JHU ranking

Colleges and Universities A-Z Johns Hopkins University
1

<p>Dear Admissions,</p>

<p>Why has JHU dropped in the national rankings from the 9th place to the 14th place in the last few years? Why has JHU become a college not so many people choose over other colleges? Do you work to make JHU one of the top ten colleges, or are you satisfied with being one of the top 15 colleges, which I believe would be difficult for you if you hadn't a good BME program?</p>

<p>JHU will be the place that I'll live my next four years. As students, what can we do to increase the ranking?</p>

<p>Sincerely</p>

2

<p>The US News rankings are faulty. Any ranking that places UPenn above stanford has something wrong with it. But anyways, stop worrying about rankings. The point of a university is not to cater to rankings. When US News changed their methodology, Hopkins was among the schools invited to hear the new changes yet did not send a representative because they know rankings are worthless. Any studies that state rankings correlate with admissions selectivity also states the effects are marginal. We dont have any real rankings obsessed people here and are doing fine.</p>

3

<p>
[quote]
Do you work to make JHU one of the top ten colleges, or are you satisfied with being one of the top 15 colleges, which I believe would be difficult for you if you hadn't a good BME program?</p>

<p>JHU will be the place that I'll live my next four years. As students, what can we do to increase the ranking?

[/quote]

Wow. I really hope you aren't being serious.</p>

<p>If you chose JHU because of it's ranking, you need to re-evaluate why it is that you're going to college.</p>

4

<p>(((How to tackle this question??? I already had my CC rant of the day. Let's try to avoid a second one and start simple.)))</p>

<p>Myself, my colleagues on the Counseling team, and the Director of Admissions do not concern ourselves with the US News rankings!!! Read that as a declaration, a definitive statement. Personally, I find the rankings to be laughable. They are seemingly one of the most important factors in the college search process for prospective students and parents. However, on the college side they are one of the greatest frustrations we face. Some schools "manipulate" their Admissions processes to "look better" in the rankings -- at Hopkins WE DO NOT CARE. </p>

<p>The difference between 9 to 14 to 26 to 12 to 3 to whatever is completely meaningless in relation to how we evaluate applicants, how we market our school, and most importantly how we educate our scholars. We do not shape our Admissions policies or processes around the rankings and have little concern if we are top 10, top 15, top 20. </p>

<p>I could continue to rant about US News for hours but I have better things to do. Let me finish with this. We just finished the most competitive year in JHU Admissions history - most selective class, largest increase in applications, strongest admitted class ever, etc. Will this increase our ranking -- WHO CARES!</p>

5

<p>Ha, I was deciding between JHU and Cornell- of course I chose Hopkins! Both were ranked 13 this year, but it seems they have totally opposite philosophies about rankings!!!! </p>

<p>Read: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/nyregion/22image.html?ex=1303358400&en=a5dc687357bca968&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/22/nyregion/22image.html?ex=1303358400&en=a5dc687357bca968&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

6

<p>
[quote=]
Let the college's standing drop in publications that rank universities, he said, and "my value as a human being feels like it's dropping."

[/quote]
Wow.. that's kinda sad... Though I think the article is more about the students trying to improve the school's image, not the Admissions office. One thing I do agree with - the Hopkins website is in serious need of updating. The University has had the exact same static website since atleast January 2001. A dynamic site like Cornell, MIT or even the Hopkins Admissions site would be a big improvement.</p>

7

<p>I second improving the Hopkins site... it's pretty bad.</p>

8

<p>third it. However <a href="http://www.johnshopkins.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.johnshopkins.edu&lt;/a> is pretty sweet. <a href="http://www.jhu.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.jhu.edu&lt;/a> not so much.</p>

9

<p>Well, what I meant by ranking was actually the image JHU has. JHU has become a school not so many people choose over other schools above it in the rankings here (at least). </p>

<p>And also, I think the peer ranking column at the USNEWS would be a healthier ranking, as peers wouldn't know simple details that USNEWS cares and would only care about the education overall. According to the peer assessment scores, JHU is in the top 10.</p>

<p>Anyways, I think that acting lofty and not caring about the rankings even a bit is not the best course the Admissions should follow. On the international arena, not every employer knows about the colleges in the States except for a few top colleges, so they usually look at these rankings. A professor in the academia will of course know of JHU's quality, and even maybe its grade-deflation. Nevertheless, sometimes rankings (and overall images) matter when you seek jobs. </p>

<p>All in all, I believe that JHU's overall image has been going downwards lately (not next year hopefully). I'm not saying that JHU gets worse in terms of education or other factors, but we, as JHU people, should bear in mind that we are better than about 4000 universities in the States, not as good as about 10 universities in the top though. Our aim should be reaching the top one day or another. There are things we can't change such as Baltimore, but things that can be changes should be bettered. </p>

<p>Above are just my sincere thoughts.</p>

10

<p>I agree with Tanman. When people say MIT, no one cares about ranks. But when people say Johns Hopkins (not premed or biomedical) sometimes they tend to check the rankings. Maybe updated dynamic websites would help JHU improve its image.</p>

11

<p>
[quote]
Anyways, I think that acting lofty and not caring about the rankings even a bit is not the best course the Admissions should follow.

