Hopkins vs UPenn for PreMed

bonanza
Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:26:07 +0000

I’m biased. I choose Hopkins over Penn and Brown (but it was, alas, a long time ago). And my son choose Hopkins over Penn much more recently. But both Penn and Hopkins are great schools so you can’t make a major mistake.

But I will share this with you. A good friend of mine is a senior professor at Penn. When my son was deciding where to go, I told him to talk to my friend (who I assumed would be pushing Penn) as a counterbalance to his Dad who is a big Hopkins booster. To my surprise, my friend told my son that, based on the inside information that he has, he considers Hopkins to be the stronger school academically overall compared to Penn.

Both schools have similar problems with their neighborhoods. At Penn, you are fine if you walk east, toward Center City. But walk a few blocks west and you are quickly in a bad West Philly neighborhood. At Hopkins, the areas immediately adjacent to the Homewood campus are fine in all directions (although a bit sketchy to the south) and remain fine if you go west or north. But walk more than a few blocks to the east and its not so great (although there are much worse parts of Baltimore than Waverly).

So the real important question is whether you would prefer to be called a Blue Jay or a Quaker? Good luck with your decision.