<p>I'm an international student trying to decide which universities I should apply to. People where I am from know very little about American universities other than Ivy League schools. There are a lot of great universities (based on rankings) that I can't decide if I should apply to or not, because I really don't know enough about them. </p>
<p>For instance, I know that Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis and Emory University are highly ranked schools, but that's pretty much all I know about them. I've looked at their websites, searched images, watched youtube videos and used the "college search" tool in a couple websites, but I still feel like I don't know enough about them.
Can somebody please tell me some more about those universities? Are they good in the humanities and social sciences areas? How prestigious are they? Student life? Small classes or big classes? What are they known for? What kind of people attend to those schools? Do they have like a "profile"? Something they are outstandingly good at? Any specific tradition? Financial aid for international students? Please tell me anything, literally anything, you know about Johns Hopkins University, Washington University in St. Louis and Emory University!!</p>
<p>And also feel free to share any advices regarding college search. If you know any other ways I could learn more about universities please let me know! And if you know any university that is well know for its humanities and social sciences programs please let me know as well! Literally anything helps right now...</p>
<p>Sorry, this ended up too long..
Hope I get some good advices!
(:</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Barbaralima, you’ve chosen three excellent urban research universities with large medical facilities attached, but you haven’t told us anything about you. Could you tell us what you intend to major in, what interests you have, what you like to do when you’re not studying, what kind of qualifications you have? This information and much else will help to guide us.</p>
<p>Getting a book on American colleges can help in your search, and it can spell out some of the kinds of colleges and universities there are here. Kaplan, Princeton Review, and numerous other companies publish these guides. They’ll get you started. All three universities you’ve named, for instance, have graduate students and a large research commitment; one thing to investigate on the school websites is whether or not the grad students teach introductory courses. Most grad students are expected to have some teaching experience when they graduate, and some universities have the grad students teach or assist in the teaching so that when they graduate they can find jobs. Graduate students can be among the best teachers of your college experience, but as a whole they are still learning how to teach, often without great support from their institution. Sometimes having graduate students at a school means that the professors’ time is directed more to the grad students and the professor’s labs or research than to the undergrads. Johns Hopkins has a reputation for such research and teaching, for instance, but there are no doubt some of the best teachers in the world there. Having professors who are actively researching can also be a benefit, however, in that it’s often possible to volunteer and later intern in many of these research projects, always good experience to have and sometimes remunerative. Almost all schools of this kind will promise you that altho they have graduate students and a research component they are an undergraduate-first institution, but I find that the willingness of faculty to engage undergraduates varies from faculty member to faculty member rather than from research university to research university. In at least half of American institutions of higher education there is a strong correlation between research quantity and quality and promotion, job security, and salary, and it is presumably these kinds of institutions, the ones with the international reputations, to which you will apply. You’ll just have to read up on and ask around CC about each institutions in which you’re interested.</p>
<p>Schools as large as these three are going to be good at just about everything. Some departments will be weaker, no doubt, but they each have so many strong departments that it’s hard to differentiate one’s strength from another’s. People will tell you this school is good at political science or English, but the reliability and timeliness of that information has to be a consideration. For instance, I teach in a strong department, but the university just offered a retirement incentive and one-third of my colleagues will leave in the next few years. That’s going to stir up the department. I’ll try to make it better, of course, but only time will tell if we’ve succeeded. Having said all this, there are rankings of departments among the elite schools such as you’ve named. You can find these online. Just take the info with a grain of salt. A neuroscience program, for instance, at CalTech isn’t going to be that much better than one at another elite institution. The question is where do you fit in? what kind of atmosphere do you want to spend four years and a lot of money in? It comes back to you eventually.</p>
<p>Emory doesn’t have aid for int’l students.</p>
<p>Don’t know if some of the others are “need aware” for int’ls.</p>
<p>What is your major and career goal?</p>
<p>What are your stats?</p>
<p>How much will your parents pay?</p>