<p>JHU's PA on US News ranking system is 4.5, which is higher than 4 schools ranked under it (Duke, Dartmouth, Northwestern, and WashU). So does it mean that, in term of prestige and public awareness of the school, JHU is a top 10 school in the US?</p>
<p>Yes and no - it really depends on who you are talking to and what you mean by “public awareness.” That also depends on the place you’re in, in terms of geography, too. If you’re looking for a job on the East Coast, particularly in the DC-Baltimore metropolitan area and the Northeast, Johns Hopkins will be very recognizable. If you’re trying to find a job out on the West Coast with small regional corporations, it might be less recognizable (and in fact, the employers out there may not put it in the top 10 - it may value the UCs, the Claremont colleges, and Stanford and USC more). It also depends on the field. If you’re going into healthcare, everyone will have heard of Johns Hopkins and it’ll be highly valued, since JHU has one of the oldest and best hospital systems in the country.</p>
<p>I don’t know if people generally organize the schools into hardcore numbers like that - delineating top 10, top 25, etc - when they are thinking about schools quickly. They know that they recognize some schools and that some are better than others. I think most people would put JHU in the same general category as the other schools you listed, although they may not be able to immediately come up with a numerical system for them. I think that in certain parts of the country the other schools probably have more name recognition (Dartmouth most certainly, and likely also Duke and Northwestern).</p>
<p>JHU is a pretty major research center, and that likely accounts for its high PA score. similarly, Cal is a huge research center and has a lower rank than JHU but a higher PA.</p>
<p>Historically, JHU is very similar to UChicago in terms of quality of student, research nature of the university, etc. So, either JHU is underrated, or UChicago is overrated by USNews.</p>
<p>^except uchicago has many more departments ranked highly than does JHU, the quality of student at the undergrad level might be similar (I still give the edge to chicago), but chicago has more departments scoring better. JHU is known primarily for bio, medecine, bme and other related fields, education also. Uchicago is a top school in the natural sciences, math, econ, english, history, law and business.</p>
<p>@IPBear - your conclusion does not follow from your premises.</p>
<p>Yes, JHU and UChicago are similar in terms of overall quality - comparable to the “lower Ivies”, Duke, Northwestern, etc. The US News rankings reflect this. As a Hopkins student, where exactly it stands in relation to its peer schools in a given year is of little interest to me.</p>
<p>I think Hopkins is neither over- nor under-rated by the general public. People who know about it respect it.</p>
<p>@confidentialcoll - I’d say JHU is better known for international studies, writing, art history, and languages, among others (all near the top of the field) than it is for education. Hopkins has no undergraduate education program to speak of. Its history and English departments are nothing to sneeze at, either.</p>
<p>As an addendum to my previous statement, JHU humanities = massively underrated.</p>
<p>Hopkins is considered the top of the top in fields ranging from Writing, Public Health, BME, Pre-Med, International Relations, Romance Languages, Art History, and others.
However, it is regularly ranked in similar rankings as such prestigious schools as Stanford, Harvard, columbia, cornell, penn, etc, in fields like Biology, Cell Biology, History, English, Economics, political science, engineering, ETC.</p>
<p>You will find that the educated regard Johns Hopkins very highly. The Educated Elite, usually of educated backgrounds, etc, have been exposed to Hopkins for many decades as a high producer of outstanding PH.D’s, MD’s, BA’s, BS’s, MA’s, MS’s, etc in a variety of fields. Thus, it is definitely not a new name by any means (like WashU or Rice), and its reputation is felt in many regions of this world.</p>
<p>Take that for what you want. I won’t comment on whether it is underrated or overrated.</p>
<p>For the people that matter, Hopkins is very well respected.</p>
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<p>I think you just overrated it.</p>
<p>Def under-rated.</p>
<p>No. They have great graduate resources, but many of those are physically apart from the Baltimore campus. Students I know who turned down JHU, turned it down, because there impression was that if you were not pre-med, they really did not care. It is a very good school, but I am skeptical to put it in the top 10, overall–particularly for undergraduate quality. They do some major numbers massaging too…</p>
<p>I’m not pre-med and have never gotten the impression that Hopkins “doesn’t really care” about my education. Only about 25% of Hopkins students go on to med school. Professors treat you the same whether or not you’re pre-med. You’ll have an advisor in your major who’s used to students doing a variety of things with their degree. There’s top-notch pre-professional advising for law and business, as well as a solid career center.</p>
<p>Undergrads have easy access to the vast majority of grad resources. Registering for grad school classes at Homewood is a breeze. Getting a lab research position, either at Homewood or at the med campus, is often as easy as asking around. There’s a free shuttle connecting Homewood to the med campus (med school, nursing school, school of public health) and Peabody (music conservatory). Which “graduate resources”, aside from SAIS* (in DC/Bologna, Italy), are so far removed from Homewood??</p>
<p>*I should mention that qualified undergrads have the option of an accelerated bachelor’s/master’s program through SAIS, which is considered one of the best international relations schools in the world.</p>
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This is getting off topic, but that’s not really a useful number. What’s more important is the percentage of students on the pre-med track. Nearly 50% of freshmen at my own college came in as pre-med, for example, which created a rather different atmosphere than one might find at, say, Vassar.</p>
<p>As I posted in another thread, only 12% of Hopkins undergraduates major in the humanities (63% in science/engineering, 25% in social sciences). This leads to a much different feel than that of Hampshire, where 60% of undergraduates major in the humanities/arts.</p>
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Among people who are familiar with Hopkins, it is neither underrated or overrated. It’s considered a top 15 or so university, which is what it is.</p>
<p>Among the hoi polloi, Hopkins is seriously lacking in name recognition compared to universities like Yale or MIT. In that sense, it could be considered very underrated.</p>
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Exactly, I know quite a few students who are pre-med, but will not/did not apply to medical school or who did not get into medical school.</p>
<p>I know, non-science people are outnumbered. That doesn’t mean that Hopkins “doesn’t care” about them. If Hopkins only cared about pre-meds, 75% of undergrads (including those who were never interested in pre-med and those who lost interest at some point or didn’t get into med school) would be screwed. That is simply not the case.</p>