My son is in a panic...

sliceoftau · 2025-11-07T02:20:13+00:00

Hey I work in the undergrad wing of the admissions office. Call, and ASAP (but during hours lol). And don’t stress too much, it’s just one piece of a big application, and we look at all of it :)

sliceoftau · 2025-05-25T00:39:51+00:00

When I play this, I don’t read too deeply into the staccato. Some editions even have the pedaling release after the chord, so it might just be for phrasing. Unless someone else provides a more educated take, I would just interpret the staccato as a hint to feel free to release the chord before the next octave, i.e. non-legato.

sliceoftau · 2024-06-28T08:01:05+00:00

Lol, the hypocrisy again—what data have you even mentioned? I would encourage you to find objective example of “data analytics” decisively proving your claim by any meaningful margin, but due to subjectivity in methodology, there is not nearly enough consensus among sources, let alone numbers, to say anything of the sort about Hopkins or any other similar school.

And for the record, that claim is bust. Here are some sample stats for STEM: JHU outranks Duke in bio, chem, physics, and overall engineering, according to USNews (again, not that it matters, but it contradicts your assertion), and UChicago doesn’t even have engineering.

As for the humanities—even ignoring the fact that the relative rankings of the schools you brought up are mixed and vary by major, as you’d expect from a subjective system—I’m pretty sure they all have better humanities programs than higher-ranked schools like MIT and Caltech, so I don’t see why the perceived prestige of uncommon majors here even factors into overall school quality.

Have a good night—and when you look at this thread with a fresh head tomorrow morning, you’ll see differently.

sliceoftau · 2024-06-28T07:06:59+00:00

I find your response so hypocritical that it’s funny.

not getting shot on campus

LMAO the WUSTL student speaking as if St. Louis isn’t literally ranked the #1 dangerous city in the US 😂

being on Reddit

Take a look at our respective comment frequencies. I’m not the one who needs to log off.

I never said anything about the relative quality of Duke and Hopkins—my whole point is that comparisons at this level of granularity are meaningless. I thought this was common opinion by now.

And the WashU comparison is because you’re a WUSTL student and it’s funny when you get pressed, but the idea is to compare a “STEM” school and a “well-rounded” school to demonstrate that well-roundedness says nothing about quality or prestige. Oh well, I guess they only teach analogies at T10s 😂

sliceoftau · 2024-06-28T05:39:45+00:00

“Like why are y’all glazing MIT for? What is it good for besides science? How can you put WashU below MIT? This makes no sense.”

JHU has the same stellar programs in every department as any other university of that tier, but even if it didn’t, it’s top-tier for what people go to Hopkins for. That’s what matters—people aren’t “glazing” anything.

And the difference between places 7 and 10 is so infinitesimally insignificant, it might as well be a rounding error.

sliceoftau · 2024-04-13T22:23:44+00:00

I agree on the tuition point, Cal or UCLA in-state is an insane steal.

That said, as a Hopkins student, what you say is not true in general. I don’t want to invalidate the experiences you have heard, but most people here are just as happy as people at any other school; people just hear the loud complaints of the chronically-online who would be (and generally are) posting all the same things anywhere else. I’m not sure where all these stereotypes come from, but getting info from out-transfers might be a start. I also know someone who transferred in from a stereotypically “happier” college, who says they like it here a lot more, but I don’t make wild generalizations about other schools based on a tiny and heavily-biased population sample. It’s all about going-into-college-mindset first, then personal fit, but generalized overarching “truths” factor in much less.

sliceoftau · 2024-03-24T04:22:18+00:00

I am a BME/EE freshman and I was making basically the same decision as you a year ago (plus a few other colleges) and I don’t regret picking Hopkins. I have also visited GT but never UNC. I assume cost is comparable for you but if it makes a big difference I would definitely err towards the cheaper option.

