<p>I am really having hard time choosing between these two. Does anybody have any piece of advice?</p>
<p>I've a lack of knowledge about JHU's poli science program, but I am very sure that JHU's International Relations/Studies program is one of the BEST in the country. It's also the most popular major/field of study on Campus.</p>
<p>Well the same that Jimmy said for JHU is true for Tufts, where IR is the most popular major on campus, with Poli Sci not far behind. I think it's widely recognized that JHU, Gtown, and Tufts offer teh best IR undergrad educations in the country.</p>
<p>It comes down to things like: Baltimore or Boston? Financial aid? </p>
<p>FWIW, I picked Tufts over JHU.</p>
<p>jimmy- more info on jhu int. rel., please:)</p>
<p>This is one of my older posts in another IR thread. I also copy-pasted some info from a current hopkins junior on Hopkins Interactive (<a href="http://apply.jhu.edu/hi/%5B/url%5D">http://apply.jhu.edu/hi/</a>) Hope it helps! </p>
<p>It's rather to safe to say that Hopkins has one of the best IR programs in the country (as rated by Foreign Affairs journal) So, if you want to talk reputation, we are it. When you talk to people in politics and mention JHU, they immediately think of all of the big names here at JHU (Prof. David, Prof. Deudeney, Prof. Blyth, Prof. Tsai, etc.) and of all the SAIS professors in DC (Prof. Mandelbaum, Prof. Fuikuyama, etc.). I would encourage you to go to the department web pages and check out the different professors' recent publications. These guys are doing some amazing stuff!</p>
<p>As for careers, you couldn't ask for a better sampling. Law school (over 95% of Hopkins grads applying to law school get in), non-governmental organizations (UN? Amnesty international? Oxfam?), finance (World bank? Paul Wolfowitz - now the head of the World Bank - was a Hopkins prof., futures?, research?). </p>
<p>As for grad school, JHU has its own School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C. Frequent guests at SAIS include...</p>
<p>-Senator John Kerry
-Senator Chuck Hagel
-Lt. General David Petraeus (commanding general of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center)
-CBS Journalist Bob Schieffer
-U.K. Defense Minister Des Browne
-Pakistani Ambassador Mahmud Ali Durrani
-Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill
-N.Y. Federal Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner
and many many more....</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins also has two separate campuses worldwide in: Nanjing, China, and Bologna, Italy. Hopkins students are always welcome to complete their studies at the two international campuses.</p>
<p>As for the university in general, Johns Hopkins is one of the most prestigious colleges nationwide. It has a VERY well-respected reputation especially in the fields of medicine and international studies. </p>
<p>Nationwide, JHU's undergrad program is definitely among the top 20, and its Grad IR program ranks 2ND place right after Harvard. International studies is also the most popular major at Johns Hopkins (yes, even more popular than things like BME).</p>
<p>Good luck! Oh yeah, if you want more info, the right person to ask on JHU's Hopkins Interactive is Michael T., who currently majors in international studies.</p>
<p>Another great thing about Hopkins IR is something that JIMMY alluded to...proximity to D.C. gives great access to TONS of opportunities that Tufts (or most other IR programs) can't match. </p>
<p>Hopkins offers a 3-2 combined BA/MA program at SAIS (this is the program that Michael was recently accepted into). You spend three years at Homewood and finish with 2 years at SAIS in DC. There is a similar 3-2 program at Sciences Po in Paris (French speaking required, obv). Hopkins also offers semester-long programs in D.C. through the political science department (which is actually the home department of the IR/international studies major). </p>
<p>Other great things about Hopkins IR are highlighted in on-campus student-organized events such as the Foreign Affairs Symposium (<a href="http://www.jhu.edu/fas/%5B/url%5D">http://www.jhu.edu/fas/</a>) in the spring and the MSE Symposium (<a href="http://www.jhu.edu/mse/%5B/url%5D">http://www.jhu.edu/mse/</a>) in the fall - they bring to campus literally dozens of the greatest minds in academia and pop culture to talk about current events domestically and abroad. </p>
<p>Hopkins also offers lots of ways for you to be involved in extracurriculars linked to IR: we have a national championship debate team (okay, shameless plug), a great model UN conference hosted each year, lots of community service & study abroad opportunities, lots of clubs focused on regional & cultural interests. Really, I can't think of a friend of mine who is an IR major who HASN'T had amazing internship & job opportunities as a result of being a Hopkins IR student.</p>
