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To be completely honest, this was one of the biggest reasons why I chose Hopkins. I’ve always known that I wanted to take a path of being a doctor, and I knew that Hopkins offers so many opportunities for pre-med students. After being here for almost a year and a half, I can definitely say that this is true. But, I thought it would be a good idea to share a bit about my experience with both the ups and the downs of being a pre-med student at Hopkins!

To begin, pre-med opportunities are super easy to access. I currently work in a clinical medicine lab. More specifically, a pediatric emergency medicine lab that looks at special needs children and how they respond to stimuli in the hospital setting. I’ve truly enjoyed my experience here, as the research area is something I’m very passionate about. A lot of my friends are also actively involved in research at the med campus across various subject areas. Furthermore, I also volunteer at the Children’s Hospital, and this is one of my favorite experiences. I’ve always had a strong desire to go into pediatrics, so it’s amazing to be able to spend time with children in a clinical setting. Also, a few of my friends spent intersession shadowing physicians at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and they felt like they learned a lot and took away a lot from the experience.

So…what’s the downside you ask?

Well first off, it is common knowledge that Hopkins is a tough and very challenging school. Pre-med requirements can sometimes be notoriously difficult. As a result, your experience as a pre-med student can be difficult, but with this also comes a lot of resources. Professors are usually super helpful, and Hopkins also offers a plethora of other resources such as Pre-Health advising, the PILOT peer led tutoring program, etc. Also in the end, the difficulty of the courses end up preparing you well for the MCAT.

Furthermore, there are a LOT of pre-meds at Hopkins, so you will be surrounded by some of the brightest people you’ve ever met. While this is great to motivate you and promote the exchange of ideas, it can also be exhausting and you may often feel an immense amount of pressure.

For this, my advice is to not let being pre-med define your college experience. Sure, I do clinical research, volunteer at the med campus, and write for the campus Med Review. But, also be sure to get involved in other things that you are passionate about. I love being able to give tours and meet families, write this blog, plan cultural and religious events with Hindu Student Council, bond with my sorority sisters, and I especially love tutoring children every week through the Johns Hopkins Tutorial Project. And while I do have a lot of friends who are pre-med, pre-nursing, and pre-dental, a lot of my friends are studying the humanities, engineering, or basically anything else that Hopkins has to offer. This diversity really helps me to find balance at a school like Hopkins!

Is johns Hopkins a good medical school

JOHNS HOPKINS MEDICAL SCHOOL REQUIREMENTS, TUITION, AND MORE
We’re covering everything you need to know as you consider applying to The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. You’ll learn about acceptance rates, application deadlines, average MCAT scores, tuition, curriculum, and more.

[ RELATED: MCAT Prep Courses Near Baltimore, MD ]

TABLE OF CONTENTS

All About Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Johns Hopkins Med School Curriculum
How has Johns Hopkins Med School Made an Impact?
Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Notable Programs
Requirements, Enrollment, Acceptance, Tuition, Deadlines, and more
Top Residency Program Match Rates and Locations

ALL ABOUT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Founded in 1876, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is located in Baltimore, Maryland, sharing its campus with Johns Hopkins Hospital, which was established in 1889. It is part of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions (JHMI) Campus, which also includes the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing. Johns Hopkins was the first medical school to require its students to have an undergraduate degree and the first to admit women. A historically standout institution, the school has always ranked in the top 3 according to U.S. News and World Report in the number of competitive research grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

With 482 full-time students and 2300 full-time faculty on staff, the school has an exceptional 4.8:1 faculty-student ratio. Faculty attention is at the forefront of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine education. At the start of their med school careers, students are divided into four colleges, each named for a Hopkins faculty member who has had a lasting impact on the field of medicine: Florence Sabin, Vivien Thomas, Daniel Nathans, and Helen Taussig. According to the school, these colleges were founded to “foster camaraderie, networking, advising, mentoring, professionalism, clinical skills, and scholarship.” A fifth of each class, or about 30 students, are assigned to each college, and are then further subdivided into six “molecules” of five students each. A faculty member not only advises each “molecule,” but also teaches these students in their Clinical Foundations of Medicine course. This faculty member remains the students’ primary advisor for all four years of medical school, and it is not uncommon for advisors to host their “molecules” in their homes. School-wide, the colleges compete in an annual “College Olympics,” which has events in sports, art, and dance.

Students primarily train at the school’s main teaching hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital. Additionally, the school is affiliated with Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center, the Howard County General Hospital, Suburban Hospital, Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., and the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida.

THE CURRICULUM AT JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
Med students complete Johns Hopkins’ “Genes to Society” curriculum, which was instituted in 2009, and integrates learning, research, and patient care. The curriculum takes a holistic approach to diagnosis, taking into account the wide range of factors that can influence a patient’s disease presentation, from genetics to the environment. According to the school, Genes to Society “presents a model of health and disease based in the principles of adaptation to the environment, variability of the genotype, and stratification of risk, rather than simply a dichotomous view of ‘normal human biology (health)’ and ‘abnormal physiology (disease)’.” Rather than studying classic medical cases, students are taught by examining disease from a whole-person perspective, taking into account not only presenting symptoms, but also factors that span cellular makeup to socioeconomic status.

In their first year, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine students start with foundational human biology, with a focus on what has been learned from the Human Genome project about human variability. Independent scholarly research is integrated throughout the curricular track, starting in the winter of the first year. Uniquely, students begin clinical clerkships from the start (most med schools have students start clerkships in Year 3). By working with patients early in their education and training, students are encouraged to integrate classroom learning through practical experience. Advanced clerkships in the latter half of the curriculum are supported by electives and week-long courses spaced out every ten weeks on specific interdisciplinary medicinal topics such as Cancer, Regenerative Medicine, or Metabolism. The curriculum culminates in a capstone course to prepare students for the residency experience.