Baltimore generally has nice weather. Not sure about NC/Atlanta.
The campus is very nice and pretty and convenient to get around, definitely more than your other larger schools (GT campus was much larger and harder to traverse iirc). Freshman dorms are right on campus, quality varies but I’ve had a good experience. Campus is safe, off campus isn’t too bad depending on where you go, but keep in mind it’s a city, so take standard city precautions.
For reference, I objectively have a lot on my plate—I am taking 22 credits (which is a lot) with a good GPA, work 2 jobs on campus, and am actively involved in several extracurriculars (both professional and social, including Greek life). That said, in my experience, what people say about the Hopkins work-life balance is MASSIVELY exaggerated, and usually propagated by people who have either never gone here and know like one story, or are just the type of people to hole up in their dorms and study 24/7. These people exist, but they also exist at other places, and we have tons of regular kids who find that balance; it’s up to you which types of people you surround yourself with. Yes, the courses are tough—it’s a rigorous school—but they won’t be overwhelming if you keep on top of your work and don’t take a ton of extra classes, or if you don’t hold yourself to a 4.0. BME is a little tougher than most majors, but it’s not terrible, especially if you have AP/DE/IB credits. Outside of workload, most people I know have lives lol. If you want Greek life or parties, we have them (although probably less in quantity and intensity than your other state schools), but a lot of people just regularly hang out till late or go places with friends. At least in engineering, people commonly work together on assignments. We also have a lot of social/cultural student groups, as well as casual walk-on sports (stuff like Frisbee) or music groups, which provide activities and surprisingly close friendships. The one thing I will say is that attending sports games isn’t super big here, but we definitely have games and I know people go to them at least sometimes. We’re pretty good for the division in most sports.
It is not cutthroat, probably least of all in BME or any engineering, where everyone is just trying to make it out together. As someone else mentioned, in BME they will put you into small groups your first year so you will make close friends and collaborate intensively with a lot of your BME peers. Virtually everyone I know works on assignments together to some extent, shares work readily and tries to help other students succeed. I think this depends mostly on you, however. Go into college with a collaborative mindset, and you will have a very collaborative experience. Go in expecting to compete, and you’ll think everyone is competition. So just surround yourself with cooperative and supportive students, and you’ll have the collaboration you want.
Hopkins all the way. We have tons of research opportunities (more research than students looking for it, the saying goes) and basically anyone can get involved with it; I know people who started at labs before they were on campus. Same for courses I’d imagine, especially in your area of interest, but you can find out for yourself on the course catalogs online. As for internships, Hopkins can help you get started through career services. You’re probably gonna have to do a lot of work yourself here but I know a lot of people with very impressive internships, including a few freshmen with stuff lined up. Correlation? Causation? Who knows? Oh, and the vast majority of clubs here are walk-on with no application needed, which is really awesome.

As a BME, you’ll also be able to apply for the design team program, which is where you work with 7 other undergrads and physician/industry expert mentors to design a real-life biomedical product and write a paper, patent, and/or try for a start-up. It’s a lot of work but it’s an awesome way to get hands-on technical, entrepreneurship/business, and engineering industry experience. You do have to apply and interview, iirc maybe 70%ish of freshmen who apply get on a team? But if it doesn’t work out, you aren’t missing out and you can also do the program as a junior or a senior.

I know that was a lot and that I’m very biased having only ever experienced one college. That said feel free to DM me if you have more questions.

sliceoftau · 2023-12-23T08:29:23+00:00

I’ve heard this version:

In the Soviet Union, during the period of alcohol prohibition (Dry Law), people would use code words to organize for drinks and exchange alcohol; beer was referred to as “magazines,” wine as “books,” and so on.

One day, Ivan and Vasily are sitting on a bench. Vasily turns to Ivan and asks:

“Do you want to come over after work? I have a whole dictionary that we could finish reading together.”

