I’ll vote for Hopkins just because it is bigger and in a city. We looked at a lot of small schools in small towns and I’ll admit, they are not for me. Only a few courses offered per department per semester. Same teachers, same classmates, same pizza place, same dorms. x4. It is less than half the size of the high school I went to. I’d go mad.
I also really like Baltimore. There are a lot of festivals held down near the harbor, there is baseball and football, it is close to DC, and even the beach is not that far away.
If the main criterion was top creative writing programs, having Kenyon and JHU be the final two wouldn’t be much of a surprise at all.
Most folks I knew who attended JHU…including the non-pre-meds hardly had time/inclination to venture out to those areas due to academic workload along with serious concerns about crime in the Baltimore area. While it has gotten much better even 5 years after those from my HS graduating class had graduated(end of '90s), it was still a serious concern among local businesses and residents.
While the Inner Harbor area and hotels area are fine, it’s a starkly different story just a few blocks away as my friends and I found when one member of our party waited till 11 pm to decide he was hungry and the only restaurant still open was located a few blocks away with a large contingent of police patrolling a 6 block area around that sandwich shop. .
The owners of the sandwich shop looked really frightened and were trying to complete their customers’ orders quickly so they can close up and leave.
When they found we were tourists, the owners warned us that the police presence was for our benefit due to the large convention in town and that we should scramble back to the hotel area ASAP as once the police presence leaves in half an hour, we’d be preyed upon by the widespread criminal element in that area as that area is one of the most crime ridden areas of Baltimore. .
Cobrat, I was at a conference recently staying at one of the Harbor hotels and felt perfectly safe walking around downtown after dinner/after dark.
Baltimore is no more dangerous than any other big city. Don’t flash your wallet. Don’t walk alone after midnight. Take a taxi if you are nervous about public transportation. Don’t use an ATM at 2 am.
But I’d give that advice to someone anywhere in a big city-- even in Beverly Hills or on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
This is why those facile categories are overly hyped here. The type and location of a college do not have to be the main criteria–being the best, or among the best, in a major can certainly be the central reason for what the final choices come down to.
Sure, but there are clearly more than two "among the best.’ Or, are you saying that these two are the best of the best? (If so, can you show me such a ranking?)
(I would submit that claiming either is the 'best" is a facile argument.)
Of course that begs the question, best of what? The OP mentions English and Writing in the title. But, Kenyon is known for Creative Writing, yes? But The Hop is known more for literary writing, altho I’m sure its Creative is awesome, too.
Does the OP have a preference between the two? If the OP would prefer English, a whole host of other colleges fit as well.
My point is that attending #3 might be a better fit than either of these two.
The areas where the hotels are located and downtown are fine.
However, turning just a few blocks in one direction resulted in a stark change with a large contingent of cops patrolling a six block area and the owners of that pizza/sandwich shop looking very terrified and advising us to get back to the hotel area ASAP. Total length of time to walk back to hotel from that crime-ridden part of Baltimore: Less than 8 minutes.
Not the entire city, but that specific crime-ridden area of Baltimore brought back memories of the high crime era NYC I remembered living through as a child/teen in the '80s and early-mid '90s.
I know wonderful young people who have graduated from the writing programs in both schools and been very happy with their experiences. Your son has wonderful options. He can’t go wrong with either of them.
I live in Baltimore. Your son will be fine if he chooses JHU. And I expect he will discover why we call it Charm City. It has a quirkiness that gets under your skin. And he shouldn’t be afraid to explore it; there is a whole lot more than the touristy area around the harbor and the poverty stricken areas you see in The Wire.
I will also say that he has graduate school/work/life to live in a big city. If he feels he wants 4 years in the Kenyon bubble that is OK. It is a beautiful campus and the students I know who have gone there love it to pieces.
We’ve (and of course I’m talking about the royal we of CC) decreed that academically both Kenyon and JHU are very good, and have very good writing programs. Now the OP needs to consider the other factors. For me, I’d take the bigger school, the city school. If the very best program in writing was at West Point, I would not choose that because the rest of the school isn’t for me. Next best choice a tiny LAC? Also not for me. I might be down to the fifth ‘best’ writing program in the country before I found a school that offered the other things that would make me enjoy a school. Yes, I’d be at Iowa before a school with fewer than 5000 students.
OP has to decide what he wants, and really can’t go wrong with either Kenyon or JHU academically.
If you think it is dangerous at JHU main campus, try the med school. There are still hundreds of applications to the school every year and I’ve never heard of anyone turning it down because it is too dangerous in that area.
I’m glad this thread came around to a more balanced position. The early chorus of advice that Kenyon was the obvious choice was terribly misleading.
The fact is, there really isn’t much of a basis on which to choose between Kenyon and Hopkins based on their writing programs alone (although I think Hopkins’ program is a little flashier and more professional, thanks in part to its larger size and more attractive location to working writers). With the writing programs basically a push, a student ought to choose between the two based on the fairly vast non-writing differences between them. Each represents a completely different, and equally valid (in my opinion), model of what an undergraduate education should look like. Two different paths to reach an agreed-upon result. Either one can work for most students, but very few students are going to be completely indifferent between the two.
The Writing Seminars major is very, very well known. And is, of course, a creative writing major. It’s meant to prepare a student to be qualified for an MFA. So I don’t understand your distinction.
Hi all. Thank you so much for your time and input. We sat down and discussed every single post.
JHU2021!
Decision was difficult. Two very great schools with great programs. In the end, we come from a very small Idaho town and my kid wanted a different experience for college. Time to move on, embrace the decision and get ready for college. GO HOP!