<p>Good move by Johns Hopkins. Latting is a great guy and has done a lot for JHU, but over the last couple of years, I have had questions about JHU's recruiting strategy. It lacks confidence for a school like JHU and hasn't used fully the great reputation of JHU to its advantage although it started to improve upon President Daniel's arrival.<br>
I expect the admission rate to drop sharply with a new dean in the next couple of years, similar to what happened at Chicago and Northwestern.</p>
<p>With a lower admission rate, it is possible for JHU to break into USNWR top 10, if that’s worth anything.</p>
<p>USNWR rankings mean absolutely diddley squat and actually are damaging academic institutions. We can look at Uchicago as an example, before their new admissions director their admissions rate was 45%. Why was it so high? Because UChicago had a certain academic culture and the kids that applied to the school knew of that culture and wanted to be a part of it. Yes now their rankings have jumped because their new director decided to follow the fold thus making it a free for all with kids applying to it because of a number in a meaningless rank, not the spirt of the school. For schools that lack an academic soul such as the giant McDonald universities of USC and NYU yes rankings mean everything. When one school is a jack of all trades but master of none all that matters is a number. But for schools like JHU, Northwestern, UChicago and Duke rankings matter less. What matters is maintaining a culture of academic excellence and independent research. If JHU wants to improve their recruiting, then Dean Newman’s plan for enhancing the undergraduate experience needs to be put in high gear. Her goal of raising the student:teacher ratio to around 6:1-7:1 is admirable and her goal of adding new Humanities and Social Science departments is the right direction but other things could be done. JHU needs to establish better relations with foreign universities to provide unique study abroad experiences for its undergrad population (no I don’t mean something like NYU Shanghai Ghana, I mean creating exchange programs like Columbia Waseda with top schools around the world in order to enrich the experience of the student body), JHU is slowly doing that now with the new programs JHU Mumbai, Singapore, Tokyo, and Nanjing but more could be done in Eurasia, Australia, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe. The international studies program needs to be groomed for the new dynamics of the 21st century. the program should have special exchange programs with top global international relations schools (LSE, NUS, Moscow State, PKU, Waseda, Uppsala etc), a stronger emphasis on language attainment by increasing the number of languages taught at the center for language education as well as the intensity of current offerings, and special pathways to related internships provided by the school. The difference between a University student and a student going to university is that a university student is someone that views university as a chance for academic development that happens to lead to a job, a student going to a university is a person looking for a brand name to get a good job, academics is only a second thought. If JHU wants that excellence it needs to attract the former kind of student.</p>
<p>Given Bluejay’s post, Latting will fit in perfectly at Emory (the latter description of students looking for a brand name to get a good job)…</p>
<p>Wow Blue Jay BJ. What a thoughtful and reasonable response. I sincerely hope you are still involved with the University in some way. Although I would love the school to crack the top 10 (my child is a student there, and I belive in branding!), I would much more like to see the suggestions you have listed above.</p>
<p>JHU should go as far as BlueJay suggested but there are plenty of simpler things they can do. For one, I know endowment money and gifts are pre-allocated but stop putting up new buildings just to put them up. How about investing money in some of the underfunded departments? How about improving the financial aid policy? Improved undergraduate housing and possibly housing for grad students? More places to eat on campus?</p>
<p>Agreed Yanks,</p>
<p>It seems a lot of the social sciences especially (economics, poly sci, etc.) are still short changed compared to the massive funding for the biological sciences (the huge addition to Mudd is going on just outside my window). I know they are hiring more professors and working to improve all the departments, but it still isn’t balanced well.</p>
<p>Also, the library seriously needed more space and hopefully they will renovate the current part shortly, it’s pretty annoying in the lower levels. Financial aid is decent but could certainly be improved, however the endowment now stands around $3 billion and some major fundraising would be needed to offer Ivy quality aid. Housing is getting better but there’s not much more the university can do aside from renovating the AMRs and doing a few others things (I don’t foresee any new dorms going up on campus any time soon). The eating situation is fine for me as a freshman as I am in the FFC all the time, but I do think they could add one or two more places closer to the library / beach area. It’s not perfect but it’s getting there.</p>
<p>I just wanted to point out that those are my current gripes, something that will likely change as the construction is finished etc. I don’t want to make it sound like JHU is a bad place, because it really is quite amazing.</p>
<p>BlueJay’s post is full of excuses. That’s why the admission office needs a change. Duke, in my opinion, academically inferior to JHU, is doing a much better job of recruiting. Their ED increase by 24% while JHU only 8% this year. Duke’s ED number is now almost double that of JHU. Internationally, JHU is much better known than Duke.</p>