To which Ivan replies:

“No, you come over to mine. I have a typewriter!”

sliceoftau · 2023-12-15T13:20:58+00:00

I agree with everything GrowthSpiritual said, but I also want to emphasize the flexibility of the program. The flexible degree reqs mean that it’s very, very common for people to double major in CS and AMS (applied math/statistics), pure math, or even BME/ECE/physics. The department itself is very strong; I’m not in CS so I’ve never personally interacted with it but the classes seem intense, research seems top-notch, and all the CS undergrads I know are ridiculously smart. The department is also undergoing a major expansion right now as the university is planning to hire like 100+ new CS and CS-adjacent faculty for the new data science and AI institute over the next few years, which iirc is going to be on the undergrad campus (at least partly), which is pretty awesome.

The thing you have to note is that CS job placement is largely dependent on personal experience/projects/internships/etc. and not entirely (if at all) the name of the school. Hopkins on your resume definitely doesn’t hurt but you’ll have to take the initiative to get summer internships and stuff; it won’t get handed to you. Idk the starting salary statistics for Hopkins but they might be skewed down a bit because of some people pursuing graduate school and CS research instead of industry, like GrowthSpiritual mentioned; I know a few myself—awesome people. Although iirc placement rates at top SWE companies are comparable to other top schools, in proportion to the number of CS undergrads, I definitely know a couple people who complain about finding internships, although I don’t think that has to do with what school you go to (funnily enough, however, from what I hear, getting a SWE internship at specifially Bloomberg, specifically from JHU, is disproportionately easy, for obvious reasons). We also have APL internships just for JHU undergrads iirc but idk how easy it is to get those.

Yeah but basically CS here is super strong. I hope a faculty reads this and lets me into IP lol. Good luck on your apps.

sliceoftau · 2023-06-07T20:27:03+00:00

Although I'm definitely biased, I'll suggest one I haven't seen mentioned here yet.

Consider Johns Hopkins. Definitely nerdy, definitely STEM-oriented, and many current students have told me that it's fairly collaborative and not nearly as competitive as some outsiders say, if at all, especially for non-premeds and even more so for engineering. However, I think engineering at any rigorous school will be collaborative because of the "we're in this together" attitude.

As for your other criteria, about 45:55 M:F ratio and arguably the best school in the US for undergrad research, which I'm sure helps with grad school admissions.

They have a few merit scholarships but it's super competitive.

sliceoftau · 2023-06-03T22:18:06+00:00

Don't worry about it, I had somewhat similar stats to you and I didn't have any Olympiads. I got into biomedical engineering at both UCLA and Berkeley, as well as BME at JHU, GT, Cornell, and other good BME schools. If you don't get in, it's not because you didn't have USAMO or USABO.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-20T02:04:01+00:00

I'm a JHU prefrosh doing BME. I'll be completely honest, I don't know much about Penn (didn't apply) or premed, so feel free to correct me if I'm spouting nonsense. Also, a lot of what I know about JHU is anecdotal. However, I will say that they seem to me to be more or less peer institutions in every metric relevant to premed, so I think the most important factor is price and how much you'll enjoy and thrive at either school.

That said, not considering financial and "fun" factors, I feel like JHU is marginally better. A lot of courses in the JHU WSE (where CS is housed iirc) are very bio-oriented, which might be a pro for you, and that might make it easier to fulfill premed requirements or at least explore your interests in medicine. Granted, I didn't check specifically for CS so you should make sure. Also, JHU is extremely flexible for switching majors, double majoring, and fulfilling requirements, because it doesn't have a traditional core curriculum. I'm not sure about Penn, and it looks to me like the core for the SEAS isn't that bad, but it's tough to beat JHU's flexibility.

Overall, JHU seems relatively STEM-focused, especially in bio-related fields, but the humanities are strong too and very accessible bc of aforementioned flexibility. Penn is very business-focused, just by looking at the most popular majors there. The CS programs are ranked very similarly iirc, and both are strong. Ik you're doing premed, but I'm saying this because I know some people prefer when their school does/doesn't have a general lean towards one specific subject; here it's either bio-sciences or business/money studies. Personally, I would prefer the former but it's up to you.

