So, after getting the Mutombo wag from all of my Ivies, I have boiled down my college selection to 3 choices: JHU, UMD (Full Banneker Scholarship), and Georgetown. Financially, it is full ride at UMD, pretty affordable for JHU, and no news from Georgetown yet. I am doing business at UMD and Georgetown, and Applied Math at JHU. I would greatly appreciate some advice on how to untangle this quandary.
First off, these are all great schools (hence your quandary), so the next big factor off the bat (as always) should be money. If money is important then the free-ride to UMD would be my biggest factor in selection. When you’re saying JHU is affordable are we talking a half-scholarship or that despite the price tag you/your parents are willing to pay for it? If money isn’t the clear deciding factor here for you then we can start talking about other things:
The benefits of going to an “elite” school like JHU or Georgetown (read elite as if I’m always putting it in quotes) are primarily the connections, the support and the opportunities. If you were accepted to JHU and Georgetown then you have your life together and I’m fairly sure you don’t need to be surrounded by other like-minded folk to stay on the straight and narrow by maintaining good grades and seizing opportunities. Also being a bigger fish at UMD means you will be able to seize many opportunities as a more competitive student. UMD also has a great business program (both undergrad and grad) and is well-established and respected, so I feel like a stellar UMD grad would be able to make plenty of connections and job opportunities without the support of an elite university like JHU or Georgetown. Lastly, if you’re proactive in asking for help and probably working harder to find quality advisors and advice for program and career questions, etc. then I don’t think you need the level of coddling and support that a smaller elite school would offer. In your case - based on what you want to study, the type of person I’m figuring you to be and the fact that UMD is a great public school - I don’t think you need the benefits of paying the hefty elite school price tag to do well in school and after.
As for location, Georgetown is a beautiful place to live, but expensive and cramped. Baltimore is less than an hour train ride away and I made the trip to Washington D.C. regularly to visit my brother, which was more than enough D.C. for me. College Park is an awesome college town feel, so it just depends if you want big city or not, and the associated costs and living conditions. For me, I loved Baltimore and had many great experiences while living there.
Lastly, I wasn’t an Applied Math major at Hopkins, but I know the graduate programs are well-regarded (both Stats and Applied Math are highly ranked with plenty of resources and great collaboration research projects across disciplines), and I heard good things about the upper-level undergraduate coursework for friends who went through the program. However, some intro level courses like Differential Equations and Multi-Variable Calculus (from my personal experience) were taught by professors more interested in their research than in teaching students. This was my only educational-based complaint while at Hopkins, and it was due to relatively poor teaching in the undergraduate Math department while I was there (maybe it has since improved, hopefully @OnMyWay2013 will respond since I believe she is a current Applied Math major).
A quick final note (though many people scoff when I mention this), for some people, name and prestige matter. Some people are competitive, worked hard in high school, etc. and/or like to show off. I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing, just that some people enjoy saying the name of their school and raising eyebrows. If that honestly is you, and no need to admit it, lol, then Hopkins would be the name you would want to say. Hopkins is typically better ranked as an undergraduate program (here come the angry responses), is more competitive to gain admission to, has more ranked graduate programs, and is a more recognized name nationally and internationally. Does this alone mean it really is a better school? Probably not. Depends on what you’re looking for in a school, what you want to study, etc. However, some people do care about this stuff and to say name and prestige don’t matter AT ALL is also incorrect since people are irrational and people like to simplify and categorize things by making lists and rankings. This often ends up being the reason why people are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for an elite degree when they may have faired just as well for a fraction of the cost at a great public school like UMD.
Take the full ride at College Park and use the money your parents would have paid and use it for a down payment on a house and a car and graduate school. Congratulations on the scholarship.
I actually just changed my major to AMS this year (before junior year), so I don’t have the same perspective as someone who’s been AMS since freshman year. There are definitely many opportunities to get involved in research across disciplines. Upper-level courses can be really good or really challenging depending on the professor and how many graduate students are in the classes. Personally, my Diff EQ and Calc III professors were some of the nicest, funniest, and most invested out of the math classes I’ve taken. For me, it’s not as much an issue of not caring about teaching as it is not being trained to teach students who don’t know everything they do. The Math and AMS departments are completely separate, though, and I’ve only taken three classes in the Math department, so it may be the case that NixonDenier’s friends are correct.
@NixonDenier Thank you for your wise words. I definitely am not a person who desires schools just for their name tag and want an education that is supportive of my career and personal development. For JHU, my parents are able and willing to pay for it.
@OnMyWay2013 I understand I’m bumping an old thread, but just curious, did you have Dr. Jiuyi Zhu for Calc III?
@jcshen I did not, I’m afraid.
@jcshen I have friends who’ve had Dr. Jiuyi Zhu for Calc III. They said he would regularly intermix Mandarin Chinese into his lectures and was generally a terrible teacher, but wrote excellent board notes.