AdmissionsDaniel

kaseyditz,
Not sure why the AP is not on the list - I will look into it.
But no, we do not offer AP credit for any history exams including AP World History.

juventus10

does JHU weight writing as equally as math and critical reading? If not, how does JHU count writing as part of the admissions system? Thank you

AdmissionsDaniel

Hopkins does look at all three sections of the SAT Reasoning exam. Emphasis is placed primarily on the Math and Critical Reasoning sections, but the writing section is not ignored. The Writing section is evaluated very much like we evaluate SAT subject exams -- they matter but they do not carry as much weight as the M and CR sections.

mj93

Why is it called Johns Hopkins? What's the history behind the "s"?

tanman

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johns_H...in_of_the_name

mj93

thanks ^

AdmissionsDaniel

http://webapps.jhu.edu/jhuniverse/in...ions/index.cfm
Question: Who was Johns Hopkins? And why the 's'?
Answer: First things first: why the extra "S"? Because his first name was really a last name. Johns Hopkins' great-grandmother was Margaret Johns, the daughter of Richard Johns, owner of a 4,000-acre estate in Calvert County, Md. Margaret Johns married Gerard Hopkins in 1700; one of their children was named Johns Hopkins.

The second Johns Hopkins, grandson of the first, was born to Samuel and Hannah Janney Hopkins in 1795 on the family's tobacco plantation in southern Maryland. His formal education ended in 1807, when his parents, devout Quakers, decided on the basis of religious conviction to free their slaves and put Johns and his brother to work in the fields. Johns left home at 17 for Baltimore and a job in business with an uncle; then, at the age of 24, he established his own mercantile house.

He was an important investor in the nation's first major railroad, the Baltimore and Ohio, and became a director in 1847 and chairman of its finance committee in 1855.

Hopkins never married; he may have been influenced in planning for his estate by a friend, philanthropist George Peabody, who had founded the Peabody Institute in Baltimore in 1857.

In 1867, Hopkins arranged for the incorporation of The Johns Hopkins University and The Johns Hopkins Hospital, and for the appointment of a 12-member board of trustees for each. He died on Christmas Eve 1873, leaving $7 million to be divided equally between the two institutions. It was, at the time, the largest philanthropic bequest in U.S. history.

Rileydog

This a Mom - just trying to put things in perspective. How ARE the SAT IIs evaluated or used in admissions at JHU? There is published data about the mid 50th percentile for SAT Is by school but not SAT IIs. One can look at the mean on collegeboard.com but I am not sure how helpful that is. Schools must vary in preparation quite a bit. My son's physics teacher, for example, was asked to leave midyear for not teaching much physics (smile!). This seems to have influenced my son's first try at SAT II in physics, although he is taking it over in Nov and will hopefully have a chance to fill in the missing information - now that he knows there is missing information. Thanks for being on the board, btw!

AdmissionsDaniel

We do not publish 50th percentile ranges for SAT II subject exams since they are not a required part of the application and not all applicants submit those scores. We do recommend SAT II subject exams, as stated on our standardized test web site: http://apply.jhu.edu/apply/testreqs.html.

As far as how are they evaluated, they are looked at as just another piece of academic information for an applicant. They are in no way the most important piece of information we receive about an applicant, but if they are included within the application they do matter. In the academic review of an applicant, the thorough evaluation of one's high school transcript will always carry more weight than the review of standardized test scores.

ponnan

Hi AdmissionsDaniel,

In regards to the Common App supplement, in the the section (19) where it says list "Additional testing other than the SAT, SAT Subject Tests", would the USABO (bio olympiad) count as being an additional test that we could list?

AdmissionsDaniel

In the additional testing section, typically students put their AP scores. You may put your Olympiad scores there as well, but in most situations students will list those scores in the Additional Information section. There is no formal rule ... which ever method works best for you.

Rileydog

Thanks. Have another question. if you don't mind. When you receive a transcript that has weighted grades do you unweight them by the high school's formula? I am curious as last year our high school went to number based grades for weighting so son will have 2 years of letter based weighting and 2 years of number based weighting. Honestly, I have no idea if that makes a difference or not although I suspect it is to give a more accurate rank. If you do recalculate, do you give more weight to AP than Honors? We did hear that AP courses should be taken if available when we visited. That surprised me as some of the honors classes at our school have reps for being harder than the AP class in that subject area. Plus some of them have the best (or most loved) teachers whereas many AP classes seem to go to new teachers for some crazy reason. Sorry for the long post.

ponnan

Thanks for the response.

AdmissionsDaniel

Rileydog ...
... read this thread on the Hopkins Forums ... it will answer your questions in a general fashion ... that's the best answer I can give because every individual situation will be handled individually.

http://z14.invisionfree.com/Hopkins_...?showtopic=287

Rileydog

If I understand this correctly, you unweight by the school's formula and then apply your grade conversions without giving any direct benefit to the GPA for taking AP or honors courses? In that context, how would you compare those who took the more rigorous program with those who did not? We did hear a strong emphasis on taking AP courses at the admissions session. From the average, it seems that most students admitted to JHU have a nearly straight A average. Is it therefore possible that the student who did challenge himself by taking all APs/Honors but received some Bs would have a lower likelihood of admission than a student who took a smattering of APs/honirs and level ones but achieved all As? Or do all of your admits have the same profile of coursework?

Given this, how does JHU assess for grade inflation/deflation, etc across schools? If a student has an English teacher, for example, who refuses to give more than two As in the class, etc, compared to another school where the English teacher is far more generous?

Honestly, you have a very difficult job and I am sure there is no one right way to do this but there sure are a lot of potentially confounding factors.