<p>edad is exactly correct. My S just finished his 2nd year at JHU and I can’t imagine him at any other school. He is an engineering major. Someone mentioned the library being crowded when they visited the campus. For my S he prefers to do his serious studying and projects there since the distractions are minimal.</p>
<p>My son also just graduated - last week. I will try to present a balanced view of his experience.</p>
<p>He was also in Engineering; very rigorous, very tough. </p>
<p>He did NOT find students competitive or cut-throat with each other, not at all. He DID find students “competitive” with themselves - ie, internally more driven than he experienced at other places (due to Katrina, he had spent two previous college semesters at two different good schools). He felt that the science and Engineering students were far more driven to achieve top grades than what he’d found elsewhere. This made it harder for him at first, and he struggled in a couple of classes. However, during those struggle times, he found profs willing to help, study partners willing to help and a collaborative, not cut throat environment.</p>
<p>However, he did not love his Hopkins experience. He did extremely well (high GPA for an Engineering grad - just shy of 3.5) and had multiple job offers. </p>
<p>He enjoyed his college experience at the other schools dramatically more. Much of that was due to his “late” arrival and early confrontation - for the first time ever -with academic struggle. Much his own personality. Clearly legions of students love their experience there. Particularly, most students will describe a different culture for the humanities and arts students vs the pre-Med and Engineering.</p>
<p>I simply MUST speak out in support of Baltimore as a wonderful city. I don’t know whether the poster who denigrated it as the worst city ever has recent or any type of extensive experience with it. The Homewood campus is in a lovely area. The neigbhorhoods of Baltimore are rich with spirit, shops, restaurants. Of course, there are some areas nicer than others. But most - as with any city - would never have any reason to venture into problem areas (wherever those might be). Just because you see a face of color in a neighborhood does not make it a dangerous area. Some who have never lived in cities seem to have trouble with that.</p>
<p>I, too, have visited and lived in many cities - I have lived in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, Boston, Washington DC, Manhattan, San Diego. I like Baltimore as much as any of these.</p>
<p>Another Hopkins parent here – S just finished freshman year – chiming in to say that based on S’s experience, this school is not at all cutthroat. I believe there was a book that came out years ago (in the 70’s maybe?) that made that claim, and unfortunately the myth will not die. </p>
<p>S is an engineering major, so he would be in a position to know if the experience were cutthroat. He just did not see it. On the contrary – he was both the giver and recipient of help from classmates. Study groups are very common there. All of S’s friends whom I’ve met are great – just regular, friendly kids.</p>
<p>Also – I love the city of Baltimore. As another parent said, the area around the undergraduate campus is lovely. S and his friends also go down to the Inner Harbor area from time to time. Although touristy, it’s a fun place. There are other cool neighborhoods that H and I have enjoyed visiting (e.g. Fell’s Point).</p>
<p>The campus itself is very safe and beautiful. Check out [this</a> nice set of photos](<a href=“http://cmichae.acm.jhu.edu/blog/2006/11/06/johns-hopkins-homewood-campus-fall/]this”>http://cmichae.acm.jhu.edu/blog/2006/11/06/johns-hopkins-homewood-campus-fall/).</p>
<p>Last week my son graduated from Hopkins with a degree in engineering. I spent this weekend helping him move out of Baltimore. He remained in Baltimore as long as he could because he didn’t want to leave his friends and classmates. I am very proud of these young adults. While their program was very difficult and required much hard work, they were very supportive of each other. Now on to their JOBS ( and graduate school)!</p>
<p>Hopkins freshman retention rate is over 96% and one of the highest in the nation.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents here… I had several friends, plus a sibling, who attended Hopkins in the 70’s. All felt it was quite cutthroat and none liked it. Some of my kids’ classmates now attend and love it. I think the culture at Hopkins must have changed. Kudos to JHU!</p>
<p>I can echo what Yalemom says. H graduated from JHU in 1975, and while he wasn’t pre-med, many of his friends were, and the atmosphere was pretty grim. Hopkins is a very, very different kind of place now: we know a couple of kids who are rising seniors (one engineering, the other doing creative writing) who are very happy there and absolutely love both the school and Baltimore.</p>