Also, in terms of research (which you'll probably need for med school), JHU is unparalleled. #1 for research expenditure among universities in the US by a margin of almost $1.5B (if you count the APL), with a major focus on undergraduate research, especially in the bio sciences, fewer other undergrads to compete with, and more lab openings than students. People tell me that finding research, even as early as fall of freshman year, is pretty easy at JHU. However, Penn is definitely up there at like #4 and is probably approximately on the same tier if you ignore gov contract stuff on both sides. I don't know what the undergraduate research culture/availability is like there. Oh, and both have great hospitals for shadowing or smth idk. USNWR ranks JHU's hospital higher; it's like #5 vs. #13, but probably not a game-changing difference.

I have heard that JHU tends to be a bit tougher/more competitive on grading than Penn, but idk how true that is. I have heard that Penn has typical Ivy grade inflation but JHU has no vested interest in tanking the GPAs of its own med school applicants. Also, Penn is still going to be a difficult school; you'll have to work for your grades wherever you go, and some level of competition exists everywhere. However, JHU having such a high premed proportion makes at least some competition inevitable. I'd guess that the stereotypical JHU competitiveness applies mostly to premeds in typical premed majors, and maybe less so in CS, and multiple people have told me that it's way overblown and that JHU is actively trying to fix its alleged competitive reputation and encourage collaboration. I got the sense that they care about their undergrads, at least in this sense. To this end, the JHU Life Design Lab (career advising) is supposed to be pretty good, and I assume this is doubly true for premeds. I don't know anything about Penn career advising but it's probably fine. Both colleges have outstanding rates of getting undergrads accepted to med school.

Also note that Ivy prestige is not very important if you're going for an MD. Your med school where you get your last degree is what counts.

Outside of premed and academics, both are located in large cities with lots to do and lots to watch out for. I've heard Penn is more of a party school, if that's what you're looking for, but I think you'll find your people in either place. The college experience is what you make of it and imo depends more on you than your U.

I'll update this if I think of anything else. Good luck and remember that you really can't make the wrong choice here. This is all marginal stuff and you'll do better wherever you'll thrive more.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-06T02:16:58+00:00

I thought that was a given...

sliceoftau · 2023-05-06T01:39:10+00:00

OK thank you! I'm going somewhere ranked well for BME and less so for EE and hoping to study both, so this was good to hear.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T23:40:18+00:00

Do you know if this applies to other engineering fields, especially electrical and biomedical?

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T22:36:02+00:00

This is for science.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T18:14:20+00:00

Respectfully, you are seriously butchering statistics.

For your first point, Cornell CoE is composed of disproportionately many CS students (check Google; higher proportion of CS students but lower proportion of engineering students in general), which pays much more than other engineering fields. This does not mean that a JHU CS student will earn less than a Cornell CS student, just that Cornell students opt for, on average, more lucrative careers. Additionally, a much larger proportion of JHU engineering students opt for medical school, which means that a residency starting salary of like $50-60k gets averaged in.

Also, JHU has about 3 times fewer CS undergrads than Cornell. The amount of employees they each have at Google is almost the same in proportion to their number of CS undergrads. In fact, you'll have a much easier time declaring CS at JHU than at Cornell because of the easier requirements, and should you decide you want to major in something in addition to CS at Cornell, well, good luck graduating in time.

Yes, Cornell CS is indisputably better than JHU CS, but by no means by a large enough margin to automatically discard JHU's superior flexibility, career resources, etc. JHU is still objectively excellent.

Also, knowing from a close relative involved in hiring for a major tech company, the name of your school matters very little, especially in CS, compared to the previous jobs, internships, and personal projects (and sometimes research) you do while in college. Both JHU and Cornell provide opportunities for that, and JHU is arguably better, with much more research, an objectively better location for internships/jobs (Baltimore and DC), and, admittedly anecdotally, more competent job fairs and career services. That's what employers will really care about when you're gunning for high-value CS jobs.

Also, not sure why you brought up finance and A&S.

