<p>I need help =/... i basically get full rides to all 3 schools</p>
<p>Can you visit? They probably feel very different.</p>
<p>Academically, all three are great schools so you can’t make a serious mistake with respect to your education. I’d probably rank them as Hopkins, Duke, and Wellesley–but that’s somewhat splitting hairs. Obviously Hopkins and Duke will have many more advanced (i.e., graduate level) courses and far more research going on if those things are important to you, but there is enough going on at Wellesley to keep one occupied for four years. Do well at any of them and you are fine for graduate school, if that is your goal.</p>
<p>Hopkins and Duke are similar in many ways, and are peers academically. Besides size (Duke is significantly larger), the schools are culturally different due to location and sports. Duke is in the deep south–although its student body is diverse. But walk off campus and you are in Durham and you better not forget that. There is that whole Duke–UNC–NC State rivalry/hatred thing going on which, depending upon your personality, can either be great or intolerable. Also, due to Duke’s success on the basketball court and its boastful superiority attitude (e.g., calling Harvard the Duke of the North), prepare to be hated if you go to Duke. Duke is clearly the most despised school in the country–and Dookies love it that way.</p>
<p>Hopkins’ obnoxious attitude is limited to lacrosse (where it beat Duke twice this decade for the national championship) and, occasionally, academics (although this boastfulness pales in comparison to Duke). Hopkins lives by its mission: knowledge for the world. Baltimore is an interesting mix of a northern and southern city (it is south of the Mason Dixon line and was a slave state, although it never seceded during the Civil War. It is much more cosmopolitan than Durham, and offers much easier access to other cities, such as DC, Philly and NYC.</p>
<p>Wellesley is culturally in a different world. You either love the idea of a women’s college or you don’t…My daughter, who went to Hopkins, spent a weekend at Wellesley when deciding on colleges and determined that, as beautiful as the campus was, it just wasn’t for her. She had too many guy friends and she wasn’t ready to give that up.</p>
<p>good luck!</p>
<p>Visit all three if you can and, if possible, stay overnight. You will know which one is right for you.</p>
<p>Definitely visit if you get the chance. I think you’ll feel a school culture different at Hopkins and Duke for sure. You’ll know which is right for you. I always thought that Duke felt like a cult but that was just me. Hopkins seemed more broadly attractive. Wellesley is just in a different realm being a Women’s College.</p>
<p>JHU has no biochemistry major. There’s molecular and cellular biology and chemistry (separate) but no biochemistry major.</p>
<p>I think sciences at Hopkins are gold compared to the other two places.</p>
<p>As a woman, you would likely get better mentoring and be more likely to be successful at a women’s college. Hopkins also has a cut-throat rep among premeds-wrecked experiments, stolen notes, etc.
It’s also smaller, so more nurturing, easier to get faculty to pay attention to you and get individual research assistantships as an undergrad.
I’d go with Wellesly.</p>
<p>^^flame, Hopkins is 50% women and the graduation rates are exceptionally high. Tales of note-stealing are nearly 40yrs old now.</p>
<p>I’d listen to people who actually go to the school and not make decisions based on hearsay. Absolutely no one steals anything from anyone, in fact, we work together and help each other with everything. lies lies lies and I’m tired of hearing them especially from people who just “heard” that it was true.</p>
<p>We do have women science professors here of course, and if you’re worried about being a woman in science then you’re fine because half the girls are pre med and half of the campus is composed of girls, anyway.</p>
<p>Hopkins boosters aside, studies show that fewer women drop out of the sciences, and a much higher percent successfully complete their major at all female schools. That is actually the main statistical advantage of attending a woman’s college.100% of the premeds are female there…</p>
<p>Not trying to put Hopkins down, sorry to offend, and I am not a flamer.I have a friend who has a child at Hopkins, and I am a married female physician.</p>
<p>I was accepted to med school at Hopkins many years ago, and decided not to attend because my female biochem teacher at Bates told me she left Hopkins to teach at Bates after she was mugged the third time in a parking lot.I didn’t comment on THAT in my original post because the college is in a much safer area than the med school, and of course because it was so long ago…</p>
<p>I’m don’t think Duke being in the “deep south” (it isn’t, technically) should concern you – even if you step into Durham, attitudes are not the typical “Southern conservative” that some people seem to think they are. And no Southern accents (unfortunately). I mean, Durham’s not a great place, but it’s not because it’s in the deep south.
