad/bioengin/degree.htm]Division”>http://www.engin.brown.edu/Undergrad/bioengin/degree.htm)</p>

<p>thats a fair amount of reqs for an “open curriculum.” i was actually under the impression that no courses would be required… but that’s ridiculous lol.
also, i don’t think you will automatically get a broader education just by going to brown [seems like you were suggesting this, my apologies if i am mistaken]. for ex, hopkins bme has many requirements, but there are tracks and concentrations to choose from. also, you still have distribution requirements which allow you to explore other areas of study. in my opinion, it is as best a blend as you can get between specialized study and a liberal education.</p>

<p>EX: [JHU</a> Biomedical Engineering - Undergraduate Program Requirements](<a href=“http://www.bme.jhu.edu/academics/ugrad/ugrad_bsrequire.html]JHU”>http://www.bme.jhu.edu/academics/ugrad/ugrad_bsrequire.html)
27 elective credits within the BME major. also, there are 67 non-bme department requirements that give you a broader experience (distribution reqs included, so for example 18 humanities credits are required but you can pick any you like so long as at least 1 is 300 level). there is definitely flexibility in the schedule, especially if you have AP credit.</p>

<p>hopkins does provide for a very broad and liberal education thanks to distribution requirements. i really like this method, as opposed to a core or no requirements at all. you get a chance to explore different subject areas in a way that still works with majoring in anything you’d like. </p>

<p>also, like brown, you can cover some courses (I think it is 1 course per semester after first semester-where all courses are covered). i honestly think hopkins in a good blend of brown’s open-minded curriculum with the addition of distribution reqs just to make sure your experience is rigorous and that your education isnt limited to one area. at the same time, you are in control of how far you will stray (in terms of departments and subjects) from your major(s) of choice. </p>

<p>ps… im neuroscience too!! i have a friend at brown doing neuro and he loves it. interesting that you picked brown’s program. i think only stanford and harvard were considered to have better departments (us news and world report) than jhu in neuro for grad… it’s one in the same though, grad and undergrad, because there is only 1 nuero department across all of hopkins and the faculty is the same and PIs are the same, etc. i really like the courses here and the research ops are great. some of the best professors at hopkins teach the neuro courses and that’s always a plus. at least a couple of those profs taught/teach neuro at the med school, which i find to be pretty sweet (and we can take neuro courses at the school of med ). im sure you’ll love neuro at brown too!</p>

[methionine]

<p>Yeah, engineering in general at Brown (and at any school) will have lots of requirements… there’s no getting around it.</p>

<p>The thing about the 27 elective credits is that 21 of those 27 will be used for your “BME focus area”–there are four focus areas you can choose from, I believe: biological systems, computational biology, sensors/microsystems, and cell/tissue engineering. So although those classes would be “electives” in the sense that you do pick which ones you want to take (and there really are a lot of options), they are still all science classes.</p>

<p>As for the other 6 credits… well, 6 credits is only 2 to 3 classes. Add that to the 18-credit humanities distribution requirement which could be counted as electives, and and you’d still get only 24 credits total. Furthermore, the 18 credits of humanities classes are supposed to be “departmentally related” and at least two classes have to be writing-intensive. This is good in that you’d focus in on a second humanities area and get to know that area beyond one or two classes, but it also isn’t like Brown, where you have the option to diversify your electives as much as you want, or to make them as related to one another as you want. I personally have a very wide variety of interests and while I’m probably most interested in using most of my electives to learn about public health or a foreign language (which JHU as well as Brown definitely offer), I also wanted to take art classes at RISD, take a few art history classes, and a linguistics or music course. I don’t think those would be considered thematically related so I probably would have had a harder time fitting those in with a BME curriculum.</p>

<p>Also, keep in mind that you can use some AP credit at both schools.</p>

<p>I agree that JHU is phenomenal for sciences. All the facilities are great, and I’ve heard that the professors are very good as well. Oh well, perhaps for grad school! I know somebody who went to Brown undergrad and then JHU for medical school, and seems pretty happy with this path.</p>

<p>Good luck with your decision! (Or apply RD to both like I did and then decide :p)</p>

