<p>Another one of these threads, but I would really appreciate some advice. I was accepted into Cornell as a Tanner Dean Scholar, into Johns Hopkins, and into Carnegie Mellon. No financial aid at any of these schools, just a small scholarship at CMU and a book award/later research scholarship at Cornell.</p>
<p>I've been leaning toward Cornell, but I feel as though I might be ruling out Johns Hopkins too quickly. I'll be visiting Cornell soon but I'm not sure about whether I should visit JHU. Which school would better serve my interests? Also, I want to go into pre-med/medicine, which plays a big factor.</p>
<p>Any advice/confirmation of my inclining/more information would be appreciated!</p>
<p>JHU has the rep of making it quite difficult for premeds; you need to make it thru that gauntlet in order to be part of their high med school acceptance rate. That’s what I’ve heard, anyway, you ought to look into it further.</p>
<p>^Actually, Cornell has exactly the same reputation. And it is equally untrue for both schools. By design, many of the courses which are prerequisites for medical school are difficult in the sense that they require a lot of work. So even very smart people who don’t work hard are likely not to do well in them. For some students, this comes as a shock because they got used to doing very well in high school without working too hard because they were smart. That technique won’t cut it at Hopkins or Cornell. I say that this is by design because medicine is a field that requires long hours and hard work; being smart is great but it is not enough. So these courses tend to weed out those who aren’t willing to put in the long hours. None of them are conceptually that difficult; just a lot of work.</p>
<p>Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences and Hopkins’ Krieger School of Arts and Sciences are peers. A department at one may be better than the other and visa versa, but on balance they are pretty equal. The big difference is size and location. Cornell has four times the undergraduate population of Hopkins and that, IMHO, makes a huge difference. Being big not only makes the lectures much larger (do you like watching your professor on a tv monitor?), it makes it harder to get the classes you want, harder to get to know your professors well, and is simply more impersonal. </p>
<p>The location difference is more subjective. Ithaca is a nice small city but it is sort of in the middle of nowhere. Sure, you can be in Syracuse in an hour but who wants to go to Syracuse? On the other hand, the Finger Lakes region is beautiful and it certainly offers better hiking, snowshoeing and other outdoor type stuff than Baltimore. Baltimore is a much bigger city than Ithaca and it offers everything that come with a big city including professional sports teams, musical and cultural events, great museums, and fine restaurants. It is also less than an hour away from DC (there is commuter train service that is both fast and relatively cheap). And Philly and NYC are readily accessible. </p>
<p>Another thing about the location is the fact that because Ithaca is so small, Cornell placed all of its medical facilities hours away in Manhattan. The Hopkins’ medical campus is separate from Arts & Sciences and Engineering (the Homewood Campus), but it is only 15 minutes away by the campus shuttle fwhich runs frequently. That means that you can get involved in doing research (and classes) at the world’s premier medical center. Try to do that in Ithaca.</p>