<p>Awesome! Well hopefully I’ll see you there next year! :)</p>
<p>Good luck to both of you.
Once you “find your place here” so to speak, it’s a really fun atmosphere (albeit intense as far as workload goes).</p>
<p>Gevamna, would you say the workload is too intense? My host told me she still had lots of free time. I’m not doing anything science related, so maybe it would be a little less intense?</p>
<p>It really depends on your educational background, honestly. Coming from a public school, I was one of those smart slackers that didn’t do much homework or studying but still pulled good grades. That kind of behavior is obviously much harder to pull off successfully here. Due to that, I find the reading/workload pretty intense (and I’m actually really behind right now; so happy we have covered grades first semester) but if you manage your time well enough, you’ll definitely have free time.</p>
<p>I don’t think Hopkins is cliquey. I’m friends with people from different races, teams, majors. I would like to point out something about the FFC. The teams often come from practices, so of course they usually sit together. And as for the races hanging out with their own race - I think that’s human nature. We’re inclined to interact with those who are most like us.</p>
<p>I would say Hopkins is both. Yes, we party a lot. But at the same time, a lot of us are very dedicated in our studies. Anyone can fit into Hopkins very easily - some are hard partiers, while some are very studious, or some are in between. That’s what I love about Hopkins.</p>
<p>Greek life definitely exists at Hopkins. Frats and sororities often host parties but many also go to bars and other non-Greek parties. Also, some just stay in and chill at the dorms. You can always leave campus and check out Fell’s Point or the Inner Harbor (especially with the Collegetown shuttle - it’s free). There’s a lot to do.</p>
<p>I’m not sure. But I can confidently say that JHU’s majors are really strong. And if it makes any difference, Hopkins has a campus in China.</p>
<p>Classes usually have a TA (and I would say you’re closer to your TA than the prof). But, you can’t expect profs to go out of their way to get to know you (that’s a general statement for all colleges) - you have to make the effort. Go to their office hours. Believe it or not, they WANT you to stop by and they are often willing to help and get acquainted with you.</p>
<p>Hopkins is not competitive - from my own experience, instead, students and my friends have been the opposite - they are willing to help me, give me notes, etc. I often study with kids that are in my class or go to the library with people. </p>
<p>I applied ED here and not in any way do I regret doing that.</p>
<p>Hi its nice to see another person interested in east asian studies. I graduated in '09 and was the student leader in the east asian studies program development initiative. To answer your questions about Japan and Korea. While its correct all of our tenured professors are involved in China except for Professor Erin Chung who is Japan-Korea focused, the past two years of have been very heavy on Japan-Korea classes. In fact while I was there one of my main goals was ensuring we had a non nation heavy agenda. The last time I spoke with the former director, plans were still there to raise money for professors in Japanese and Korean studies. Because JHU is strong in Poli Sci, History, and Anthro, and History of Science and Technology, by your sophomore year if you are accepted you should see the fruits of this. The East Asia program is a major priority of the KSAS and the JHU president and hopefully very soon we will get a center. We have a lot of old alumni from Japan and China that are trying to throw stuff at us (for example an old alum wanted to donate to us one of the finest collections of Japanese Lacquer Art in North America but we have no place to put it, so when we get the center it will be there) I myself have been collecting artifiacts from the different ethnic groups of China and plan to donate them all when a center is finally endowed. Our new head of the Center for Language Education Yuki Johnson is an experienced expert on Japanese linguistics and is know as the fixer. She formerly was at Umich and UToronto, two schools known very well for their east asian languages program. She was hired specificall to enhance and strengthen the East Asian Language programs at JHU. The Japanese program even offers grad level Japanese classes. Our Korean classes are mostly filled with native speakers which skews it but from what I know there is been a growing interest in Korean studies so lets see what happens. When I was a freshman there were maybe 6-7 single majors in EAS, my senior year it shot to 40, not including double majors which would raise it to at least 100. I’d also like to tell you that we are currently preparing for an exchange program with Tokyo University, the premiere university in all Japan. The East Asian Library collection has a wonderful librarian and is supposedly getting priority funding to expand the collection. To be honest I would say EAS at JHU is at the early stages of a Renaissance, we were working with the Walters Art Museum that has a pretty damn good east asia art colletion on cooperations with us, the language programs are improving, and we are getting more and more classes. My freshman year there wrre maybe 4 Eas classes at most a semester. I checked spring 11 there were 12. Its a huge jump. Yes the size of the EAS program is very small compared to other schools. Mainly because the past 20 years JHU had a crisis of identity and ignored the humanities. Pre 1950 JHU was one of the foremost centers for East Asian Studies until that ***** Senator McCarthy called everyone in the dept a Commie and it basically got shut down. Prof Tsai really kicked everything into gear and it was depressing to know she stepped down from being director but at least she is still involved. JHU has a large large connection to East Asia, much larger than most of the other top tier schools, I’d say only Columbia, Princeton, Berkely, Stanford, Harvard, and Yale match us with actual connections with Asia. I am currently working in Beijing right now before grad school and have a good job thanks to JHU connections. If you have any questions feel free to ask and gl.</p>
<p>BlueJay…thanks for all of the info on East Asian Studies. My son has applied to Hopkins Engineering (BME) but wants to double in East Asian…specifically Japanese. Though Hopkins is not his first choice right now(and who knows where he will get in) it is a good fit…we were, however concerned that Japanese might not be strong enough dept. He has already taken 6 years of Japanese language and wants to study abroad there (again, not sure if possible with engineering workload). It’s great to know that the East Asian dept is on the upswing. Oddly, we have a strong family link to Hopkins…my mother is a Wolman.</p>