[wolfmanjack]

<p>“But be aware that deviation from liberal orthodoxy is greatly frowned upon (in other words, it is not a very liberal place in the true sense of the word). Moderate and conservative students who do not get in line behind the liberal orthodoxy will be shunned and made to feel very unwelcome. Brown students likely will spend fours years without ever hearing a conservative speaker on campus, or learning about a conservative point of view in the classroom.”</p>

<p>Sorry to bump and old thread, but this is a bunch of crapola. You live NEAR Brown? That’s your qualification?</p>

[bonanza]

<p>^Okay then please provide us with a list of conservative speakers at Brown over, say, the last 4-5 years.</p>

[wolfmanjack]

<p>Mike Huckabee
Ben Stein
Rick Santorum
some libertarians, military commanders, some crazyman they had in MacMillan last year (I can’t recall his name)</p>

<p>I wish there was a nice list available online but there isn’t.</p>

[bonanza]

<p>Your response prompted me to look up the speaker list at the Brown Lecture Board. The list is: Salman Rushdie, Oliver Stone, Ralph Nader, Joseph Heller, David Mamet, Spike Lee, Naomi Wolf, Anderson Cooper, Jesse Jackson, Ehud Barak, Wesley Clark, Rich Santorum, Vincent Cianci, Valerie Plame Wilson, John Krasinski and Mike Huckabee. Interesting speakers no doubt, but certainly not a politically balanced list.</p>

<p>While there are three conservatives on that list (Huckabee, Mamet [a converted liberal] and Santorum)–it would be hard to argue that the list is balanced since 12 of the others lean left (some very hard left). Cianci just leans towards himself so he wouldn’t count in either category. Pollsters tell us that Americans self identify themselves as conservatives at a two to one ratio compared to identification as liberal. You would never know that based upon that list of speakers.</p>

<p>The “crazyman” at MacMillan that you referenced was undoubtedly David Horovitz–who wrote an interesting piece about his experience as a speaker at Brown University. So much for freedom of speech and tolerance of different viewpoints. [FrontPage</a> Magazine - The Hazards of Speaking on a College Campus](<a href=“http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32780]FrontPage”>http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32780) This was exactly my point. </p>

<p>And he is by no means alone. Conservatives at Brown (yes there are a few of them) write about how oppressive the environment at Brown is for them. [The</a> Oppression of Conservative Thought on Campus | The Brown University Spectator](<a href=“http://thebrownspectator.com/conservative-thought-oppression-brown-university/]The”>http://thebrownspectator.com/conservative-thought-oppression-brown-university/)</p>

<p>Moreover, your description of “military commanders” as being conservative demonstrates where you are coming from. The only military guy on the list is Wes Clark–who ran for president as a liberal Democrat.</p>

<p>And speaking of military, I remember when Brown had a wonderful NROTC unit on campus. Vietnam is long gone, but the lefties at Brown won’t let NROTC or ROTC on campus. Brown students who are so inclined (or need the scholarship money) have to trek over to Providence College to participate. Now that is pathetic. Compare that to JHU, where the Blue Jay Battalion is the oldest continuously-functioning ROTC unit in the country. Make no mistake, Hopkins is definitely a liberal leaning place, but the faculty and students are much more tolerant and respectful of others viewpoints than you will find at Brown.</p>

<p>Finally, I think that the most telling thing about Brown’s leftist leanings is that there are no well known conservative academic faculty on campus. Brown supporters usually point to Glenn Loury to refute this point, since Prof. Loury was one of the few African-Americans to hold a significant position in the Reagan Administration. The problem is that Prof. Loury identifies himself as a “Black Progressive,” and most of his views differ from those of most conservatives (except, perhaps, for his opposition to affirmative action).</p>

<p>Again, while most Hopkins faculty are liberal (including famous liberals such as Zbigieu Brzezinski) -the faculty boasts many of the most well-regarded conservative thinkers in country such as Elliot Cohen, Fouad Ajami, Francis ***uyama and Michael Mandelbaum. Harvard–also a very liberal place–nevertheless makes room for conservative scholars. Where’s Brown?</p>