Thank you for your input and for speaking on behalf of UMich. Always good to balance things out and offer an alternative perspective. I did agree that both are awesome schools and that you would get a phenomenal education at both. I will, however, address my facts (and defend my honor, ha).
The stats I posted on JHU’s annual R&D expenditure are accurate. They truly are spending, as an institution, nearly a billion dollars more than the next highest school, UMich. This is a huge number, and while that should raise eyebrows, it shouldn’t be suspicious since it can be easily confirmed by multiple sources going back for years simply by Googling: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/johns-hopkins-again-tops-in-university-research-spending/2013/12/09/6bc681ca-60eb-11e3-bf45-61f69f54fc5f_story.html
There are of course caveats when looking at an institution’s R&D spending versus an individual college’s expenditure, which you seemed to be confusing. It is true that the JHU School of Engineering itself is only reporting $113 million in R&D and not the $860 million reported in the previously posted link, which would be significantly more than any other engineering school in the U.S. The difference is because there are many other JHU programs conducting engineering research beyond the engineering college. These include organizations like the Applied Physics Lab (APL, which I mentioned before) and the Space Telescope Science Institute. This of course is why numbers are misleading and never paint the full picture. I felt it was still accurate to consider all institutional funding as opposed to just one college’s since undergrads still benefit from these other organizations. The Space Telescope Institute is connected to the undergrad campus and they offer programs and research internships to undergrad students to benefit from. APL, which spends over a billion dollars on research each year, is primarily the reason why Hopkins is spending so much more than any other school. APL is receiving the bulk of its money from the military for research including, to the dismay of some, significant research on drones and drone warfare: http://www.jhunewsletter.com/2014/01/30/hopkins-must-end-unethical-involvement-in-drone-research-90556/ While undergrads do conduct research here (I attended a research symposium presentation by a student who had a paid summer internship here, and, honestly, it was pretty boring since all the data was redacted), APL is about a 40-minute drive away from the undergrad campus, which of course is a huge barrier to students accessing those funds and reaping the benefits. This is why numbers on their own can be misleading. I, however, know friends who made the drive to APL 2-3 times a week, and I too was working in a JHU/NIH lab for four years that was about a 30-40 minute shuttle ride away (really two shuttles) on the Bayview Campus, so I know students can feasibly access these resources, though there are significant barriers for some opportunities. Again, the research opportunities I benefited from would not be associated with the college I attended, but may have been included in institutional spending (or maybe not at all since it was a joint program with the NIH - I’m not sure).
While it is clear (for me at least) that Hopkins does have a better faculty:student ratio and R&D spending/student than UMich, is it a significant difference to merit choosing one school over the other? For the hard-working go-getter, probably not. Additionally, how do all the caveats (such as the APL being 40 minutes away from the Homewood campus) affect these broad numbers in the context of what is useful for an undergrad? It’s hard to say unless we really delve into it (which I won’t).
Looking at endowment, as you brought up, is another way to assess resources available to students. It is clear that as a whole and per student, UMich does have a larger endowment. But again, beyond showing the numbers, we need to discuss context. Endowments are a fickle thing without knowing the breakdown of how the endowment is being used. I found an interesting article regarding Duke students complaining that despite their school having an endowment twice the size of Hopkins (and about half the number of students as Hopkins) that tuition cost is slightly lower at Hopkins than Duke (http://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2015/09/university-need-based-aid-still-limited-by-7-billion-endowment). This goes to show that an undergrad’s benefits from an endowment have just as much to do with (or more to do with) the mission and values of the endowment as it does with the figure itself. It’s possible that Duke has higher tuition costs because it truly is spending more per student, or, maybe Duke isn’t using its endowment to lower costs for students as significantly as JHU has been. Again, without more information and context it is very difficult to say one way or another how these resources are impacting students, specifically undergrads.
Why isn’t JHU better regarded for more of its engineering programs when it is spending more on engineering research annually than MIT, Cal, and Stanford combined for decades? I don’t know. I believe you’re referring to the U.S. News program ranking which is solely based on a survey completed by individuals in the engineering field whose opinion U.S. News values. Would the program ranking approach better help students select an engineering program if faculty ratio, endowment, R&D budget, number and quality of research papers published by faculty and/or students, etc. were instead considered? Probably. Would that mean the rankings would alter significantly? Possibly.