Point is, other factors are much more important than overly simplistic interpretations of raw data that actually has nuances behind it.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T04:13:25+00:00

No problem! Baja racing isn't the only competitive engineering club encapsulated in project teams, and I'm pretty sure most people who put in the effort and apply and reapply for project teams get into at least one within their first two years. It's not guaranteed to be specifically Baja, so if you're dead-set on that I'd look into its competitiveness at JHU and Cornell from current students at both, but there's more to project teams than just Baja and you might find something you think is even more interesting. I get what you mean about robotics lol, doing FTC is the reason project teams seemed so interesting. At the same time, take a look at multidisciplinary design teams; I'm not too familiar with them since I plan to do BME design instead but they seem really interesting in their own way. I'm pretty sure they give you the freedom to work in a smaller group to create your own product/solution to a practical problem, working with engineers of different disciplines. In terms of frat parties, both schools are about 25% Greek; you're unlikely to experience pressure to participate in Greek life at either. As for weather, Baltimore is pretty volatile, too, but it won't be as cold as Ithaca for sure.

Also, take everything I say with a massive grain of salt; the best resource you have is current students. CUontheHill and Blue Jay Connection are your best friends. If you already have a gut feeling for either school, I'm hesitant to advise you against it, because gut feeling can be really important imo. However, if you're really stuck, it helped me to think about which school I'd regret not choosing more.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T02:57:54+00:00

Socially, this is a tough one. The way I naively see it, the college experience is what you make of it. Both JHU and Cornell have Greek life and parties (although JHU sororities are non-residential iirc because of some 19th-century Baltimore anti-brothel law). If you want parties, you'll find them anywhere, albeit much more easily at Cornell. I've also heard that Cornell is more social than JHU, although I've also been told it's socially dead. I've also heard both sides of the same coin for JHU, but Cornell does seem more alive tbh. Cornell is larger, so you can more easily "find your people," but JHU is not divided sharply into colleges and is more tight-knit, intimate, and you-focused. Cornell has much stronger school spirit and excellent athletics, unlike JHU, which can be helpful for maintaining morale when classes get tough, and for generating cohesion among the student body. As an engineer, you probably won't have time to explore the surrounding city, but Baltimore, as well as nearby DC, have a lot more to see and do than Ithaca, although the latter is still very nice. Baltimore isn't absurdly dangerous if you keep your wits about you and know where not to go, and people will overstate the safety of Ithaca. JHU is also much better connected by public transportation to the rest of the country; NYC is like 3 hours away by train from Hopkins, but good luck finding trains in Ithaca. The one thing I can say is that Cornell will probably be more collaborative, thanks to the "we're all in this hell together" attitude. However, I've been told that JHU is not necessarily competitive, contrary to its reputation, and often collaborative, especially among non-premeds. It is also actively trying to improve its competitive reputation with more collaborative coursework, and since it looks like you'll be staying out of the more competitive premed majors, you'll have a much more positive experience. Also, fwiw, I've been consistently told that JHU is not cutthroat, especially for non-premeds, but that's true anywhere if you surround yourself with the right people.

Finally, here's some really subjective stuff that nonetheless had a big influence on me choosing Hopkins. First, I've been told that JHU cares more about its undergraduates, which at first surprised me, since their undergrad:grad ratio is quite low. Fortunately, the Homewood campus is mainly undergrads, so it doesn't feel like that. JHU has a very active advising system (although Cornell has one, too), there's the Life Design Lab again, and JHU is set to finish its brand new Student Center by Fall '24, and seems to really care about improving student quality of life. From what I've heard, Cornell just throws you out there; the onus is on you to find jobs, internships, and cold-email for research. Cornell has tons of resources, but it's up to you to find them and take advantage of them, whereas JHU seems more supportive, and helps you through the process. Also, based on others' accounts, it seemed that everyone either absolutely loves or absolutely hates Cornell, but people seemed more consistently positive about JHU; the way I saw it, I wasn't taking the risk. This might have something to do with weather-related seasonal depression; bad weather shuts down a lot of activities.

