Johns Hopkins University

Location

A major reason why JHU is what it is, is probably its absolutely fantastic location. Baltimore is a mid-sized city, but there are a million things you can do here. And although you’ll definitely find enough to keep you busy, you can always make the short trip to Washington DC, or the slightly longer trip to Philadelphia.

Campus

Johns Hopkins University is built on a nice 140 acre campus, and once you reach it after driving through Baltimore, it just doesn’t feel like you’re still in the midst of the city. Make no mistake, this is a good thing. The campus is very modern and has all sorts of state-of-the-art facilities, but it also has a peaceful atmosphere thanks to the lush greenery everywhere. JHU is known for its research, and all the libraries, laboratories and research centers more than do justice to the Hopkins name.

Residing Options

As a grad student, you would probably want to live off-campus, just like almost everyone else does. Fortunately, there’s a multitude of options available for off-campus accommodation, just that you have to be willing to do some looking-around. Apartments and row-houses are quite easily available, and pretty accessible from the university campus as well. The rents in Baltimore are quite low as well (between $500 and $900 per month), and it becomes even more affordable if you decide to live with a couple of roommates. Popular areas students normally choose to live in are University Parkway and Charles Village, though you can live just about anywhere and still have good accessibility to everything around. Of course, it’s important to give some importance to safety; muggings aren’t totally uncommon, so you’ll be well-advised to not roam around aimlessly in dark alleys in the middle of the night.

Faculty

Students are pretty pleased with the academics at Johns Hopkins. In fact, that’s probably the main reason why they joined it. JHU is regarded as the best in the world for medicine, and that is perhaps why even the biomed and biotech engineering courses are so impressive. Although the quality of the professors cannot be questioned, students always complain that they are more bothered about their research than actually teaching in classes. This makes the professors slightly unapproachable at times, but then again they are willing to go out of their way if you build a good rapport with them.