After Bloomberg’s donation to JHU, JHU will be so hard to get in next year. JHU will attract many qualified students who don’t necessarily want to pay a lot of money to go to college. Therefore, JHU will be so hard to get in in the future (starting next year). What do you think?
I think Baltimore is a negative for JHU. Parents remember the riots, and don’t want to pay top dollar for
a school in a transitioning city. Also JHU is known as ultra competitive/studious school, and that limits
applications too. Top student often turn down JHU for Caltech, MIT or Ivy League which are all need blind and offer full need financial aid . I have known students
to turn down JHU for GaTech just because of the Baltimore factor.
Many schools like Case Western Reserve U and small liberal arts colleges are loan free and need blind too, as are all the top east coast colleges. So this generous donation towards financial aid, just brings JHU up to the normal standards out on the east coast and may not affect applications that much.
Transitioning city? JHU is no less safe than other big city schools like Penn, Yale, UChicago etc. The campus is stunning and the academics top notch. Some students want a competitive/studious school - I’m not sure how you think that’s a negative. JHU is already “up to the normal standards of the east coast.” In fact many would argue that it far surpasses them. I personally know someone who turned down MIT and is happy at Hopkins. I think Bloomberg’s gift is an amazing opportunity for many students and I do think there will be an uptick in applications. You seem to be an expert on JHU, its campus and its home city. You must have spent a lot of time here.
I think that the ED applications to JHU will dramatically increase. There are many qualified students that do not apply ED because of the concerns about financial aid. Although I am sure that there are students who turn down Hopkins for MIT or Ivy League schools, as @Coloradomama points out, there are many students (including one of my kids) who chose Hopkins over the Ivy League. As @NJFL123 correctly said, many amazing institutions are in cities similar to Baltimore. The beauty of Hopkins is that you can stay on or near the campus or choose to be more involved in Baltimore City.
I also think that JHU will see a surge in applicants. Baltimore is a great city that undeservedly gets a terrible rap. Campus is beautiful and academics are top notch.
Baltimore is not a transitioning city. It’s great with lots to do and two top medical schools located within a few miles of each other.
It my change the number of students who can now accept admissions. If someone was accepted but couldn’t afford to attend because the FA wasn’t high enough, this new infusion of cash may allow that student to accept over the state school or Brown or even MIT.
Like ANY city, Baltimore has areas that are unsafe. JHU is not in one of those areas. That’s like telling students not to go to U of Chicago or Northwestern because Chicago is unsafe.
^Not disagreeing with the perception being a generalization and wrong. Not everyone however reads CC or has the resources to visit Baltimore and walk around Inner Harbor.
Instead people wil rely on google, sensational news accounts and pop culture. That leads to kids erroneously thinking that there are discernible differences in safety between New Haven and Baltimore for instance.
Reality however is that for students with options Baltimore will still cause some to choose elsewhere.
Students that are lucky to get into Hopkins do visit and typically have the resources to at least get airplane tickets given the absolute majority of the class (~70% are from the upper middle class), so that argument is debatable. JHU’s yield for the class of 2022 is a robust 45%, It will go up from there.
As other posters have indicated, Chicago is also sensationalized by the media for crime (see the recent shooting that happened). Financial aid matters far far more than location.
While I appreciate the Baltimore vs. Chicago debate on crime, does anyone care to answer the OP’s original question? I was curious about this as well when I heard the news of Bloomberg’s donation.
StevenPR the OPs question was regarding the Bloomberg grant which is designed to attract socio economically disadvantaged candidates.
“Students that are lucky to get into Hopkins do visit and typically have the resources to at least get airplane tickets given the absolute majority of the class (~70% are from the upper middle class), so that argument is debatable.”
Bloomberg’s generosity will attract students who don’t have these same resources. Yes it will likely improve the number of applicants and yields and ultimately may push yields closer to the 60+% rates of their Ivy competition. These however are the same students all of the elites covet.
LOFL. Who here thinks he’s going to write a check for that on day one? For tax and other reasons, large donations usually come over years. (If it’s a one-time, let me know. That would be incredibly rare. He has “committed,” not sent a 1.8 B check.) And the college needs to adjust to the new funds, review policy and other considerations, decide how exactly to implement this, including how to recruit theright kids.
This is not about whether Baltimore has crime or drug problems.
With regards to the OP’s question, what difference does it make? Hopkins is already insanely hard to get into with a 10% flat acceptance rate. Will a drop to 6 or 7% make that much more of a difference? It’s pedantic discourse at that point.
@lookingforward Even so, admissions has already announced starting with next year, no students will have student loans as part of their financial aid package, 100% of need will be met, and all decisions will be needblind. He certainly has enough to give $1.8B in a one time transaction as he has stated the entirely of the funds will be made available immediately.
But it is not customary to give it all at once. Not even when it’s, say, 50 million.
The cycle to get a big donor to sign is lengthy. So maybe the college, with its $3 B plus endowment has been thinking.
While there may be many more applications, the school will put the money into investments so will likely only nominally change financial aid and all the rest. My guess is that the majority will go into the “endowment” fund and be spent down very slowly. Although I’m sure the detail were likely publicized regarding how the money is to be spent.
I agree with other posters that JHU is at a distinct disadvantage relative to many other schools in its league due to its location. The city is notoriously dangerous and has few industries in the area that are going to keep young people there.
Yes, people factor in the location before attending college. Few believe that they are going to be on campus for four years without leaving.
@momofsenior1 Ahh, I think all those schools locations’ you mentioned would factor into a decision. Many parents will consider the safety of the city as part of the package. Probably not a huge factor for all but definitely a huge factor for some.
25000+ students are satisfied the college is not the city.
SOme people hate the situation in New Haven. NYC has issues. Cleveland Detroit, Memphis are hgher than Baltimore in some reports of violent crimes. . Look it up
JHU campus is a country club setting compared to JHU medical school or U of Maryland medical school (riot central).Still lines a mile long to get it to all three.
JHU can immediately replace all loan money for current students and the next class with grant money and it won’t put a dent in the $1.8B. $5500 x 1000 students or 2000 students? Drop in the bucket. I think the hope is that JHU will revise its formula and find students have more need (that will be met) than previously calculated. A family that had a JHU efc of $35k may now be found to need $50k and the school will award that without loans in the package.
Yeh, it seems strange someone would pick Georgia Tech over Hopkins for that reason. This may not be politically correct, but Georgia Tech is in the hood. So is JHU med school. When I was there, many med students, particularly girls, lived near the JHU Homewood campus and took the shuttle to the med school. The main Hopkins location is in a fine area by urban college standards. It isn’t like some LACs or land grant school in college towns.
I can’t find anywhere in the announcement that JHU will become need blind and meet full need for international students. For domestic students, the donation will mean higher income threshold for full ride, no loan (perhaps below some income threshold) in FA package, and no consideration of primary home equity in calculating FA award, essentially becoming one of a dozen or so most generous colleges. Will it attract more applications as a result? Yes, absolutely. Will it increase yield? Very likely against schools like Duke, CMU and some Ivies.