<p>First of all, how strenuous are the classes? Do you spend hours and hours on homework every day, or is there time for other things? How competitive are the students with one another. I would like to get into the biomedical engineering program, but i'm sure thats the most competitive one!</p>
<p>Secondly, how hard would it be to also play a sport while in the biomedical engineering program? would i be able to go to practices and everything, or would i have to be dedicated to academics??</p>
<p>Ok, that came out to be about a million questions, but if anyone has any input on it, i would appreciated it! I'm having trouble deciding which school to go to!</p>
<p>These questions have been answered MANY, MANY, MANY times before. Use the search function on College Confidential to find similar threads that discuss the work load, the myth of competition, and athletics v. academics.</p>
<p>I am a freshman and I am NOT BME but I can answer from my experience. I am a math/physics double-major so a majority of my work comes from problem sets. I have never spent more than 2 hours on a set (except one, but that was because of a trivial problem). I do have one class that requires reading but it is easily split among several days. So to answer your question, there is plenty of time for other things.</p>
<p>Next, the people (at least in my dorm), are very friendly. There is little to no competition (I haven't seen any) and people are always working together. The myths are just that-myths.</p>
<p>I don't know what math class you're in Yanks but Calc 3 takes at least 3~4 on a really easy/good week, average of 5~10 on regular, and 10 ++ on a horrible week. I seriously use at least 1 page per problem, and oftentimes even more on one calc 3 problem. The professor does say that for every 1 hour you spend in class, you'll spend about 3 hours outside. Since Calc 3 is 4 credits, that means I should spend 12 hours. Yeah...</p>
<p>As bad as that sounds, it doesn't mean I don't have time for anything else. I'm involved in many clubs/sports/music ensembles so it's just time management. In fact, I don't think I've ever felt really stressed or pushed to do anything yet...and I take 7 courses btw.</p>
<p>You definitely will have tons of homework. I'm BME and it really depends on what classes you're taking at the time. Some of my BME problem sets take an hour, others take 10 hours. Some really rigorous math classes have problem sets that take even longer. But you're normally given a week, and sometimes two weeks per problem set, so unless you wait till the last minute to do you work, there's definitely time to do other things. I have leadership positions in 3 completely unrelated clubs, do research and I've consistently taken 18+ credits per semester. Yeah, there are some days when you do nothing but work, but there are also those when you actually have nothing to do. It's really a question of balancing your schoolwork, social life, and sleep to maintain your sanity and most people are able to handle it well.</p>
<p>BME is no cakewalk, especially if you're playing a sport, but off the top of my head, I can think of people who play soccer, row crew, run track etc, so its definitely manageable.</p>
<p>And BME is far from the most competitive. This is what I tell people when they ask me about competition in BME at Open Houses: Most BME's are smart enough to realize there's no way to do well in your classes if you work alone. Basically, if you want to do well on problem sets and on exams, you have to work with other people, not compete against them. Sure we all want to do well, but it's never at the expense of making other people do worse. There are about a hundred BMEs per year, and they become a pretty close group after the first couple BME classes. I can't really comment on competitiveness in other majors, but as a BME, you can't really afford to be overly competitive/cut-throat if you want to do well.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone for your responses! That makes me feel a lot better about possibly attending Johns Hopkins. I want to go to a rigorous school, but not one where everyone is extremely competitive!!</p>
<p>jovenes132, actually I'm in Honors Multivariable Calculus (the harder version of Calc III). I meant what I said, it doesn't take me that long to do the problems and I get perfect or close to perfect on each set.</p>
<p>Who's teaching Honors Calc III this semester? I took it last year with Graeme Wilkin and it was pretty insane.. especially the last couple weeks of Stoke's Theorem, Green's Theorem etc</p>
<p>Zhang's teaching it right now. The ease associated with the class could be due to the professor. Not that he's an easy professor, but that he's a great lecturer.</p>
<p>I took Calc III with Ha in the fall of last year, and while the lectures were often disjoint and strange, the class itself is fairly easy. I can't speak to Honors, as I opted not to take it.</p>
<p>He is a great lecturer (he's a quote machine) and his first midterm wasn't hard at all (79 average). Some of his HW problems are tedious, but not hard.</p>