Johns Hopkins University

Date: Mar 28 2004
Major: History/Histories (art history/etc.) (This Major's Salary over time)
Under no circumstances should any student apply to Johns Hopkins unless he wishes to waste his college years in bitterness and not receive a good education.

Johns Hopkins faculty members are, on the whole, utterly unconcerned with undergraduate students. They wiew their jobs as high-paying welfare - an entitlement which allows them to pursue their interests as though on leisure time. In fact, in the 1970s, the university has to start requiring faculty to teach because so many were not interested in doing it. As a result, today, almost all view it as a necessary evil and are not even slightly interested in making their classes informative, interesting or dynamic. For a large number of my history classes, I showed up the first day to pick up the syllabus (to find out when the paper was due) and the last day (to hand it in). I was able to realize immediately that many of my classes simply weren't worth my time. When I did try to seek out professors, among other things, I was told to "get the f^&k out of my office, I don't feel like seeing undergraduates today" and "I don't see why this isn't something your TA can't handle."

The administration is even less concerned with the undergraduates. These people are self-centered autocrats who have a personal agenda which includes careerism, free-cell on their computers, lunch at the Johns Hopkins club, political correctness, naps, budget-cutting, corner-shaving, nickle-and-diming students, etc. The welfare of the students is invariably at the bottom of their agendas, if included on it at all. They are not at all interested in your well-being or personal development. (They ARE, however, interested, in capital development and spinning your sub-par experience as an undergraduate into something worthy of your regular contributions to JHU once you graduate.)

The Social Life on campus is dead. The only thing open after midnight is the library, and that only because it is convinient for the faculty, should they get the desire to pursue their interests at 1 in the am.

Whenever there is an "improvement" on campus, it is invariably for the benefit of someone besides the students. If you go on a tour today, your guide will point out the new "Arts Center," an edifice constructed to resemble a Nazi war bunker without an input from the students. Your guide will not mention that it houses mostly offices for them (ie, the administrators). Similarly, your guide will likely tell you about the availability of personal trainers at the Fitness Center. He will neglect to tell you that the fees charges are far above what any student could afford, but are at a discount from those fees charged on the economy generally- the result: discount trainers for the faculty.

I tried to make the most of my Hopkins years: I was a varsity athlete, in ROTC, active in several clubs… in fact, I was an officer in the above-mentioned tour-guide society, so I know first-hand the "spin" that gets told on campus tours. In fact, we had to discuss in tourguide training what to do when students shout "don't come here, it sucks" during tours. I once polled the other tourguide officers to see who liked JHU: none did, and most (like myself) had tried to transfer out.

Today, I work for a similarly classed university in student life. As such, I can compare to a certain extent the undergraduate experience at other places, and I can say that JHU treats its undergrads like crap.

The worst day I ever spent at Johns Hopkins was at a newly admitted students event. A mother and her son, to whom I had given a tour several months before, came up to me and said "We're trying to decide betweem UMCP and JHU. We were worried that JHU is no fun, but if you go here, it can't be that bad, because you are a fun guy." I felt just awful that someone would base his decision upon the "spin" which I had given him on a tour. So, I leave you take anything else away from this message, take away the need to look past the official message and talk to the average student who is NOT put forward by the admissions office… just go up and ask, and I guarantee that you will find the all is not well at JHU.