John Hopkins has been a dream school of mine since I began high school, but doing more research now as a junior, I have found several people who are completely against it as a pre med choice. I have been told that it is too rigorous and kills one’s gpa, and that Ivies are a better bet. Is this accurate? Other thoughts?
If you are pre-med at Johns Hopkins, you don’t really have to worry about your GPA. Medical schools know how rigorous JHU is. Get in and don’t look back.
@eiknarf That isn’t true at all. GPA is incredibly important for med school, regardless of where you went for undergrad. JHU is a very tough school, especially for pre-med, and if you receive a low GPA, your chances for med school do go down. Remember, a GPA of 3.5 or higher is considered competitive for med school.
I concur. It is NOT true that your GPA doesn’t matter for med school as long as you go to Hopkins (and this is coming from someone who graduated from there). It’s also not true for law school, grad school, etc.
A LOT of Hopkins grads have to go “down” (in prestige) for law/med school. Some don’t get in at all because they scored poorly on the MCAT or LSAT or because their grades were terrible. I definitely think there are easier paths to go if you know for certain you want to go to med school (i.e. schools where you are at the top of the student body stats-wise, or schools with massive grade inflation), but the research opportunities at Hopkins are also amazing and something that could boost your application IF you also get good grades and score well on the MCAT.
I would say the boost to a graduate program application is tiny (if existent). If anything, the boost for employment is much stronger.
(current student)
Short answer: Hopkins is not a pre-med killer - I know several Hopkins students who have gone on to attend med schools like Harvard, Hopkins, and UCSF.
Long answer:
I take exception to the idea that “if I want to be premed I should go to the easiest school so I can get the highest GPA possible”. I get that that’s how the game is played, but however hard Hopkins undergrad is, med school will be at least as difficult. Everyone hits the wall sooner or later and you may be doing yourself a disservice later on by putting yourself in a too easy undergrad environment.
Hopkins is definitely not the easiest school out there, but those premeds who are able to maintain competitive GPAs (which is a large number of them considering our average GPA is around 3.3-3.4) and MCAT scores have research experience, shadowing experience, and volunteering experience that sets them apart from the average applicant.