Perhaps that “some reason” is the large number of pre-meds there? But if your student is not a pre-med or in a major popular with pre-meds, the pre-med pressure-cooker-competitive environment would not affect him much.
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Improper use of commas, sorry!
I meant that “for some reason JHU doesn’t have the same reputation for mental health issues even though they do have a similar reputation for having a competitive/pressure cooker environment.”
Congratulations, HMom. You certainly did a thorough investigation and your family made the best informed decision you could.
We all know about Cornell’s reputation as a pressure cooker and the accompanying mental health crises. No one really knows why or how many kids are affected. My nephew, a brilliant & motivated kid went there, struggled, and is still trying to find myself. A friend of ours moved to Ithaca for a tenure track teaching position, but gave it up after a few years because she hated the weather. Seasonal Affective Disorder and the accompanying depression is a real thing and may be a contributing factor.
My daughter took her daughter to JHU for the tour as one of the colleges they visited. She was absolutely blown away by the facilities and everything about the place. She was hoping her daughter would go there but, although she liked it, my granddaughter chose another college in Cambridge closer to home. Everything that JHU does, it does with a high level of excellence and with top notch faculty, but because of its stellar reputation as a leader in medicine, the humanities and engineering get overlooked even though they’re just as good.
I don’t think that Cornell would have been a wrong choice because plenty of kids go there and thrive. Friends of ours sent there son there for engineering. He had a wonderful 4 years there and his career has been going great. But I don’t think you’ll have any regrets about JHU. It is a special place with lots of resources.
All the best!
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It is true about the deaths at Cornell this year but they were not all suicides so if that is the implication given to your son that information is false. There were 3 deaths this semester and 2 during the winter break. Not all were undergraduates and not all were suicides. Two of the three this semester were definitely not, and the third has not been confirmed one way or the other, only suspected, but the family has asked for details not to be released.
As for the two over break, since they did not happen while school was in session no one knows what happened, one was a Phd student and the other was an undergrad in their 40’s so not the typical college student.
So, as far as that goes, I wouldn’t necessarily assume the reasons or call them red flags when there are actual death by suicides at many schools and multiple ones year after year at many schools. There are no more mental health issues at Cornell than most schools as it is unfortunately a problem everywhere. There have actually been more deaths at my daughter’s public university related to mental health than at Cornell. It’s a problem everywhere, sadly with not enough resources to go around or resources spent on the problem.