Let me preface this by saying that UPenn and Cornell are currently unaffordable to my family (my parents are contributing 15k, and I could probably come up with 3k a year). I appealed my aid for both and am waiting to hear back. I’m just wondering if UPenn or Cornell would be worth it even if they end up being more expensive. Would it be worth potentially taking out federal loans for the prestige?
I’m also not 100% set on CS and biology yet.
No - because for one, they’re not more prestigious than JHU and #2 - bio is not a well paid career. or are you seeking CS?
Cornell is, on paper anyway, the best combo wise but you simply can’t afford it.
Not sure what your career goals are - or if they require more school which then JHU really makes sense.
I might want to eat at Flemings but if I can only afford Outback, that’s where I have to eat.
Best of luck.
I’d minimze debt and go to Johns Hopkins. IMO they are equally wonderful options. Congrats!
Congratulations on a really impressive acceptance!
Not sure there’s much benefit to Penn or Cornell at 18k - strictly speaking, if you added the 5.5k federal loan you’d be able to go as high as 20.5k per year - but if you really liked one more than the other, why not? There’s nothing wrong with attending either at such a price.
The issue is that JHU is an incredible university. Lucky you 
You don’t seem dead set on one particular university and I can’t see what you’d get at Penn or Cornell that you wouldn’t get at JHU. So it’d all be intangibles - environment, fit.
These are all excellent universities. These are all well known and highly respected. They are all good for a wide range of majors (for example if you decide to change your major). If they all cost the same, this would be a tough choice with all three being very much worth considering.
All of these three universities are going to be full of very strong students, very good professors (with probably a small number of not-so-good professors), and all three are going to be academically very demanding. The fact that they will all be academically demanding implies that you would be better off if you do not need to work too many hours to help pay for your education.
One of them is sort of just barely affordable. The other two are not affordable. This makes the choice easy.
Do not take on extra debt in order to attend one excellent university when you can attend another similarly excellent university for $48,000 or $72,000 less over four years.
John’s Hopkins is a very good university, and has plenty of “prestige”.
By the way, assuming that you have other “not quite so highly ranked” options, you do not need to attend a highly ranked university just because you got accepted. In addition to looking for a university that you can afford, it is also a good idea to look for a school that is a good fit for you, and this does not always correspond to a university that US News ranks highly. You are allowed to have different priorities compared to US News. On the other hand, you have been accepted to three very highly ranked universities, which suggests that admissions at three different schools have independently looked at your record in detail and they have all decided that you can handle a school at this level.
That’s a great offer for a great school, to attend JHU at $18K. It’s hard to imagine that you’ll get enough movement from UPenn or Cornell to even come close to closing that gap; and even if you do, what happens when they evaluate your aid eligibility in subsequent years? I’d go with the top-notch school that you can attend with minimal debt, which offered you very generous aid up-front, and which isn’t even a compromise in terms of reputation.
First of all, even for the same price, UPenn has nothing to offer over JHU. I would give Cornell an edge over JHU, but not a $18,000 a year edge.
Bottom line, all three have top programs in CS, and if you can get Cornell to drop its price so that it’s affordable, go for it. Otherwise, attend JHU knowing that it is one of th etop programs worldwide.
Take pre-conceived notions of prestige out of the equation – obviously UPenn and Cornell are Ivies, and Hopkins is an Ivy peer… same as Stanford, Caltech, MIT, UChicago, Duke, and Northwestern (IMO).
You can receive a top-notch education at each of them.
Right now, Hopkins appears to be the only one that’s affordable without loans – assuming you can work a summer job and use some of those proceeds to come up with the other $3k of COA and maybe have some spending money left over.
That said, taking out federal loans (the $27k-ish max over four years) to help make UPenn or Cornell affordable likely wouldn’t be too much of a burden, provided you are able to secure a decent job after graduating. But… I think you’re still a bit short, even with the federal loans.
Regardless, the relative affordability of Hopkins must make it the leader at this point.
For your interests I’d choose Johns Hopkins over either of the other two. JHU has a better reputation in life sciences. Consider the covid tracker that JHU built and was used by media, industry, and the greater public. This is one of the most public facing projects of their public health/computing/data analytics efforts but there are countless others. While Penn and Cornell would both be tremendous places to learn, I’d choose the one with the most prominent thought leaders in the computing/public health/life sciences space. This is JHU hands down.
Is there some reason you prefer Cornell or UPenn, besides being Ivies? If so, maybe there’s a reason to go to them.
But I’ll join the chorus on here: Hopkins is as fine a school as there is in the world for studying life sciences, and CS is excellent … and if you spend much time outside the US, you’ll find that Johns Hopkins is actually better known than any Ivy other than Harvard or Yale, due to the phenomenal strength of its researchers over the decade. And for the seriousness of its students, I’d put Hopkins more on par with a MIT than any Ivies (some subset of which include “kids of famous people and politicians” - who typically avoid schools like Hopkins, MIT, Cal Tech, etc.)
I’d also consider those colleges peers, and suggest different people could rationally prefer any of those, for a variety of reasons.