<p>Yesterday I received a call from Dartmouth saying that I got accepted from the wait-list. I am thrilled about it! But I already committed to Johns Hopkins before May 1st. I want to be a doctor-surgeon in the future. I will be majoring in Molecular Bio + Pre-med Track. Which school: Dartmouth or Hopkins will prepare me better to get to a great Med-School and why?</p>
<p>Both are great for pre-med. I would take JHU because it is more focused in the direction you want to head in life. Also the National Institute of Health is located in Maryland and they recruit undergrads from JHU.
Dartmouth would prepare you better for alternate career paths, but since you are focused on being a physician that is not a major concern. In the end, both are great choices. Dartmouth comes with the IVY label, but Johns Hopkins provides better research and opportunities in the medical field. On the ranking basis, Dartmouth is higher, but for your field, the JHU route makes more sense.</p>
<p>When making your decision, you have to ask yourself what school you’d like to get your graduate degree from. In my opinion, the most prestigious medical degree would either be from Johns Hopkins or Harvard. With that being said, I think that going to JHU for their undergrad program would significantly increase your chances of getting into their graduate program.</p>
<p>Hope that helps!</p>
<p>-iBP</p>
<p>I heard that JHU does not like to take their own students into their medical school. I do not know why. One possible reason is that it is hard for you to maintain a high GPA there. On the other hand, Dartmouth has a small size class. You might be easy to learn. When I brought my son there last year, I contacted the director or pre-med program. His data showed that many students at Dartmouth successfully went to many good medical schools, including Harvard, Upenn, JHU, and so on. By the way, my son was accepted into both schools. He chose Dartmouth over JHU. He is so happy in Dartmouth and he is going to have a 50 miles hiking this weekend. </p>
<p>Once you are on campus, you can check the data that all the previous students who went to medical school are willing to share their successful experience. You can contact them for questions. That will happen only after you are a part of Dartmouth.</p>
<p>I hope that you have already made a decision. In my opinion, JHU has a better medical school than Dartmouth. However, the medical school is what you should consider after four years. Dartmouth has a strong and unique liberty art college for undergraduate now. You will be taken care of better in a small college. Dartmouth has a medical school too. Ideally, you should go to Dartmouth now and then go to the medical school at JHU.</p>
<p>Most represented undergrad school at Hopkins med school is Hopkins. Harvard follows.</p>
<p>Another way to look at it: your odds of getting into med school are really small from either college. Thus, where would you rather spend your four years? Which school has other non-bio departments that you might be interested in? Which one costs less?</p>
<p>I know this choice well - my three best friends at Dartmouth were pre-meds (one went to Upenn Med school, another Yale med, and the other Harvard med). Dartmouth has amazing preparation for med school. The Nathan Smith society provides amazing advising and Dartmouth has invested significantly to become a leader in healthcare and just opened a $35M center for healthcare delivery (<a href=“The Dartmouth Institute | For Health Policy & Clinical Practice”>The Dartmouth Institute | For Health Policy & Clinical Practice). The best thing about Dartmouth is the access you will have to research, advising, small classes and professors. Its also not a weed out in the way Hopkins is. In my experience JHU does feed into JHU med, but after that its much less successful at med school placement. I think you’ll be much happier and better off at Dartmouth where the approach is to support and nurture rather than to just throw curves to weed out students.</p>
<p>JHU has a great med school, no doubt. JHU pre-med, on the other hand, has a reputation for being extremely cut throat. To what extent that is true, I cannot say. You have to figure that JHU attracts a significantly higher proportion of premeds than most other universities. How many of them make it through to the end is another matter. You might want to look into that before making a decision.</p>
<p>They’re both stellar schools of course, but I’d focus on your undergraduate experience and not just situating yourself with respect to subsequent professional training. You may find that you’ve changed your mind along the way–worse things have happened. </p>
<p>Dartmouth is small and relatively intimate, and its winters are harsh. JHU is more cosmopolitan and I find Baltimore captivating. Well, alternately captivating and horrifying 
</p>
<p>As if it needs to be said: YMMV</p>
<p>^“I find Baltimore captivating”</p>
<p>I just came from a long weekend there and there is nothing captivating. Even the tourist areas and the inner harbor areas are just second grade imitations in miniature scale of what you find in other cities. God help one if they wonder beyond the safe areas. They could not pay me to live there.</p>
<p>That’s the horrifying part, and the tourist parts aren’t of any interest either. You missed the good parts I daresay. </p>
<p>They include: Hampden, Fells Point, Federal Hill, Dickeyville, Roland Park, Homeland, Guilford, Mount Vernon, Wyndhurst, Canton, Downtown, Mount Washington, Charles Village, Homewood, and of course Camden Yards. </p>
<p>Homeland offers the highest-quality traditional residential architecture I have ever seen in America, btw. <a href=“http://www.homelandassociation.org/[/url]”>http://www.homelandassociation.org/</a></p>