Wow, I've done research at Rutgers in the past...and, it didn't seem anything like the way you just described a state school. Rutgers has a seperate (reasonably small) science campus that's teeming with hard-working Asians (huge stereotype at Rutgers). Classes seemed small enough and I talked with lots of students who claimed they had nothing to complain about the place. Quite honestly, Rutgers seems to differ from JHU mostly (if not entirely) in reputation. I even looked at Rutger's BME website and their staff is incredibly well-qualified (PhD's mostly from top schools: Cornell, UPenn, MIT, NU, Columbia, etc). Check it:
Rutgers University Department of Biomedical Engineering