What is life like at JHU? What do students do for fun? Do they mainly stay on campus or venture off? What is the surrounding area like?Are the academics cutthroat, so much so that free time is rare? What do you think is the best thing about JHU and what do you think the worst is? Thanks so much!
- Life is fine, haha. Classes, studying, job, clubs, friends, food, sleep. Studying takes up more of the day than it might at other schools, but I don't think there's anything particularly significant about life at Hopkins.
- Study, haha. Maybe that's just me. There are a lot of things that people do for fun, just like in high school. People do clubs and intramural sports. They hang out with friends, go to parties, lounge or play frisbee on the "beach."
- It really depends on the student. If you do research at the medical campus, you'll be leaving campus a lot. People might travel locally to go to work or go out to eat. Occasionally, people will go to places like the Inner Harbor, Hampden, etc. for more touristy, leisure stuff, but this happens more at the beginning and end of the semesters when there is less work, it's warmer outside, or it's a holiday.
- Lol, Hopkins needs to make "We are not cutthroat" the first thing people see on its website. Nooooo. Free time is only rare here if you make it rare by taking on a bunch of courses and extracurriculars (which, Hopkins students are definitely the type to do that).
- The best things about JHU are that there's always something for me to do (see #4), and also the people (students and professors) are awesome. I've learned so much about the world from talking to other students, and all the people I've met are amazingly down-to-earth (we aren't all sparkly, perfect premeds, lol).
The worst thing is that because a good chunk of the student body is Type-A and perfectionistic, it creates this unspoken social norm that you have to be doing a million things, getting good grades, and making an impact on the world. And if people are struggling at all, they feel like something’s wrong with them because they aren’t doing as well as everybody else. Or conversely, people look down on athletes and sorority girls in particular because they don’t seem as driven or value the same things as the rest of the student body.
The culture is very subtle, though, and it’s only something you realize if you really think about it. But I think the majority of people have friend groups that they can be authentic with.