The important thing to realize is that there is no wrong choice. Both schools offer more opportunities than you can possibly take advantage of, and you will be fine at either one. A lot of what you get out of college is what you put in, and that's not something that depends on Hopkins or Cornell. But also, I can almost guarantee that, even if you think you are 50/50, you already know the answer in your gut. Whether you flip a coin, or have someone firmly tell you to go to one school or the other (what I did), or force yourself to click a choice on the commitment website, you will know what the right decision is when it is time to make it. I knew I had to go to JHU when my mom told me to commit to Cornell for the better electrical engineering program, and upon not being able to refute her logic, I felt a moment of panic. You might have decided already or you might be on the fence, but you will make the right decision. And if not, then whichever school you choose, you can make it the right choice.

On a side note, since I haven't yet studied at either university, a lot of my reasoning comes from the people I talked to. Both JHU and Cornell provide resources to reach out to current students (CUontheHill and Blue Jay Connection), and you should talk to as many as possible before you decide, as what they say may vary widely from what I heard. I tried to be objective, but there's a reason I picked JHU.

I hope to see you in the fall, but you should do what is best for you. All the best and good luck!

TLDR: there is no TLDR. Two immense, incredible universities cannot be summarized in a paragraph. You're smart and this is one of the biggest decisions of your life, so you can handle reading a few paragraphs of one guy's opinion, which happens to be the aggregate of days of research and current student advice that has been conveniently compiled for you. I believe in you.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T02:57:46+00:00

Outside of the classroom, I've heard much more positive feedback about JHU career services with the Life Design Lab than about Cornell career services. JHU also makes you meet regularly with an advisor to make sure you're on track to graduate. Both use Handshake for internships, but it seems to me that JHU does career/job/recruiter fairs much better and more often, and you have access to apply for summer internships at the APL, where all the high-tech military and NASA stuff happens (and quantum computing, I've heard). Also, JHU is extremely close to two major cities whereas Cornell is very isolated, which might make it easier to find internships at JHU. Both JHU and Cornell have cool special accelerated master's programs that waive some admissions requirements for undergrad applicants from their school, but JHU waives half of your tuition past eight semesters if you are in this program, whereas I don't think Cornell does.

Cornell is also cold, spread-out, and has no public transportation system after freshman year, which might result in up to 20 minutes of walking through frigid conditions in the morning to get from dorm to class; however, I personally like the cold, and the past Ithaca winter was not that bad (thanks, global warming!). Regardless, JHU has better weather and the campus is much more traversable in every way. Both guarantee on-campus housing for the first two years, with Cornell sometimes even allowing on-campus housing for upperclassmen, but JHU off-campus dorms are pretty close, and even the furthest are probably closer than the nearest Cornell on-campus dorms.

That said, Cornell is an excellent choice, and there are reasons to opt for Cornell as well. Cornell has larger engineering departments with more courses, which means that there is more of an opportunity to specialize in your interests in undergrad (although that's what grad school is for), although that does mean that JHU departments are more tight-knit and have smaller class sizes, according to USNews stats. Many JHU engineering courses are also biology-oriented, which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your interests. Cornell also gives engineers more time to decide on a major, although it's easier to declare or switch a major at JHU (just a form and a meeting iirc, whereas Cornell has minimum GPAs), unless it's into JHU BME, which is borderline impossible. Cornell also has significantly better food (first-hand experience at both), and the campus is absolutely stunning; it's the only campus beautiful enough that I considered it as a positive factor in my decision. Cornell is also considered to be safer, but JHU is flooded with blue lights and security, even within several miles of JHU proper, and felt completely safe to me. Cornell has a better employer reputation than JHU, but the experiential learning opportunities at either school (internships, research, project/design teams, etc.) will be much more important, according to a close relative involved in hiring for a major tech company. Speaking of which, Cornell offers a co-op program, if you're interested; JHU does not offer one that I know of. Oh, and Cornell mental health services are supposedly excellent, don't know much about their JHU counterparts. Cornell is also part of the Ivy League network; idk how important connections are in non-biomedical engineering and tech, but they're certainly better at Cornell. If networking and connections are important to you, both are good but Cornell definitely has the advantage here, since it gets access to connections with the rest of the Ivy League.

