<p>hello, I am a graduating highschool senior and I am deciding between Hopkins and Pitt.</p>
<p>I am planning on majoring either biology, or biochemistry, which means that there is more than a good chance that I will be going to a grad school after my undergrad study.
From what I've been reading and hearing, both have good choices to bio major, and both have plenty of research programs.
I don't have any preference on location of the schools or anything like that, so I'm looking strictly at the schools themselves.</p>
<p>What attracts me to Pitt:
1) Hopkins IS going to be a lot more expensive (about 15K to 18K or so).
2) Hopkins deflates grades, which probably means that maintaining grades would be easier at Pitt (...right? if this is not the case, feel free to correct me)</p>
<p>What attracts me to Hopkins:
1) It's prestigious (and some people actually told me that it helps a lot when I am applying for grad school)
2) smaller campus & smaller classes compared to Pitt</p>
<p>so just give me your opinions. I know some people are gonna tell me that it's ultimately my decision, but I want to gather as much opinion as I can.
Would it really be that much harder to maintain good grades at hopkins?
Does graduating from a prestigious school really beneficial in any significant way?</p>
<p>I think Hopkins is a COMPLETELY different experience than Pitt mainly with respect to the attention you’ll get and more excitingly, your peers. Your experience with respect to opportunities will be what you make of it. However, all of your peers at JHU will be top notch and in a small, welcoming community in a liberal arts setting. Are you going to have the chance to visit?!</p>
<p>at this economy, anything can happen; but it seems like they’ll be able to support the tuition if i work and earn all (or most) my personal expenses.</p>
<p>I think the real big issues is whether or not the name Johns Hopkins helps in my grad school admission,
and if it is really near impossible to maintain high gpa there… as I hear that many students struggle, and all of those who struggle were smart enough to be accepted in the first place.</p>
<p>I don’t think that JHU is the welcoming environment that a previous poster said it was. my impression is that, especially for your majors, it is quite the pressure cooker.</p>
<p>when i visited pitt, it seemed friendly enough. but it honestly seemed to me to be a kind of place to go simply for the purposes of going to college. As in, you go to some places, like small LACs, for the perspective and education and all that. pitt seemed to me to be a place where you go because you know you’re supposed to go to college.</p>
<p>ok… is there any place where I can find out what percentage of graduating students from each school were admitted to a grad school?
I’ve been looking for that but never could find it…</p>
<p>Hopkins is a very welcoming environment. As someone who is there, I should know better than someone who has never heard of it and probably couldn’t even tell you how many undergrads are on campus.</p>
<p>Anyways, the Hopkins name and advising is very very good for graduate schools of any kind. Much stronger than Pitt.</p>
<p>If you want a high GPA, why even go for Pitt? I’m sure PennState or your local community college can help you there.</p>
<p>edit: Also, for grad school, the main difference is that Hopkins will give you a better chance at the BEST grad schools in the country and the world, while Pitt may not.</p>
<p>My friend with a 3.45 GPA here at Hopkins got into a graduate program in History at Columbia University. I don’t think I could say the same for a 3.45-er from Pitt.</p>
<p>well of course 3.45-er from Pitt won’t be seen as equal to a 3.45-er from Hopkins,
but isn’t it also true that getting 3.45 at hopkins is much more difficult than getting 3.45 at Pitt? I wouldnt even be asking this if both were equally difficult.
A friend of mine told me that Hopkins deflates grades for sure… I’m ready to work hard but at a competitive place like hopkins, a decent gpa isn’t guaranteed.</p>
<p>And why not just go to Penn State or a local community college? because Pitt has great research opportunities, which is a big plus for a bio major planning on going to a grad school.</p>
<p>I got a 2.1 GPA (0.1 from academic probation freshman year) because I really didn’t take school seriously and applied my high school tactics towards studying at Hopkins (not a good idea). I failed a class and I got straight C’s first semester under covered grades (meaning 2.1 didn’t count under covered grades, classes were pass or fail)… possibly the worst grade since I’m on a pretty prestigious need based scholarship from Hopkins (yes, i’m suppose to be smart).</p>
<p>I motivated myself to work hard. Second semester at Hopkins freshman year, I got a 3.5 GPA (i worked pretty hard to get this, i’ll admit it) and then first semester sophomore year I got a 3.7 GPA… Now this semester, I was hoping to get a 4.0 but based on my last midterm grade, it’s probably not going to happen (my overall GPA is a 3.6 btw) I’ve improved dramatically, but don’t take my story and superimpose it on the entire Hopkins student body. I’m one of the rare ones that fail early on and then rebound very quick… </p>
<p>I’d say it’s pretty not bad to get 3.45… depends on your major, whether you take your work seriously, and general work ethic.</p>
<p>The rigor of the Hopkins curriculum has definitely improved my work ethic in general. I feel stronger than ever before and feel that I can tackle pretty much any challenge that comes my way regardless of it’s difficulty… Just work hard and don’t fool around is my advice :D</p>
<p>It’s obvious a 4.0 from any institution is impressive. If you are applying to med school with a 4.0 GPA from UPitt and the average student MCAT score of a UPitt student applying is a 29, then it will greatly diminish the impressiveness of a 4.0 because your school probably isn’t as rigorous and competitive than a 3.7 GPA student from school where the average student MCAT score is a 35 or 36.</p>
<p>If you are applying to med, law, or business school, graduate schools factor in the mean MCAT/LSAT/GMAT scores of your institution and re-adjust your GPA based on how well students at your school compares against the national standard. It’s a means of adjusting for rigor and competitiveness… so having a higher GPA at an easier school might actually hurt you and might not necessarily help that much after all is said and done.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest that this is fairly meaningless. Here’s why:</p>
<p>A large number of students will self-select out of pre-med because of their struggles compared to other students or because it really is not something they are passionate about. Determining the number of students in pre-med is made even harder depending on how a school tracks this. Some have pre-med tracking others may not know that a biology major is interested in med school until perhaps his/her junior year. This unknown number (as much of this occurs before a kid has even declared a major) is reduced further by college advisors. This is the ugly underbelly of the med school route. Certainly advisor(s) want to help a student in their school and pre-professional tracking. However, every school is dearly interested in telling students and their parents how 100 percent of those applying to medical school were accepted. So, the ugly side of this is telling a student that they won’t get into med school and to consider other options so that they can keep their admit rate sky-high. Bottom line is that comparing one school’s 95 percent rate versus another school’s 99 percent rate is virtually meaningless.</p>
<p>So what can you do? Ask each school what first year course they offer has the highest correlation between students enrolled and students applying to med schools. Ask them how many students of a class took this course. Divide this number by the number actually accepted into medical school. This will tell you about med school tracking success or (more soberly) the burn rate out of that tracking. </p>
<p>As others have pointed out, a school’s grading will be quite well known to grad school admissions so deflation/inflation will be taken into account. </p>
<p>There is something to be said for swimming with sharks to make you more competitive and to push yourself. However, given that a large number of pre-med students bail out of this track and the cost difference between the two schools and the cost of graduate school studies, I’d suggest a strong and long look at UPITT.</p>
<p>Pitt has the honors program and advisors who will help with your grad school applications. Didn’t you get the brochure that listed how many of the top scholarships (Rhodes, Marshall, Truman, etc.) Pitt grads land each year? Most of the other schools that were listed were Ivies–and Michigan.</p>