Yup, JHU is absolutely on the rise. The entering class statistics have been stagnant for a while, but their recent admissions lead hired away from Penn has been increasing the emphasis on test scores. The entering class profile is now at 88% ranked in top 10 and with an enrolled 1360 - 1530 SAT range. Compare this to 2 to 7 years ago, which saw the enrolled Hopkins SAT consistently in the 1300 - 1490 range and 80% of freshman ranked in the top 10. Compare this with cornell and brown which has seen limited traction with enrolled student test scores. This is what may help drive the ranking increases further (something I don’t care for nor agree with).
There are other campus improvement initiatives underway including construction of several new academic buildings, majors, and interdisciplinary programs. Momentum is there contrary to many ill informed opinions on here such as those from hungryteenager (show me objective stats that indicate campus crime has been increasing instead of decreasing - I’ll wait for your “rigorous” analysis).
Beyphy: 3.5 billion in endowment is quite a bit (it’s among the top 25 schools in the country and greater than other comparable elite privates like Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown) - it doesn’t compare to Stanford, however (with $25 billion which still calls me for donations), but few other schools do. It also makes little sense to compare the endowment to the entire University of Texas system as a whole or University of California system (distributed amongst 10s of campuses) to Hopkins, however. UT austin itself has 3 billion flat for instance. Unlike some of Hopkins’ peers though, the endowment return rate is amongst the most aggressive in positive return.
Hopkins has traction for sure. But so do a lot of peers in this regard.