<p>Where would you rather be? In a city near a city that offers opportunities (ie, Baltimore to DC) or in a city that offers those opportunities (Boston)?</p>
<p>Is Baltimore really so bad? Because Boston is one of the main factors that turns me in favor of Tufts.</p>
<p>Hopkins IR is generally regarded as one of the top programs, along with Georgetown SFS and Tufts.</p>
<p>There are significant methodological issues with the new Foreign Policy magazine rankings, as several of the schools listed (including Columbia at #3) lack international relations/studies majors. This leads me to believe that the professors that were interviewed had minimal knowledge of undergraduate IR programs. The graduate and PhD rankings are much better. SAIS is generally recognized as top-tier for a terminal MA in IR, along with Fletcher (at Tufts), SIPA (at Columbia), and Georgetown MSFS.</p>
<p>With that being said, undergrad IR rankings are generally rubbish. You shouldn't make your decision on the rankings of the IR program (at the undergrad level), but rather what city/environment/student body you feel more comfortable with.</p>
<p>Baltimore has its problems - I'd personally prefer to be somewhere like Boston or Chicago or NYC.</p>
<p>And I'd also like to add that while the 5-year BA/MA program with SAIS is terrific, I'd caution against applying to JHU with the sole intention of doing it. It's a highly competitive program (8 spots for around 30 or so applicants) and it would suck if you were set on getting in and didn't. There are more qualified applicants than the # of people they accept.</p>
<p>I never realized that the small city of Medford (which is where Tufts is located) was such a hotbed of opportunity for political science and IR majors!</p>
<p>Lord knows that none of that political stuff goes on in Washington D.C. I mean, what kind of politician or high ranking diplomat would be caught dead there, right? </p>
<p>Plus, the fact that transnational and international organizations like the World Bank and the IMF are headquartered there must be a constant source of embarrassment for them. I'm sure they'll relocate to Sommerville MA quite soon. </p>
<p>So I guess it doesn't matter that SAIS is right in the heart of D.C. Or that DC is easily accessible by car, mass transit, and JHU shuttle from the Homewood campus. Or that undergrads can intern in D.C. during the school year because it's so close. </p>
<p>Because, as we all know, Medford is awesome!</p>
<p>Tufts is a good school, but Johns Hopkins is in another league in terms of reputation, strength of faculty and research, quality of programs, etc. There's no comparison, with the notable exception of their ONE highly regarded department (it seems that every Tufts student lives and dies by how their IR department is percieved).</p>
<p>There's no question that Boston is a MUCH cooler city than Baltimore. However, Tufts is NOT located in Boston. It's in Medford. If you think you can walk off campus and stroll into Cambridge--well, you're in for a really unpleasant surprise. Try taking mass transit from Tufts to the city. It seriously sucks. </p>
<p>As for Baltimore--well, it's no Boston or Chicago but it's not a bad town, and there's more than enough there to keep you occupied for a lifetime, or at least four years. There are plenty of great and interesting neighborhoods: Charles Village (JHU's home turf), Mt. Vernon (by Peabody), Fells Point, Little Italy, just to name a few. Plus, the downtown area is going under a major revitalization. </p>
<p>There are awful sections of Baltimore, to be sure, but there are awful sections of every city--and how often do you hang out in YOUR home city's worst areas?</p>
<p>Anyway, because a picture's worth a thousand words, here are a couple of photos that show the side of Baltimore that most Hopkins students know. It's not a bad place to call home. </p>
<p>And pics of one of my fave areas of Baltimore, Mt. Vernon:</p>
<p>You guys are ridiculous! Tufts is 6 minutes walking from Cambridge, 20 minutes walking to the Charles River (if you're a fast walker). 10 minutes by subway to downtown Boston. Thank GOD it's not smack middle of Boston, as then it would be a campus-less school like BU or NYU. It has the best of both worlds -- the suburbia affords a haven of greenery and academia, but we are minutes away from a major city. </p>
<p>And you're ridiculous if you're seriously going to categorically say that JHU is a better school than Tufts. They are on par and if we want to talk about selectivity, it's actually harder to get into Tufts, but because I don't enjoy making blanket statements such as yours, I'll concede that that difference is negligible.</p>
<p>Definitely go to Tufts, buddy.</p>
<p>Being in D.C. is one thing, but being in a city near D.C. is another. Plus, being in D.C. for the academic year is overrated. All the good internships -- full-time ones -- you can only do when you're not in school, right? Summer internships. So you you can be in Boston, Milwaukee, and Timbuktu during the school year and still get those internships in D.C.</p>
