Urgent Question: Hopkins Vs. Rutgers

Colleges and Universities A-Z Johns Hopkins University
1

<p>Alright well I visited JHU last week and talked with a lot of people and I liked the school. It had its pros and cons.</p>

<p>You see I want to do pre-med and an economics major.</p>

<p>Now I have this dillema, I pretty much lowered down my two choices to Hopkins and Rutgers (full ride) Honors Program.</p>

<p>Yeah yeah, I know you are like ... go to HOPKINS you idiot...but take a look at my pros and cons. Please add any pros or cons here too.
JHU PROS
Open Curriculum (minimal requirements)
Higher Chance (med school)
Any major - connections/ payoffs
Best research institution in U.S
Not much worries about doing outside activities
Smaller upper level classes
Accessible professors
Really nice internal campus</p>

<p>JHU CONS
Money (financial aid)
Harder to maintain high GPA
Outside Area/ Food Choice
More competition
Farther from home</p>

<p>RUTGERS PROS
More social life / people
Close to home
Food/ restaurants
Free
Easy GPA Maintenance
Accessible dean of admissions</p>

<p>RUTGERS CONS
Lower MD school chances
Must to outside activities to boost application
Research is there (but not much)
Liberal Arts requirements in Honors Program
Bigger classes in general (some small classes for Honors)
Less accessible professors</p>

<p>ahh what should I do. I'm still waiting on HOPKINS aid.</p>

2

<p>oh jesus please maryland is not that far away from new jersey</p>

3

<p>I'd go to Rutgers. They offered you a full ride and you still have a good chance of going to med school. At JHU, the competition will be real tough and the kids will do ANYTHING to get good grades. I don't imagine making alot of new friends there.</p>

4

<p>drinkingmilk is clearly going off the stereotype of jhu, which is not true at all. i will post pros later (in the middle of too much hw), haha, just posting so that i remember to post here later.. if that makes sense</p>

5

<p>Hey--</p>

<p>I'm in the Rutgers Honors Program now and turned down JHU last year (along with Northwestern, Uva, etc.)... anyway I am really glad that I made the decision to do so.</p>

<p>First of all, did you go to scholar's day (@ RU?) If not, you don't really get a good idea of what the honors program is like. If you'd like to, an honors dean would be more than happy to speak with you if you're having any qualms (i did that when i was deciding).</p>

<p>Anywayyy.. I'm really happy I made the decision to come to RU instead of hopkins. When I visited hopkins, to be honest I wasn't really all that impressed w/ the classes... maybe I just got unlucky but none of the kids seemed engaged and I felt like the major plus hopkins had going for it was its pretty campus, which to me wasn't worth the money.</p>

<p>As a RU honors program student, your chances for med school will not be lower than if you were coming out of JHU, imo. The competition is fierce for premed at JHU, and you will be competing with tons of other kids for spots at top med schools (im premed too by the way).</p>

<p>Also, your assertion that RU has less research than JHU is actually absurd. Rutgers is a research institution, every faculty member does research here... (and there are more faculty here than at JHU). It's really really easy to get involved in a lab (i'm starting to work in one this summer) and there is even the aresty research program which pushes research and gets students involved (it is directed by an associate dean of the honors program): <a href="Http://aresty.rutgers.edu%5B/url%5D"&gt;Http://aresty.rutgers.edu&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, professors aren't less accessible here. They have office hours just like they do at JHU, and if you are bright (which you are if you are in the honors program) they will be very interested to talk to you. I've met with my professors on a number of occasions to talk about what were learning, or even just to talk about my plans for the future and what options I might want to consider.</p>

<p>Also-- I don't think classes are going to be much bigger here than at JHU. I've only had a couple large classes, most of mine are small-- those that are large are almost always broken up into smaller recitations, in my experience.</p>

<p>OK-- but that's enough pro-Rutgers blabber from me. If you have any more questions for someone who was in your exact shoes last year, ask away.</p>

<p>GO Knights! :)</p>

6

<p>"to address your dilemma
i had the same problem... rutgers was giving me full ride + honors college/eng + 500 stipend a year...</p>

<p>i'm gonna take hopkins, i can't explain why, but it feels right. i don't want to compromise my education and think back of where i could've gone.</p>

<p>just my 2 cents. "</p>

7

<p>i had a similar dilemma with hopkins vs uva's echols program. however, what convinced me was that i heard medical schools tend to love hopkins undergrads</p>

8

<p>awesome choice merudh. i was going to push you for hopkins but i see you already made the choice.. and yes, med schools love hopkins undergrads.. 95% acceptance rate doesn't come from nowhere haha</p>

9

<p>Oh haha, sorry I misunderstood the post with the decision. I get it now. :) :)</p>

10

<p>so chowdhury... what are your list of pros for Hopkins? you said you would post after you finish your hw or something.</p>

<p>if you could, I'd really appreciate it, because I have to prove to my parents why I should go to where I want to go.</p>

<p>They subconciously want me to go to Rutgers, so any good information they recieve about it, they make me read it. But I mean, money is money, whatever I get from Hopkins, I'm gonna pay my parents back in the long run...so I guess they really don't have much of a problem with the aid thing, but the issue is whether or not it is worth paying approx 150-200K for four years of undergrad or going on full ride and not worrying about working for the next four years.</p>

