<p>Hopkins is first and foremost a research institution, one of the best in the world. Hopkins routinely pulls in the most grant money and has almost double the amount of money spent on research compared to the 2nd place competitor. Not even MIT, Stanford, Harvard, etc. spend anywhere near as much money on research as Hopkins. </p>
<p>The reason you don’t see Hopkins high on “overall university rankings” is because Hopkins is established much more in certain fields–especially anything related to biology or medicine–and focuses a lot more on basic science research than say engineering fields related to instrument development, robotics, etc. The business school is also not on the par with the best, and there is no law school (again this contributes to the lower “overall” rank). </p>
<p>Hopkins is a place for research minded individuals. It does feel almost like it is practically a government research institution like the NIH rather than a university sometimes. </p>
<p>As far as safety, people need to get over it. Baltimore is perfectly fine as long as you aren’t an idiot. People who are afraid to venture out and who feel that they have to live close to campus or stay mostly around it have no idea what they are missing out in the city–all the fantastic places to eat, bars to check out, music shows to see, and all the historic places to walk around. I was actually surprised at how many decent places Baltimore has to eat. An underrated spot for foodies.</p>