Hey everyone - I’m a high school senior currently trying to decide on a college. I’ve been accepted at JHU, Tufts, WashU in St. Louis, Emory, and I’m still considering Notre Dame.
Money isn’t really a factor, they would all end up costing about the same.
I’m also not worried about safety of the location, I’m comfortable with the city environment.
I love creative writing, and would most likely double major in English/ Creative Writing with something else. I’m not sure if I want to do communications or physics… as you can see I’m terrible at making decisions haha.
I would really appreciate any insight into these schools!! Thanks
The long process of thoughtfully exploring and applying to these colleges was a great opportunity to understand how they would meet your objectives and enhance your future education. CC is a better forum for asking specific questions based on people’s experience and knowledge.
I went to Emory and live right near JHU. JHU is a much more cutthroat environment. Many students are premed and those that are not sometimes feel lost, according to students I’ve spoken with. There is no doubt you will have more fun at Emory, but I don’t know what is important for you. The environment of each school is very different, so I hope you get a chance to visit.
Out of Baltimore, Atlanta, St. Louis & Boston, I’d say Boston wins by a mile as a place to spend your college years. So if the nearby city is.s concern, then Tufts is tough to beat.
visit if you can. As you noted in your OP, location or safety isn’t that important. If so, most people in your situation would likely pick Hopkins by virtue of reputation and opportunities afforded. Physics at Hopkins is taught by multiple nobel prize winners with tons of undergrad research (not sure if Tufts or Washu comes close to the faculty research opportunities. Emory is a nonfactor as all rankings indicate when it comes to sciences). Creative writing at Hopkins is typically known as amongst the top 2 programs in the country (second to UIowa’s writing program). The English department is absolutely top notch at Hopkins as well (hovers around being top 10 in rankings). You really can’t go wrong with your major selection at Hopkins - can’t say the same about the others where stem or humanities may be lacking. Overall rankings everywhere (not just US news but all rankings) indicate Hopkins is the superior academic institution. Hopkins and Washu come closest with the strongest freshman academic credentials as well - which may impact your classroom experience as well.
From a first hand testament,I had many premed friends at Hopkins and was in engineering, we all had a blast to be frank. There is no cut throat atmosphere - visit the Hopkins board and the campus to verify this. Don’t get this secondhand from others on here. The 6 year graduation rate is high amongst peer schools and freshman retention is 98% - all indices that would be lower if people transferred out due to unhappiness.
Hopkins does have the biggest rep, but (according to USNews) WashU is top-20, Emory is top-25 and Tufts is well-regarded also.
I think you should compare them all based on social vibe/things to do, culture, environment, dorms/food, and academic fit (program and class availability, class size, degree requirements, etc.). You have said that the costs come out about the same; otherwise you’d want to include that as a factor also.
If you can, visit them and be sure to factor in the “gut feeling” also.
As long as you pursue the right fit for you, you cannot make the wrong choice. These are all fine schools.
As a premed who recently went through the premed experience at Hopkins, I can tell you I thoroughly enjoyed my experience and that NO, it was NOT cutthroat. Please stop perpetuating this myth that Hopkins is a terrible place where fun dies and that students will sabotage labs and hide library reference books to get ahead, I never saw or heard of anything like that happening. Is it competitive? Of course, but when you talk to students you’ll see most of it is self-imposed since students see other students are working hard and feel obligated to work hard too. I think this is a great thing since it pushed all of us to be better students and to achieve greater levels of success in coursework, extracurriculars and after college. You know what else is extremely competitive? Medical school (oh, and life). I can tell you my Hopkins friends would consistently report back to me (when I was an undergrad) that medical school was a breeze for them from the study habits they developed while at JHU. I had the same experience at medical school, and while many of my peers struggled the first few months I knew exactly what I needed to do in terms of time management, prioritizing, etc. to get the scores I wanted.
Cutthroat is a completely different thing than competition. Do not conflate the two since it deters many students from even considering a school that has the largest annual R&D budget of any institution in the U.S. (and probably the world), amazing academic and career advising, superb and dedicated faculty and prestigious programs. The school also has rather flexible degree requirements which truly does allow students to pursue their passions, double major, etc.
Make sure you ultimately base this important decision on real information with real students and not just hearsay from a friend of a friend. Look over these threads where there is more discussion on common JHU misconceptions:
I’m a book editor/agent (S&S, Random House) who is a Tufts grad (with a major in English/Poetry) and I have a daughter starting as a freshman at one of your choices next year. I can tell you, in all honesty, that if your goal is to become a writer, or work in publishing, it makes no difference which of these schools you choose. Where you get your masters in creative writing may matter slightly, especially if you plan to teach, but if you want to write for a living,choose the school that has the professors whose work you most admire or the classes you most want to take, and take the classes that require a lot of writing and reading. You can major in pretty much any liberal arts subject too - history, philosophy, political science are all common majors in publishing.
If it is possible for you to sit in on a workshop, or talk to students in the department, I would do that too. The one thing you do not want as a creative writing major is an overly competitive/cut throat environment. (but just because a pre-Med or Engineering dept is cut throat does not mean the English department will be as well) Creative writing workshops have to be carefully run in order to support every student’s efforts, and undergrads who aren’t taught the proper way to workshop can do some damage to their peers. Class size is very important too. Once classes get above 20-25 students, it becomes much more difficult to get the kind of detailed feedback on papers that you need to improve, and creative writing classes should be kept intentionally very small. Congrats on so many great choices!
Many students at JHU will take IFP (Introduction to Fiction and Poetry) since it fulfills premed requirements and many students are also creative writing majors (plus it is a popular and fun class). It’s a great mix of students. When I took it the class had about 15-20 students (it was two semesters) and we were workshopping once a week (class met twice a week for 3 hours, but you could also take the 3x/wk for two hours). It was a very positive experience. Again, students at almost all schools (even JHU!) are not going to be leaping at each others throats. We may be competitive, but we’re still human and show common decency. You also will be workshopped within the next few weeks, so it only makes sense to be sincere and helpful since you’ll be in their seat in no time.
If you are interested in creative writing, you have done really well according to a USA Today article, “The 10 Best American Colleges for Writers.” Emory, JHU and WUStL are included. These other online articles also discuss writing programs and may give you further insight into some of your choices: “The 10 Best Colleges for Creative Writers” and “The 12 Best Creative Writing Colleges and Programs.”
Regarding standardized scores, Business Insider analyzed them for “The 610 Smartest Colleges”:
In fact, that website just averages the 25th and 75th percentile scores which would give JHU a 1475 (when the actual JHU median is a 1480). JHU would be amongst the top 10 in the country in SAT scores in that case.
They pulled data from 2014, so more than 2 years old as it is for the class enrolled in fall 2013. The schools of interest are clearly outlined in my post above, not sure why they would use your link when the most relevant data is already there in my posts.
Why does a school as highly ranked and with the rep of Emory laaaaag behind its peers in test scores? Are they really that more holistic? Did the test score issue a few years ago lead to a decrease in demand (# of apps)?
Their test scores have always been the same and unchanged since they found out the discrepancies. They hired the admissions dean from Hopkins as well. Their yield is just extremely poor (28% versus most “peers” at 40+%). They aren’t a peer of Northwestern, Hopkins, Duke in terms of desirability from that regard.
I have them just a notch below those three (and Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn…).
I have Emory’s peers as Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, Rice, Wash U, Georgetown, and maybe Carnegie Mellon. (and as their reps continue to improve, soon Tufts and USC). Sound about right?