[/quote]

There is a difference between caring about how you rank and whether you are attracting the best students and providing them with the best education. JHU is focused on being the best and I think that is how all universities should behave. Using admission to try to manipulate rankings is unethical and I am glad JHU admissions people do not focus on rankings. Some of the most remarkable students graduate from JHU. I can't see this stopping simply because JHU has not climbed in the ranks.</p>

12

<p>I agree with JHURocks, I think we've seen what happens when schools care too much about the rankings and yield rate</p>

13

<p>Alright then. Maybe this is just a local issue here in Turkey; people tend to go to the ivies. Also, for instance when I look at the Fiske Guide, the overlaps of JHU in the applications indeed are the top schools, but I don't understand why JHU is not listed in their overlaps of these other top colleges(this might be a size issue though). </p>

<p>Are there any people over there who chose JHU (not biomedical) over the colleges in the top ten? I guess not so many people do that.</p>

<p>Still, I am excited about JHU. And I'm sure that I'll love JHU. </p>

<p>My aim to open this thread was to learn whether we as students could do something substantial to better the rankings or other things. I'm sort of a perfectionist.</p>

<p>By the way, do you know whether we can work in the Admissions Office and go to our country or other countries as JHU representatives?</p>

14

<p>I was talking around to some freshmen at the beginning of the year. Around my AMR hall, alot had chosen JHU over Northwestern, Chicago, Cornell and some with penn. These were mostly IR,History, Writing Sems, Biology and regular engineering people. It does happen. Thankfully, the SAT and admissions talk rarely happens. People just don't care about rankings.</p>

15

<p>So I wasn't going to return to this subject because one rant is enough usually for me, however after a bad day of sports for me I thought I would post again. (Bad sports day for me includes my beloved Mets blowing a 4-0 lead in the 9th to the dreaded Yanks; Barry Bonds tieing the Babe, JHU Lax losing in the NCAAs, and then the sad story of Barbaro at the Preakness.)</p>

<p>Back to the topic...</p>

<p>First, on the Cornell article. I echo tanman's sentiments in that the article does not express admissions policies at Cornell but rather what a group of Cornell grads have done. Typical to the NY Times they over-exaggerated the story a bit - the work of the Cornell grads focused on image (i.e. new hats in the Bookstore) a lot more than rankings. I did some recruitment travel with a Cornel rep this past fall and we would constantly joke about how Hopkins and Cornell were tied in the US News rankings -- I guess that means we are the same school.</p>

<p>As far as the rest of djok's comments I really think you are making some grand generalizations about how people view Hopkins. As Blah2009, JHURocks, and others stated, there are A LOT of people who disagree with you about Hopkins' image. Making assumptions about the Hopkins image from your country does not mean it is true in America or across the world. </p>

<p>The Admissions Office and the current students at Hopkins have no desire to create initiatives to improve rankings. Instead they look at what Hopkins needs and focus on that -- and we have been quite successful:</p>

<p>*largest applicant in Hopkins history
*applications up 23% in one year - one of the largest increases seen by any school in the country
*lowest acceptance rate in Hopkins history (down nearly 8%)
*highest yield ever</p>

<p>*major improvements to student life
*new food vendor
*new housing initiatives</p>

<p>We are doing quite well and a #13 ranking, or whatever our next ranking will be has really nothing to do with that. We compare ourselves to what is going on at other schools which have different characteristics and values...we compare ourselves to what we (students, staff, faculty, administrators) envision the ideal Hopkins to be. </p>

<p>Hopkins will never be #1 in US News nor other rankings. And this does not bother anyone at Hopkins. It is the nature of those meaningless ranking systems and truly does not measure the value of a school. Blah2009 said it best, "People just don't care about rankings."</p>

16

<p>And oh yeah, about the JHU website. I agree that <a href="http://www.jhu.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.jhu.edu&lt;/a> is not a good main site. There does exist a new committee that has begun to work on improvements, but it is a major endeavor and therefore a major work in progress.</p>

<p>I personally work with colleagues on the Admissions pages, and we have made some great strides this past year. The main page (apply.jhu.edu) got a face lift in terms of graphics and structure this past summer, and this summer we will be doing a lot of work on content updates. </p>

<p>In addition this past year we launched Hopkins Interactive (apply.jhu.edu/hi) with the student blogs and message boards, and I feel this has been a great addition. We will continue to update and improve H.I. this summer, so check back in the fall. </p>

<p>Also, our past web project had to be the Admitted Student Web site (apply.jhu.edu/admitted/). We hope to expand some of the content on this site into a Hopkins Experience (Student Life) site in the future.</p>

<p>So, though I do agree that <a href="http://www.jhu.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;www.jhu.edu&lt;/a> needs major improvements, I hope you all do appreciate the changes to the pages Admissions has control of. We are behind other schools yes, but we are working on it as much as we can. </p>

<p>(Wow, that was a bit off the topic of this thread, but the Admissions web sites are dear to my heart!)</p>

17

<p>Hello Adcom Daniel, you say that the acceptance rate is down nearly 8% this year. Can you give us the exact admissions rate for this year? for both ED and RD, if you could. thank you</p>

18

<p>
[quote]
There are things we can't change such as Baltimore, but things that can be changes should be bettered.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>er...as a future jhu student, having jhu within the top 10 in the US News rankings will probably be the furthest thing that'll be on my mind. There are so many factors missing from the US News's "criteria for ranking," that's it's pretty much a joke. If you care so much about rankings, JHU's philosophy might not be what you need. Yea...Hopkins could change things to get a higher ranking, but who needs another WUSTL?</p>

19

<p>
[quote]
Hopkins could change things to get a higher ranking, but who needs another WUSTL?

[/quote]

Well put pianote. If you read up on Wash U., you'll find evidence showing that they're often looking to raise a statistic. Not sure about other students, but I don't find that to be appealing.</p>

20

<p>WUSTL indeed sucks. Although it is high in the rankings, I'm aware that it is not as good as JHU, Chicago, etc. People know such statistics games.</p>

<p>I didn't mean that we should manipulate data. Maybe class sizes could be reduced. I don't know. </p>

<p>Let's put an end to this discussion because this won't yield any solutions. Admissions does not care, so why should we? And major changes take time, so probably we will not be affected positively or negatively if JHU decides to follow a strategy or start a new thing in the following years.</p>