| Okay, "academically intense", "competitive", and "cut-throat" are not synonyms, and saying Hopkins is intense vs. competitive is not the same thing. YES it is academically intense, no matter what major you are. I don't think I've seen any student who thinks his/her major is a breeze. As far as COMPETITIVE- it depends on what classes you take. Some classes at Hopkins are curved, whereas others are not. The ones that are not take the grade you earn as the grade on your transcript, you don't have to compete with your classmates to make an A or B, because in those classes, everyone could get an A or everyone could get a C...there are no set number of A's, B's, C's etc given out. However, there are many other classes (ahem premed classes) where you DO have to compete with your classmates because only a certain percentage of students can get A's, B's, C's, etc. As far as CUT-THROAT, it depends on your definition. There are no "burning people's books" or "sabotaging experiments". I mean, would you really risk getting kicked out of Hopkins just to hopefully torture another student? No, most people wouldn't. However, with that said, when I worked in the library, there were a lot of "book-hiding". By that, I mean that a lot of commonly used books were hidden elsewhere and so other students cannot find them. So if you think that's cut-throat, then yes, maybe it is, but the horror stories don't exist anymore (other than the library thing). Overall, prepare to actually do some REAL work when (and if) you get to Hopkins. Remember that your classmates are at least as intelligent as you are- so you're not going to be at the top of your class without putting in a lot of effort. |