Johns Hopkins vs UCLA

mikemac
Thu, 24 Mar 2016 18:38:30 +0000

like a lot of kids, it sounds like you don’t know yet what you want to do as an adult. Maybe medicine, which turns into “I’m premed!” rather than settling on that only after thinking about all the patient-care jobs that don’t involve11-15 years of school/training and a huge load of debt. MechE sounds like something you also don’t have a lot of comittment to, just something you expect will land you a job. Fact is, at most schools 1/2 or more of those entering engineering drop out of the major. Without the dedication to put up with the immense workload, many decide it just isn’t worth it. Nor, absent a real desire for the career, is it likely to prove rewarding after college. At many companies it isn’t a 9-5 job; those that get raises and promotions are those that work longer hours and the occasional weekend. It’s going to be hard to do this for very long if the only reward is the paycheck.

My suggestion is threefold. First, go to ucla. The savings is big, and my bet is you wouldn’t be in the MechE major at JHU more than a year anyway. Second, you say you have an interest in medicine. With your senior year of HS winding down you have 5 mos or so before college starts. Get a volunteer job in a health-care setting to find out if being a doctor is a fit for you, and also so you can see some of the other patient-care careers. Exposure to the field is an unofficial requirement to get into med school anyway; might as well get a start now. Third, once you start ucla go to the career center 1st quarter frosh year and keep working with them to learn about the careers out there, what is a fit for you, how you prepare to enter them. There are few careers that universities specifically train for; nursing, engineering, teaching, accounting, some others. These are not all the jobs in the world, so find out how you get into the rest of them.