<p>Plus, I love how people love to generalize that people who are interested in IR must be interested, necessarily, in living or working in D.C. The IR field prepares people for all sorts of fields, many of which have nothing to do with the U.S. seat of government or even diplomacy.</p>
<p>And the idea that Tufts' only good department is IR is absolutely ridiculous. If you're going to make blanket statements (as above poster noted), it just shows you're resorting to baseless arguments to convince someone to pick your school over another one.</p>
<p>lolabelle, don't misrepresent the selectivity of Tufts solely to try to win an argument. And the reputation of Hopkins is considerably higher than the reputation of Tufts among other academics, eg 4.6 peer assessment versus 3.7. Furthermore, Tufts is notorious for playing yield protection games.<br>
There's no need to get defensive, but Hopkins is far and away in a different league than Tufts for many areas of study.</p>
<p>Yield protection is an outdated concept. And peer assessment is notoriously the worst part of the USNews ranking (which is almost entirely bad), as it is a bad way to look at undergrad education seeing that it's mostly indicative of grad programs. If you're really going to resort to using rankings to compare schools, then I'm outta here. Good luck to the OP.</p>
<p>Come on, guys. If Tufts is practicing yield protection, then how come it's accepting students with higher or equal stats to the ones JHU is accepting?</p>
<p>JHU Freshmen Academic Profile
Average SAT: Not Reported
SAT - Verbal Range (25-75%): 630-730 (admitted)
SAT - Math Range (25-75%): 660-760 (admitted)
TPR Projected Range SAT Writing: 670-750 (admitted)
ACT Composite Range (25-75%): 28-32 (admitted)
Average ACT: Not Reported (admitted)
Average High School GPA: 3.69 (admitted)
Students in top 10% of HS class: 80% (admitted)
Students in top 50% of HS class: 100% (admitted)</p>
<p>TUFTS Freshmen Academic Profile
Average SAT: 1405 (enrolled, presumably admitted is slightly higher)
SAT - Verbal Range (25-75%): 670-740 (admitted)
SAT - Math Range (25-75%): 670-740 (admitted)
TPR Projected Range SAT Writing: 690-750 (admitted)
Average Verbal SAT: 715 (enrolled, presumably admitted is slightly higher)
Average Math SAT: 718 (enrolled, presumably admitted is slightly higher)
ACT Composite Range (25-75%): 29-32 (admitted)
Average ACT: 31 (enrolled, presumably admitted is slightly higher)
Students in top 10% of HS class: 83% (admitted)
Students in top 50% of HS class: 99% (admitted)</p>
<p>(All data from Princeton Review for admitted classes of '10 except for the data regarding enrolled students at Tufts which I took from Tufts' Admissions website to fill in where it said "Not Reported" through PR. Didn't know where to find JHU's Not Reported data).</p>
<hr>
<p>Anyway, if you check my and Lola's post history you'll see we both consistently say that the best IR programs in the country are Gtown, Tufts, and JHU. Each have some things going for them. The 3 are great all-around schools, with each department probably being quite strong. To say that Tufts only has one great department is ridiculous, and frankly, makes you look petty.</p>
<p>Johns Hopkins IS catagorically better than Tufts. No ifs, ands, or buts.</p>
<p>For example:</p>
<p>-Johns Hopkins is tied with Yale in the US in terms of Nobel Prize affliations with 32.</p>
<p>-Nobel affiliations with Tufts? 2...tied with such heavyweights as the University of Kansas and SUNY Stony Brook.</p>
<p>-Johns Hopkins alums include 16 Nobel Prize winners (for perspective, Princeton counts 14 alums who've won the prize).</p>
<p>-Tufts has graduated, in it's whole history, ONE Nobel prize winner. Congrats, you just matched Juanita College.</p>
<p>-Johns Hopkins counts a US President among it's graduates. A big fat ZERO for Tufts. </p>
<p>Something else? Name one other Tufts department that's recognized as being among the best. Just ONE. You can't do it, can you?</p>
<p>At Hopkins, off the top of my head, there's:</p>
<p>English
Creative Writing
History
Art History
Romance Languages
Near Eastern Studies</p>
<p>And I haven't even listed anything in engineering or sciences.</p>
<p>I could go on and on.</p>
<p>To be fair, Tufts did get a shoutout on Seinfeld. Too bad it was Elaine yelling, "Hey, I went to Tufts! That was my safety school! So don't talk to me about hardship!"</p>
<p>Yield protection is an "outdated concept"? I'm surprised an 18/20 year old is familiar enough with the inner workings of the admissions office to tell us so authoritively that Tufts doesn't practice yield protection anymore. </p>
<p>I'll be sure to pass that info along to my former classmates who are now at Harvard and Princeton who were waitlisted by Tufts. I guess it they just weren't qualified.</p>