<p>How do the two schools compare in terms of program?
Difficulty?
Prestige?
Research opportunities?
How will they differ in getting me in to grad school or professional school, for example, to get a masters in engineering or even a JD or MBA (I'm assuming this will relate to the previous questions)?
Student life? Anything else?</p>
<p>Are you fricking kidding me?</p>
<p>All of the answers to all of those questions is JHU, except for maybe student life, thats a toss up.</p>
<p>While Hopkins is more academically prestigious in the US (UCLA is probably more well known in China/Asia because of the large asian student contingent there), I think the chem e programs at both schools are comparable. Difficulty is probably equal at both (it’s not an easy major, but you’ll have classmates to work with. I don’t know how it is at UCLA, but I know alums from my work that said they worked hard and played hard). </p>
<p>That said, I know 3 friends that graduated with a chem E BS at Hopkins. They definitely had easy access to professors and research because of the major’s smaller class sizes. I often saw them working with classmates on problem sets. They didn’t seem to have too tough of a time with the major and definitely went out on the weekends. One of them is working, and the other 2 are at Princeton and MIT for grad school, respectively. Getting into a master’s program at a top school from Hopkins is easy. A JD or MBA is another story. JD’s are numbers based (GPA and LSAT…I wouldn’t recommend majoring in engineering for that), while a MBA is work experience and numbers based more so than your undergraduate school.</p>
<p>The answers to your questions will be subjective. It’s difficult to offer quantitative answers as there aren’t student satisfaction survey results for specific majors readily available, as you can imagine.</p>
<p>So essentially by majoring in chemical engineering I’m at a disadvantage if I decide to go to grad school for law or business? Not good…</p>
<p>Well, how much of a deciding factor is GPA? I’ll concede that I’ll almost certainly end up with a lower GPA by majoring in ChemBE at JHU than choosing another major or school. But I do feel that I’d still do well on the LSAT; I feel like I’ve even read the argument that engineers tend to do better on the LSAT due to the type of critical thinking that they’re exposed to… If GPA is a huge factor then that’s rough.</p>
<p>And hopefully I could still get plenty of work experience as an engineer?</p>
<p>well…not necessarily for business school since it’s dependent on your gmat, interview, and most importantly work experience. For law school, admissions officers do take into account your engineering major when seeing your GPA, but it’s still a risk.</p>
<p>An engineering undergrad opens up certain specialties in law like patent law that one can often enter from a somewhat lower ranked law school, so there is some compensation for the lower GPA.</p>
<p>Thank you for your responses.</p>
<p>For some reason, the general perception that I have created about the schools is that Hopkins might be more prestigious and might even open up more doors post-grad, but that it’s going to be more challenging and stressful to get through than UCLA.</p>
<p>Any comment?</p>
<p>No one can make that assessment unless they went to both schools and took the same classes. Yes, engineering at Hopkins and at every other school is hard. But harder than at UCLA? Most likely not. Unless you’re competitive or <em>completely</em> anti-social (in which case, please go to UCLA or some other university), you’ll do fine by having classmates that will want to help you and vice versa. You’ll find people will often be struggling with one problem you might get in a problem set, while you might struggle with one they understand well. This is a good way to get to know the material while developing friendships and study groups. I got to know some of my good friends in my major this way (cramming together in the library the day before a final was one of my finer moments at the end of senior year). Smaller class sizes along with friendly students will do that.</p>
<p>And would you say that getting into grad school or getting job opportunities is easier with a Hopkins ChemBE degree vs. a UCLA ChemE degree?</p>
<p>probably? this is subjective. I know my chem e friends are all at fantastic grad schools and all had JHU as a backup school for their master’s degree. JHU is more respected than UCLA as whole. You can get more info about chem e at JHU here (specifically alumni info):</p>
<p>[Johns</a> Hopkins University - Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering](<a href=“http://www.jhu.edu/chembe/alumni/]Johns”>http://www.jhu.edu/chembe/alumni/)</p>
<p>You can also see there’s a career links section headed by one of the profs. The profs definitely have deep connections to other colleagues at other universities, which will help with grad school, and to industry, which will help with finding a job.</p>
<p>What I can tell from the above alumni newsletter link instantly is 5 chem e seniors alone won the NSF graduate research fellowship (an insanely hard to win full scholarship to grad school) this past year alone. These students have their pick of grad schools. The amount of undergraduate students research awards is also telling.</p>
<p>From the above link in one of the newsletters:</p>
<p>ChemBE students are making good use of the Johns Hopkins ChemBE Career Network (HCCN), a highly active network of students, faculty, and academic and industry partners. Senior Jenna Lloyd-Randolfi, 21, for example, was able to use the network last year to land a coveted industry-paid internship at Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in New Brunswick, N.J.
Lloyd-Randolfi, a native of Billings, Mont., worked for the summer as a process engineering intern. She worked in the sterile clinical manufacturing unit, where the biopharmaceutical company manufactures liquid injectibles for clinical trials. “We worked in a clean room and wore what looked like a space suit,” says Lloyd-Randolfi. “We were ensuring and testing for sterility because you don’t want anything not sterile going into a person’s bloodstream.”
Lloyd-Randolfi credits her relationship with alum Sarah Doshna, BS ’96, for making the internship a success. Doshna, director of Clinical Manufacturing, had posted the opportunity on the HCCN website.</p>