<p>So I'd apprecaite your input. Thanks</p>

11

<p>Well I was originally deciding between Hopkins and Cornell and what really pushed me over into Hopkins was visiting the campus and talking to the professor of my desired department of study (History of Science and Technology). He was awesome - he talked about all the cool things we would do, the opportunities present on campus regarding anything I wanted including art classes available at the Maryland Institute College of Art (I'm a graphic designer) if I exhaust the Hopkins curriculum, dance groups present at Hopkins (since I'm a dancer), and just the really personalized attention I will get at Hopkins. As a smaller school, it's not too small with about 5,000 students but it's still not too big as you supposedly get to know your professors and whatnot very personally. I asked him whether graduate professors were eager to teach undergraduates, and he said of course - it's what makes teaching fun. I don't know much about Rutgers, but all I know is that Hopkins is the place to be if you want to go into the field of medicine. They have excellent academic advising, cool professors like the one I met (from what he told me), and excellent graduate school placement rates. It's not just a science-y school either.. it excels in the humanities as it is also #2 I believe in Writing Seminars.. and does very well in International Relations. I also really liked how the administration seemed to be very receptive and open to the students needs (which I believe is why they are building all these new buildings for upperclassmen to live in and even hiring new food services next year). Hopkin's care for it's students as well as its world-reknowned reputation for excellence is what really sold me. And like I said, with a 95% acceptance rate to medical school (so I believe), it has to be doing something right.</p>

<p>Money, of course, is money, and ultimately this is a decision between you and your parents... you have good reason to be curious about these schools as it is a very tough decision. Rutgers is also an excellent school, but for anything medical-related you cannot go wrong with Hopkins by any means. I'm not too sure about their economics department, though. But anyway. I would definitely ask some other students to chime in, but that's just my perspective on things. Granted, Hopkins also gave me a lot of money but I had always wanted to go there to begin with and money wasn't a huge factor.. I fell in love with the school when I visited. Not to mention, the campus is gorgeous and it's in the middle of a bustling city with a ton of culture to it.</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
I'd go to Rutgers. They offered you a full ride and you still have a good chance of going to med school. At JHU, the competition will be real tough and the kids will do ANYTHING to get good grades. I don't imagine making alot of new friends there.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>This is clearly the typical stereotype of a JHU student, which was, from my point of view, NOT TRUE. Yes, competition will probably be tough, but in any medical program at a top school competition will alway be tough. Cutthroat kids are in the minority, from what I heard of students, and I really don't think students will do ANYTHING to get good grades. College is what you make of it.. and so are your friends. If you make a point to go out and meet new people, you will obviously have more fun during college than if you sit in your room all day and befriend kids who only talk about GPAs. There are extremes in every group, and the students I stayed with at Hopkins said they didn't even know any extremely cutthroat kids.</p>

13

<p>Sorry for the triple post, but I was looking through the JHU message boards.. this is a good post regarding the JHU stereotype and how students actually like it there</p>

<p><a href="http://messageboard.chatuniversity.com/jhuboard/default.asp?action=9&read=29936&fid=786%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://messageboard.chatuniversity.com/jhuboard/default.asp?action=9&read=29936&fid=786&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Definitely check out the JHU messageboards for more accurate info, I think, as they are students and know a lot more...</p>

14

<p>fjchowdhury - please come back during your freshman year at JHU and tell us how it is from a first-hand experience. JHU has such a bad rep about being cutthroat and competitive. I know they're trying to dispel that image, but I keep seeing it in so many "inside guides" to colleges, etc. that it's easy to believe it.</p>

15

<p>JHU all the way. You can pay back 200K loan easily once you become a MD.</p>

16

<p>do you think it's that easy to become a M.d.? Especially at JHU? The competition will be real high and everyone will be fighting with you for a good grade.</p>

17

<p>It's never "that easy" to become a medical doctor. But I believe JHU prepares you in the best way possible, from what I saw and talked about with admissions counselors. Competition in any premed program is high.. the medical field itself is very competitive as well. And no, people will not necessarily be "fighting," I don't think, because there is no curve based on the class's performance, but rather a pre-set expectation (ex. in organic chemistry, so many people are expected to get As, so many people are expected to get B's, and so on), so you have to pretty much work your ass off for yourself, or so I was told.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that I am not a current student and this info is only based off of what I've seen and gathered from students/administrators. Please feel free to "correct" me, so to speak, with anything you might say about JHU if you know info or if you're a student/admissions person</p>

18

<p>"because there is no curve based on the class's performance, but rather a pre-set expectation (ex. in organic chemistry, so many people are expected to get As, so many people are expected to get B's, and so on), " ---jfyi, this is called a curve, if only so many people can get A's, that would lend to competition</p>

<p>Anyway, I'm still here if you have more questions about what life is like here at Rutgers. (and what it's like to be a pre-med here).</p>

19

<p>Haha, I hope youre being sarcastic?</p>

20

<p>hey supermtt, could you please detail some key aspects of being pre-med at rutgers and is it possibly for me to do economics and neuroscience double major in the honors program along with pre-med there?</p>

<p>thanks.</p>

<p>on a side note, please don't bash on each other's opinions...everyone should be able to say what they feel. I'm just trying to make an informed decision about my future based on a variety of pros and cons here. Thanks again</p>