And concerning the rivalry, there is no way you’ll be able to distance yourself from it, but I don’t know anyone who doesn’t think it’s a lot of fun. Even if you’re not at all a sports fan. And especially around March. :D</p>
<p>And I agree with what’s been said - you’ll get a great biochem education no matter which school you go to (although I have heard that organic chem at Duke is unbearably difficult, I can’t figure out whether that’s because of the professor or the course content). So decide based on campus culture. Duke has more school spirit than Hopkins or Wellesley (the flip side of it being the most hated school in the US, ahaha). Wellesley has the best dorms. I personally wouldn’t choose a woman’s college, and I’ve never been to Wellesley (I have a friend there who gave me a dorm tour, her room was pretty darn amazing. And as a frosh, don’t they usually get the worst dorms?). I don’t really know anything about Hopkins, though. I need to visit too, haha.</p>
<p>I would say that Hopkins has school spirit in a different way than Duke and probably Wellesley. Duke’s student activities and school spirit is built, for better or for worse, around the comraderie that is fostered through sportsmanship and rivalry. The type of spirit it creates is a fiercely passionate one in the same vein as people rooting for their favorite basketball or football team during the Superbowl season. Don’t get me wrong, students at Duke are also passionate about many other things, but the general school spirit seems to veer in this direction.
On the other hand, Hopkins is the more mellow, but persistent effect. There are certain things students do that helps foster their own unique Hopkins spirit in ways that schools like Duke, UNC, etc don’t often replicate. Whether its through passionately delving into Biomedical research, performing with the JHU Barnstormers, or simply sitting at the beach on a clear Spring day, and chatting with you friends about plans for the weekend, every student at Hopkins comes to build their school spirit, pride, and connection in a unique way. Some may call it muted, but I prefer to call it individual. Students at Hopkins are just as loving of their school as any Blue Devil, etc, but it is not necessarily the aspect of sports or partying that unites them.</p>
<p>Of course, neither one of these approaches has to be the perfect fit for you. Some people would prefer the Sports-centered school, the Hopkins connection, or something entirely different, but the important thing to do would be to experience each of these different ways, talk to real students (like myself 
) and get a good feel for what it is you want out of your college experience.</p>
<p>Walk on each of these campuses. Which one of these feel like home?</p>
<p>For me, it was Hopkins.</p>
<p>and P.S. the bio/chem programs at all three schools are excellent. It’d be like comparing which type of Mercedes you preferred.</p>
<p>^Oh sorry, “school spirit” wasn’t a very specific term, was it? I didn’t mean to imply that students at Hopkins don’t love their school, as I’m sure they do. However, I think that a Hopkins student is more likely to define themselves as “a member of the JHU Barnstormers” or “a biomedical researcher”, while a student at Duke is more likely to define themselves as “Dukie” (even the non-sports-fans, although it is hard to avoid watching a basketball game or two while you’re at Duke). And that’s certainly a different campus atmosphere. Plus, everyone [in the sports world] hates Duke so much that Dukies have to stick together, right? I think that’s probably where the intense pride comes from.</p>
<p>I agree with the 2 posters above. Different kind of school spirit. But when you think about it, all we have is a spring D1 sport that already isn’t the most popular/well known type of sport, so of course the same type of sports school spirit isn’t here. But they do have good turnouts for a lot of the games. Depends on what you care about. Some people wouldnt like it here because we’re not like Duke or other schools with that kind of intense sports spirit…me…I’m ok with it considering the sports teams circumstances.</p>
<p>BUT AGAIN anyway just make sure you know if you want a biochem major, and not just bio and chem, we don’t have one. I think you can double major in bio and chem though, not entirely sure (sometimes you can’t double major is the pre requisites for 2 majors are too similar)</p>
<p>Wellesley (where my husband taught) and MIT have a cooperative study arrangement and students are constantly shuttling back and forth both for classes and parties. It’s not as if you’d be locked in a convent or would never see a guy. The atmosphere at Wellesley is very distinctive–strongly feminist and liberal, very visible lesbian community, lots of collaborativeness socially and academically, closely tied in to the Boston college scene.</p>
<p>Hopkins (where I attended) has superb academics; very hardworking and serious students, tons of people doing life sciences of various kinds. When I went there the undergraduate experience was otherwise a little lacking, but I gather that there have been efforts to improve in recent years. I loved Baltimore but some people have a more mixed reaction.</p>
<p>Can’t comment on Duke.</p>