<p>When I said JHU’s recruiting strategy lacks confidence, I meant they should not be afraid of competing with big guys like Harvard and Stanford. For example, Duke and Georgetown travel with Harvard, Stanford and UPenn on recruting trip on the West Coast while JHU travels with a bunch of liberal arts colleges that no one heard of them on the other side of the coast. In other words, Duke is using the reputation of Harvard to recruit while JHU is lending its reputation to the liberal art colleges. This kind of thing doesn’t cost much money and you just need the right strategy.</p>
<p>Also, other people can dismiss the USNWR ranking, it would be amounted to malpractice for admission people to ignore it. In Duke and UPenn’s ascension over the last 20 years, USNWR played a important role.</p>
<p>^I agree that JHU has a very very strange recruiting strategy…if they want to attract more applicants then the needs to play the prestige game. it’s sad but USNWR does affect a high schooler’s decision. </p>
<p>and I agree with Yanks! The dorm I live in is about to get a movie theatre built inside of it yet the food here sucks and they keep messing with my finan.aid!</p>
<p>Which dorm is getting a movie theater? And most of the things I suggested are big differences I’ve noticed between JHU and my current school.</p>
<p>The University has been improving in the areas a lot of you guys are suggesting in recent years. They’re trying to step up their financial aid (which, for me, while it wasn’t a Harvard-style grant for your full “financial need,” was actually a really good package). The Econ department got the Center for Financial Economics which brought with it several new professors. Gilman got its much needed complete renovation. They’ve gotten much better at providing study abroad opportunities over the years. Etc.</p>
<p>There’s always room for more improvement, but I think they’re already on the right track in that regard.</p>
<p>I would like to see more connections within their different offices, though. It would be nice if they could get the academic departments, academic advising, study abroad, and the career center to work together to help students really plan out their course of study and their futures in a more accessible way. The primary problem I found as a student was that each of those offices is tucked away somewhere and you have to be pretty proactive to get the most out of them. A lot of the opportunities are there, but they could do a better job connecting students with them.</p>
<p>As for USNWR rankings, it’s a necessary evil for universities to keep them in mind. On one hand, a lot of the factors in the rankings are meaningless. Small differences in GPA or SAT score could be a result of one school looking at those numbers in more context (if the person wants to be an engineer, while they should be able to write, their B in English might not really matter). A school could have a very low student to faculty ratio, but depending on the course offerings that might not actually mean that you, as a student, have smaller class sizes… a couple of schools have a bunch of classes that have only a few students in them, but the ones most people actually take could have hundreds of students. It might be great to have a very small class, but if the class only has 2 students, odds are that you’re not one of them.</p>
<p>On the other hand, while I’m not sure that you want to be at a university filled with people who applied to the top 10 list because they were clueless about the actual schools and thought that was the way to get ahead, the USNWR rankings shape a lot of people’s perception of a school. It’s the first place a lot of HS students look when they’re choosing where to apply to college, and that kind of publicity is obviously worth something. Also, while I would hope that students would focus on getting a good education rather than just getting a prestigious brand name for their resume, sometimes a good education isn’t enough… to put it to use, you need people to recognize the level of academic achievement you reached.</p>
<p>Hopkins has moved up in the rankings during Latting’s time there, so I wouldn’t complain about him too much in that regard but, unfortunately, it’s not something that the next dean of admissions can afford to ignore.</p>
<p>I think JHU has done a good job making itself attractive to those who take a close look at it. The campus is beautiful, Hopkins Insider is great, and the education is top-notch in a variety of fields.</p>
<p>But a beautiful campus only helps if people see it. From the street, Johns Hopkins isn’t much to look at – you really have to walk into the main parts of campus to appreciate it. People who are casually interested in Hopkins aren’t going to make the effort. Instead, Wikipedia and Google Maps will be their first impression. And neither site really does JHU justice. The Wikipedia article on Hopkins has pictures like [this[/url</a>] and [url=<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lower_Quad_at_JHU.jpg.JPG]this[/url”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lower_Quad_at_JHU.jpg.JPG]this[/url</a>]. These can certainly be improved upon. [url=<a href=“http://www.hopkins-interactive.com/includes/image.php/image-name.jpg?width=640&height=361&cropratio=640:361&quality=100&image=/blogs/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/5575109533_c6d1f90af8_b.jpg]This[/url”>http://www.hopkins-interactive.com/includes/image.php/image-name.jpg?width=640&height=361&cropratio=640:361&quality=100&image=/blogs/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/5575109533_c6d1f90af8_b.jpg]This[/url</a>] picture from Hopkins Insider would be a start.</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lower_Quad_at_JHU.jpg.JPG]this[/url](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lower_Quad_at_JHU.jpg.JPG%5Dthis%5B/url){kind=link}