<p>Just wanted to comment re: studying abroad with BME: Unfortunately, studying abroad during the school year as a BME student is not easy. I do know of a couple people who were able to do it. The difficulty is that most engineering curricula have a pre-set order of courses that you have to take starting sophomore year. However, one big plus for Hopkins is the Vredenburg Scholarship program - this is a program only for engineers who want to travel abroad during the summer to do a research project, service project or internship that provides up to $8000 in funding. Also, another big plus is the ease of doing a double major - because Hopkins has no core curriculum and instead has “distribution requirements”, (ie engineers have to take X number of non-science classes, humanities majors have to take X number of science classes), combining a science/engineering major with a social sciences major is very doable</p>
<p>JHU has lots of research links with East Asia, At China’s top engineering university Tsinghua there is a BME center, and I’m sure he could do research at osaka university or tsukuba.It is true there are no “East Asian Language majors ie Japanese…CHinese…Korean” but what you can do for your child if he does get in is get involved in the east asia program. Write to Dean David or the new Dean of KSAS and add your voice into more intensive language classes for EAS and more “literary” courses taught in CHinese and Japanese. JHU is currently going through a liberal arts renaissance where its rediscovering its strengths in such programs. If your son has studied 6 years of Japanese already I suggest he takes the JLPT to see his level. In most top Japanese language programs, Uchicago, Stanford, Columbia, Berkely,Princeton, Middlebury, Williams, etc Higher level curves more to literary analysis than day to day language. So you should ask your son what does he plan to do with the language? Does he want to be proficient with it so he can watch tv shows, listen to music, chat in the office etc? Or does he want native level when he can write a thesis in Japanese and end up at a Grad school in Japan? In my junior year I collected data for a compare/contrast of the top east asia language/studies programs in the country and most of those that taught intensive languages were designed really for kids who plan to pursue further language education ie an individual who wants a PHD in East Asian Language and Literature whose thesis is on comparing edo era and modern era ghost stories. But I personally believe mastering a foreign language is a must in this day and age. BME is tough and any university will tell you its hard for a kid to double major but at least JHU has research connections in top japanese universities so your child will have the opportunities to be abroad.</p>
<p>It’s funny , I had almost exactly the same experience on my overnight as Grander. I came away with a very different impression of Hopkins after my overnight visit. I would suggest to the admissions team in the future it might be a good idea to have an online
questionnaire to match up hosts with incoming applicants and maybe it would help to have a more positive experience. I was not planning on applying ED but I had already sent in my app under RD at the time of my visit. I would say I still am very impressed with Hopkins and know it would be a great place to go to school, I just felt the overnight visit gave me not the best impression. I think it may have been better if my host just followed the scheduled agenda because there were many interesting things that were planned but I didn’t get the opportunity to participate in any of them because I hung out with her and the sorority. I am definitely not into Greek life and this further confirmed that for me but I just came away with a feeling that Greek life is larger than what it appears on campus.</p>
<p>I attended an overnight in October and had an amazing time even though I had nothing in common with my host. I agree that they should pay attention to the matching of hosts with us but I assume that could be a really hard job. I’ve done like 6 overnights and the lesson I learned is not to judge a school just by the one person’s floor I am going to sleep on. I made sure to do the events with the overnight program and met a lot of great people. I also liked talking to the other high school seniors there … we kind of bonded over how stressful all this college stuff is. </p>
<p>The one thing I did learn about Greek life is that it does exist but it definitely doesn’t dominate the scene. One freshman I have stayed in touch with has told me that for the first few months most of the freshmen who like to be social stick with the greek system. But then things change and if you don’t want to “be greek” you don’t have to. My host seemed to be a big sorority girl too, but her roommate was into theater and said that they have great parties too. </p>
<p>My Dad always says college is what YOU make of it, not what someone else makes of it. Though I would never tell him this, he does give great advice.</p>
<p>I also attended an overnight in October and I loved it! I actually went to two Greek functions that night (a frat party and a sorority casino night), but I’d say maybe the best part of the night was getting ready in the dorms with all the freshmen. The freshmen floor I was on was like a huge family- everyone’s door was open and people were running in and out borrowing clothes and listening to music and some even trying to study haha… It just seemed like a great place to be! And I think that the Greek life or at least the frat parties play a large role in the social scene for freshmen and sophomores, but I think that generally dwindles off by junior year. (The junior that I was staying with said she doesn’t go to the frat parties anymore and that her and her friends hang out in their apartments all the time)- btw, the upperclassmen apartments are HUGE!!! Or at least the one I stayed in! Definitely something to look forward to after dorm life 
So all in all, I liked Hopkins because the people I interacted with were extremely friendly and not clique-ish at all… all the freshmen seem like a family! And on a side note… my last day I had to eat breakfast at the FFC by myself because my host had to go to class… but these kids invited me to sit with them because they recognized me from a class I had sat in on the previous day!</p>
<p>I am so glad to hear that most of you had positive experiences! A lot of us will be hosting prospective and admitted students in the spring; I look forward to meeting you and getting to know you all.</p>