How competitive is it? I’m talking about CS in the engineering school specifically. Is it as tough as life is for pre meds? How collaborative are students and how helpful are professors? How easy is research access? Can anyone speak about the 5 year BS/MS program?
Lots of questions, any advice is helpful
Thanks
anyone?
Here’s a discussion from a couple of years ago that may answer your question. http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19752935/#Comment_19752935
(current CS major at Hopkins)
How competitive is it?
Really depends on what you mean by competitive. Grade wise, most core classes aren’t curved and the average comes out to around a B. Most students are looking to go to industry after undergrad so they’re not as focused on grades as the pre-meds.
Is it tough?
CS at Hopkins is not our most difficult major. Core classes aside, you can more or less pick and choose your upper level courses (with some restrictions) which allows you to make the program as easy or difficult as you want. I’ve found that CS is more of a time sink than it is difficult - a lot of the effort in CS courses is finding small bugs in your code rather than trying to understand some abstract concept.
How collaborative are the students?
As a rule, Hopkins is not a cutthroat place. Students band together under a “we’re all in this together” mentality and generally help each other out with projects, problem sets etc. The engineering school (and CS especially) is where you’ll see this the most. Students are encouraged to work together on problem sets, there are a lot of partner assignments, and students will often study for exams in groups. All CS classes use Piazza as a Q&A forum where students can ask questions about course material and professors, TAs, and other students can respond.
How helpful are the professors?
Some are very helpful, others are not. No one tries to be deliberately obtuse, but some professors are very focused on their research and just don’t care enough to put effort into teaching. However, at least one professor has been nominated for an Excellence in Teaching award for every semester I can remember - so that’s something.
How easy is research access?
It’s there if you want it. I’ve found that CS students are less inclined to get involved in research than other STEM students. I attribute this to two factors. First of all, CS students are more inclined towards opportunities in industry -
most of us aren’t planning on going into academia and research is much slower / more boring than your average software developer experience. And secondly, you need to have some prior knowledge to seriously contribute to CS research (whereas in a wetlab you can learn on the job more easily). But like I said, if you want to go into research there are plenty of opportunities - all you really need to do is do your due diligence, send some emails, and see what comes back.
5 Year Program
I’m not going for the 5th year, but I have some friends who are. It’s a pretty good deal - you get 50% tuition for the first year and the program usually only takes 1 or 1.5 years. The way the program works is you double count two upper level undergrad courses between your BS and MSE; that leaves you with 8 courses or 6 courses + thesis to complete. Some students are able to take some extra graduate courses in their junior and senior year which lightens their load - those are usually the ones who are able to finish in a year.
thanks very much. This was a comprehensive answer to my questions and it’ll be very helpful when deciding where to attend. Thanks again @saif235
@kjake2000 great questions! As I RD admit I am so torn between picking a high ranked school, a smaller school and prestigious schools in between. I know JHU, UNC, WashU and other non ivies have great reputation for BME or Premed and they are not that reputed for CS. But great schools for CS like GT, Purdue, UMICH CMU are all super big and I worry about being lost in the mix.
I wish I knew about this forum before! People are super helpful here!
Good Luck.
@saif235 , Thank you 
@Wisdom2share Thank you