Having been an undergrad premed at Hopkins (as competitive as it gets) there was NO cutthroat behavior. JHU is known for cutthroat behavior only because the myth is constantly perpetuated. To clarify, cutthroat behavior is where students sabotage classmates’ labs after class or hide library reference books - I never saw this happen at JHU while I was there and all of the alumni I have talked to during alumni functions never recall seeing it either. It just isn’t true. Is it competitive? Of course, very competitive. But the stress is normally always self-imposed since students are working hard and you, as a result, feel obligated to work harder. I thought it was a great motivator and helped me greatly in medical school where I already had time management, multi-tasking and other important skills well-honed, while many of my peers struggled the first few months. I assure you that being a BME at Rice is not going to be this carefree wonderland of joy with students frolicking while Hopkins is where fun goes to die and souls wither. Nothing in life is that cut-and-dry, and to think that is giving into stereotypes and naïveté. Make sure you talk to students who went there if you want more input on this, but I assure you it is nowhere near as severe as the picture being painted. At the end of the day, undergrad, grad school, your career and life will be stressful. It will depend on you to learn how to balance things out and to locate stressors in your life and how to deal with them effectively. Too many students play this game of trying to find the least stressful or a low-stress undergrad experience at the expense of phenomenal programs, top faculty and learning basic life skills. Does having higher stress levels at JHU (if this is even true) mean you should necessarily pick it? No, but I wouldn’t discount it simply on that basis.
I wouldn’t say Rice has unparalleled research opportunities. Rice is known as a stellar research university, but when it comes to annual R&D spending, Hopkins has ranked #1 in both Institutional and Engineering research spending for over 35 years while Rice doesn’t place in the top 50 (Institutional spending). Numbers don’t lie, though I will disclaim that about half of the Hopkins R&D budget is dedicated to research at the Applied Physics Lab which largely conducts early-stage military research (engineering, primarily). Even then, Hopkins is still outspending nearly every other school in R&D when you subtract out the 1.2 billion dollars spent at APL (though undergrad students do still conduct research there). http://www.bestcolleges.com/features/colleges-with-highest-research-and-development-expenditures/ Undoubtedly, higher R&D spending can be correlated with more undergrad opportunities for early and meaningful research experiences, and all of my JHU friends had no problem researching in a field of interest freshman/sophomore year (I started second semester of my freshman year).
Baltimore’s weather is no CA, but it’s no Boston either. Baltimore typically has humid summers (no where near as humid or hot as Houston though) and colder winters (30s during the day versus 50s in Houston). Baltimore typically has 10-20 inches of snow a year, though the last decade has shown unusual weather patterns with either only 1-2 inches or heavy snowfall for a few weeks out of the year. Overall, I do agree Houston has better weather, but exploring the East Coast on weekends (Philly, NYC, Washington D.C.) was worth it for me. Lastly, I had tons of fun in Baltimore. The surrounding area around campus is suburban and not a college town (so there are fewer restaurants and bars within walking distance, though there are dozens available along with museums, parks, a new movie theatre, stores), but you’re 3 miles north of a major metropolitan center. Honestly, there was plenty of stuff to do and focusing on schoolwork was the bigger problem for most of us. You can look through the JHU posts for more discussions on JHU BME and program benefits. I admit I’m not familiar with Rice beyond US News ranking surveys (which has the two basically identical in categories of overall undergrad ranking, undergrad engineering programs, etc.) and data on R&D spending (a significant difference).
Both schools are awesome for BME and you’ll reach your goals at either one, just make sure you aren’t giving up the #1 BME program solely based on stories of cutthroat behavior that I, and others on this site who attend(ed) JHU, can attest simply aren’t true.