![http://www.hopkins-interactive.com/includes/image.php/image-name.jpg?width=640&height=361&cropratio=640:361&quality=100&image=/blogs/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/5575109533_c6d1f90af8_b.jpg]This[/url](http://www.hopkins-interactive.com/includes/image.php/image-name.jpg?width=640&height=361&cropratio=640:361&quality=100&image=/blogs/wp-content/blogs.dir/23/files/5575109533_c6d1f90af8_b.jpg%5DThis%5B/url){kind=link}
<p>When people go to Google Maps and use Street View to look at the campus, they’ll see [url=<a href=“http://g.co/maps/7fwur]something”>http://g.co/maps/7fwur]something</a> like this](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JHU_Eisenhower_Library.jpg]this[/url”>File:JHU Eisenhower Library.jpg - Wikipedia). Not very impressive. Why not get Google to add some of the nicer areas of campus to street view via the [Street</a> View Partner Program](<a href=“http://maps.google.com/help/maps/streetview/partners/]Street”>Create and Publish your own Street View images)? Competing universities, such as UPenn, have [already</a> done this](<a href=“http://g.co/maps/pzrcw]already”>http://g.co/maps/pzrcw).</p>
![http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JHU_Eisenhower_Library.jpg]this[/url](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:JHU_Eisenhower_Library.jpg%5Dthis%5B/url){kind=link}
<p>Likewise, great educational opportunities are only useful if people know about them. Too many people still think of Hopkins as a bio/med school. In the college search and selection forum, I’m amazed at how often people leave JHU off the list when brainstorming for top universities in fields in which JHU is very competitive. For example, take a look at [this</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1208681-chemical-engineering-schools.html?highlight=upenn]this”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1208681-chemical-engineering-schools.html?highlight=upenn), where a student asks for schools with good undergraduate chemical engineering programs. The student really likes UPenn and UChicago, but wants a similar school with stronger chemical engineering.</p>
<p>What a great fit for JHU! One of the top undergraduate chemical engineering schools in the country, where chemical engineering is one of the most popular majors. A beautiful, urban campus similar to UPenn and UChicago. But nobody on the thread thought of JHU, and there was no representative from JHU to mention these facts.</p>
<p>The attitude of JHU seems to be “when people take a close look at us, they’ll like what they see.” And they will. But they have to take a close look at JHU first, and I don’t think JHU has been sufficiently aggressive in getting people to do so.</p>
<p>One more quick thought on recruiting: it’s not just a prestige game to make people feel good about themselves. It’s essential to the mission of JHU:</p>
<p>“The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.”</p>
<p>The student I mentioned in the previous post ended up applying early decision to UPenn, which arguably has a worse ChemE program than JHU. If that student could have better realized his/her potential to “bring the benefit of discovery to the world” at JHU, then the failure in recruiting will have real-world consequences that are contrary to the mission of the university.</p>
<p>LookingIn is making some good points.</p>
<p>I suggest to the next dean that he/she partners with Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth to recruit on the west cost. I know that all those schools are recruiting individually there. If such a travel group can be created, it will rival the Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Duke and Upenn group on the west cost. Of course, if JHU can join the latter group, that’s fine too.</p>
<p>I think it’s naive for any of us laymen to judge any admissions office or dean. They’re the experts and that is why the university has hired them. I also think its naive of us to think that these ideas have not been investigated or thought about by seasoned admissions professionals. I doubt we’re the first to explore these ideas. Perhaps the strategy they have is different than other places who just want to gobble up more files and spit them out… Perhaps? I dunno. JHU is not for the average smart kid… I’m sure there is a reason they do what they do and we just don’t understand it.</p>
<p>I vote for more admissions presence in the upper midwest. Everyone knows Georgetown, but few know JHU. It’s crazy. I would love if more talented kids around here looked at JHU more carefully. There are fabulous large public schools that would make for some efficient admissions trips! Admissions Daniel, feel free to PM me, LOL.</p>
<p>Hopkins is so prestigious internationally, much more well known than my alma mater Duke unfortunately. When I tell people to choose based upon fit here in the U.S. when deciding between JHU, Duke and Dartmouth, no one believes that the former is as good as the latter two.</p>
<p>JHU needs to beef up its business school and start spreading the word about some of its less known amazing programs like Art History and International Relations. If I were to tell some that JHU’s Art History program was a peer to Yale’s and that the IR course of study was on par with Georgetown SFS, I would be laughed off and thought off a raving lunatic.
This shouldn’t be happening.</p>
<p>Look at the popularity increase that Chicago has experienced. There’s no reason why JHU can’t get the same level of recognition by USNWR. Trust me, there are people out there who will choose a school just because its ranked one point higher on USNWR.</p>
<p>WOI, I respect your opinions a lot. This is one time that I don’t agree with you. How do you know the people on the board are layman? Why is Dean Latting leaving if everything is well?</p>