<p>I graduated Hopkins in the early 70’s. I was not premed or engineering, but most of my friends were. It was a very intense place, but I loved it–largely because I was challenged in ways that I never was in high school. Back then, Hopkins treated undergraduates like mini-graduate students, which was both somewhat scary and very exhilarating. The training was superb. Almost everyone went to graduate school, medical school or law school–and most did very well. </p>
<p>Both of my kids graduated JHU in the last few years. It obviously is a very different place today than when I went. For starters, it was all-male when I matriculated. Today, half of the class is female and, yes, that makes a big difference. There is also much more support offered to undergraduates than years ago–although you are still definitely at a first-class research institution, not a liberal arts college. Today, the first two years are pretty similar to a LAC. The last two are still very much like graduate school. </p>
<p>It is still an intense place, but I would never call it “cut-throat.” By intense, I mean that academics clearly comes first and, unlike some of its peer institutions, the faculty does not dumb down classes for undergraduates. Instead, the faculty sets very high (but not impossible) expectations. The course load is also heavier than many other schools, with most students taking 5-6 courses a semester as opposed to 4. At Hopkins, you essentially get 5 years of courses for the price of 4. While this means that Hopkins is a lot of work, it does not mean that you can’t have a lot of fun also. Most students lead balanced lives and abide by the “work hard, play hard” philosophy. </p>
<p>Of course, there are a minority of students who find Hopkins to be too intense and do not enjoy it. I have found that these students tend to fall into one of two categories. First, there are students who did very well in high school without working very hard and without developing good study habits. These students think they can do the same thing at Hopkins and find out that, unless they are truly brilliant (and few are in that category), that they can’t do well without working hard. Most of these students really aren’t into academics–they came to Hopkins because of the name and they expect to be handed a degree because their parents are paying tuition. These are the type of students who spread the “cut-throat” myth. To them, being cut throat is not so much sabotaging other students (which is how I would define it) but rather working too hard. In other words, these students are upset that other students do better because they work harder than they do. Frankly, some of these students were pampered too much by their parents and teachers and, basically, are spoiled brats. </p>
<p>Second, there are some students whose families put so much pressure on them to do well that they do not lead balanced lives and they tend to do nothing but study or engage only in solitary activities like video games. Not surprisingly, they report not having much fun. Many of these people do well academically, but are miserable. I’m afraid that many of these people remain miserable after they graduate, although a few learn to balance their lives better after starting their careers. Needless to say, people like that are not limited to Hopkins–you’ll find they same type at MIT, Cal Tech, Chicago, and other similarly intense places. </p>
<p>The key is to lead a balanced life. Those who do, and who truly enjoy academics, generally love Hopkins. </p>
<p>And I’ll also stick up for Baltimore. Yes, it has some very bad, drug infested neighborhoods but there is no reason for students to venture into those places. Gang crime is committed mostly against opposing gangs. Most Hopkins students go through 4 years having absolutely no idea of what goes on in the bad neighborhoods. But Baltimore also has beautiful, fun and very interesting neighborhoods and areas. The Homewood campus is very safe, and the surrounding area is fine (Guilford, Canterbury- Oxford, and Roland Park neighborhoods north of campus are beautiful; Charles Village, east of campus, is fine and getting better; Hamden, west of campus, is interesting, fun and very funky; and Remington, south of campus, is a bit sketchy not really bad). </p>
<p>Really, the issue is not safety, although it is often couched in those terms. The real issue is that some kids who grew up in suburbia feel unsafe in a large city with a large minority population. Believe it or not, some students have never interacted with working class people–which is what Baltimore is largely composed of. For others, their only experience with minorities is what they see on television. But learning from the diverse cultural experience which is Baltimore is also a very valuable part of a Hopkins education, particularly for those from the suburbs or rural areas.</p>