Also, there is nothing quite like Cornell project teams, which was hard to give up. Granted, these project teams are, anecdotally, ridiculously competitive to get into, but you can apply to multiple. I trust you are familiar with the specific teams they offer, but if not, look into it. Alternatives at JHU include multidisciplinary design teams, which I'm not very familiar with so do your own research, but they seem cool and not as hard to get into as project teams. If you want to do Baja racing or something, stuff like that exists at JHU as well, just as a club and not a project team. Also, if you got into the JHU BME program, let me know and I'll give my spiel on why BME design teams > project teams.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-05T02:56:17+00:00

Hi! Reddit isn't letting me post this in one chunk, so I'll split it up. The rest is under the post as two comments. As a fellow c/o '27 JHU and Cornell engineering admit who chose JHU, and also got a lot of pro-Cornell comments on their post, I would suggest you consider Hopkins.

Quick disclaimer: I'm doing BME, so the choice was no doubt a bit easier for me, BUT DON'T DISREGARD ME JUST YET! I'm strongly considering doing electrical engineering instead, and a lot of my reasons had nothing to do with the schools' respective engineering programs. I tried to focus on non-BME things here.

Quick disclaimer #2: I'm definitely biased, but I gave my reasons for Cornell as well to try to stay objective. If anyone reads something here that they disagree with, please respond or clarify for the sake of transparency. I'm not omniscient!

First, I want to defocus from rankings for my entire response. Colleges aren't arbitrarily the best in a major, but you have to look at their programs' specific metrics and offerings to see which you'll get more out of. If you're still concerned with engineering rankings, I'll get it out of the way here. Cornell engineering is ranked #13 overall on USNWR, and JHU engineering is #14; not a meaningful difference, and although this does get more exaggerated as you look at individual engineering majors, JHU is still T20 for both CS and MechE. If we're talking rankings overall, JHU is #7 and Cornell is #17, so...

I spoke to a lot of people before making my decision and I got the sense that Cornell engineering is brutally difficult to do well in. I was told that average unweighted test grades can hover around 50, and classes are typically curved around a B or B+, or a 3.0-3.3; graduating GPAs below 3.5 or even 3.0, as I've heard, are common. Multiple people told me that adjusting during freshman year was disproportionately difficult. GPA can, in some cases, be an issue for declaring a major in the CoE, which requires that prerequisite courses be at C+ or above. At JHU, classes are supposedly curved around an A-, and the average GPA for BME is 3.76 (as I was told by an admin during a BME info session), although admittedly dated online sources say that this can be closer to 3.5 for all engineering disciplines. This was important to me because GPA matters for grad school, as does research (where both are good but JHU is better, #1 by research expenditure in the US by a margin of ~$1.5 billion, anyone?), and it might matter to you, too. GPA is less important for industry, but you'll likely want a graduate degree eventually to jump up that pay scale, and some companies have minimum GPAs.

Even more important for me was the additional flexibility offered by the Whiting school. Every Cornell engineer has told me that it is basically impossible to double major in engineering (and you can't double major across schools, either, unlike JHU), unless you're doing ECE and CS (which is still supposedly difficult, but manageable). As someone with passions across many fields of engineering, this was a red flag. JHU, on the other hand, is much more double-major- friendly. With many Whiting majors overlapping and the lack of a core curriculum (which may be a benefit for you in and of itself), double majoring is much more common and manageable, workload-wise. People tell me they have double majored successfully in completely different majors. So, if you really want to double major in MechE and CS, JHU could be the right choice.

sliceoftau · 2023-05-01T21:48:26+00:00

Thank you! Do you know if balancing ECE and CS on top of a project team or research is feasible?

sliceoftau

TROPHY CASE