In addition to the MD track, the school has several dual-degree programs:

MD-PhD Program – a 6-8 year program intended for students who have already identified a medical research career path. About 10% of each incoming class is accepted directly into this program.
MD-MPH Program – in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Students in the School of Medicine can apply for admission to this program between Year Two and Year Three or between Year Three and Year Four.
MD-MS in Health Care Management – a program to give students a business background in the medical industry. Students can apply for admission between their second and third years of med school, or their third and fourth.
MD-MBA Program – with the Carey Business School. Students interested in pursuing these two degrees concurrently apply directly for admittance into this 5-year program.

HOW HAS JOHNS HOPKINS MED SCHOOL MADE AN IMPACT?
As a longtime leader in the field, Johns Hopkins has been associated with many firsts. Some notable advancements include:

First to introduce rubber gloves in surgical procedures
Published The Harriet Lane Handbook, a vital tool for pediatricians for 60 years
Developed CPR
Developed the first biological pacemaker for the heart
Conducted one of the most complicated successful double arm transplants

Learn what the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine adcom looks for in applicants [Show summary]
Paul White, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Student Affairs at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, dispels common misconceptions about the program and explains what applicants can expect from an admissions process altered by COVID-19.

What makes Johns Hopkins School of Medicine unique, and how can YOU show your fit? [Show notes]
Do you want to know how to get into Johns Hopkins School of Medicine? Are you wondering what its curriculum is really like, and how it has adapted to COVID? Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Assistant Dean for Admissions and Student Affairs is here with answers.

Before arriving at Johns Hopkins, Paul White attended Yale for undergrad and Georgetown for his law degree. He has worked in admissions, both undergrad and med, since 1979. Since 2012, he has served the applicant community as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Student Affairs at Johns Hopkins and made a previous appearance on Admissions Straight Talk in 2016.

Can we start out with an overview of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine program, focusing on its distinctive elements? [1:50]
Johns Hopkins has a wonderful educational program. Hopkins is one of the schools that really pioneered prerequisites for medical school, and the Flexner Report, which came out in 1910, said Hopkins was one of the schools that did it right, and we’ve never sat on our laurels. So we’re always asking, are we keeping current? Are we teaching students what they need to know to work with patients? A few years ago, easily 12 years ago now, Hopkins completely revised its curriculum to focus more on the social determinants of disease.

We incorporate that throughout the curriculum when our students come to Hopkins. You have a course that begins right after orientation that focuses on healthcare disparities. There are several intersession courses you’ll have between major components, like anatomy and so forth. But the very first one focuses on healthcare disparities and brings in someone from the community who talks about their issues, and so forth. We also have our students do an ambulatory longitudinal clerkship later in their first year, which gets them out into the community and working alongside a physician who works with patients from underserved populations.

Continuing with that, we integrate, throughout the curriculum, the social sciences, ethics, public health, and interprofessional education. We give our students opportunities to do research. Many of them have already had research prior to coming to Hopkins. Although it’s not required, I would say easily 95 or 96% have had research prior to their matriculation. But by the time they graduate from Hopkins, easily 99% will have research, and nearly 99% will have a publication by the time they graduate from Hopkins. So that has really strengthened the profile of our students, which was pretty strong to begin with, but it has really made students that much more attuned to what’s going on in the world and ready to address it using scientific methodology.

Watch how to ace your med school interviews during the time of COVID-19 in this free Q&A.
When you talk about a longitudinal ambulatory clerkship, what are they doing? [4:55]
I think of it as advanced clinical shadowing, and actually in the community working with the physician. But rather than being a pre-medical student, they’re actually medical students, and it is something which they are evaluated on as part of their curriculum as well. Who they see depends on who the physician is seeing as part of the clerkship. That’s why it’s several weeks rather than a two-time event.

What’s a common misconception about Johns Hopkins that you would like to dispel? [5:36]
That the only thing we’re interested in is research. That is a misconception that can impact how someone is viewed in the admissions process. Even though I am not a physician, I’m a lawyer by training, I want to make sure that the students who come to Hopkins have a strong commitment and interest in patient care. So we look for students who’ve had meaningful patient interactions prior to applying, not something they hope to get once they’re in medical school. And if they haven’t had that, and instead they’ve had research, that’s great. But the research has to involve some type of patient care. Most of our students who are successful in our admissions process have had significant clinical interaction, and that goes well beyond shadowing. I’m talking about actually interacting with patients, and sometimes they’re scribes, but in a position where they interact on a regular basis. All have interest in patient care, and how they would benefit from the research that they’re doing.

Obviously, clinical exposure early-on and throughout the four years of med school is a critical element in the curriculum. How are students getting that during COVID? [7:25]
Certainly the third and fourth year students had to pause in the spring, but they were getting right back into the clinical component in early July, if not slightly early. They didn’t miss a beat. The first and second year students, it’s a little different for them, and it’s more controlled with the standardized patient program instead.

Now let’s turn to the Johns Hopkins secondary application. It’s a thorough secondary and asks for five essays. When you examine the secondaries, what are you attempting to glean from them that the primaries don’t provide? [8:09]
We’re looking for people who will be the best fit, and you don’t always get that from the primary. You get some of it from their personal statement. That’s why there is a personal statement, frankly. It is our questions that will impart, hopefully, to the applicant what we value. One of our questions deals with adversity. Another question deals with a time when you were not in the majority. What interests do you have? What kind of medicine are you interested in?

It’s not that we are looking for anything conclusive, but we want to know, have they ever dealt with patients? So they have at least an idea. I do interviews as well, and I screen, and I’m one of the interviewers, and I’ll say, “You know what? I think this person really blew off X question.” And that will lead to much discussion. I’ve had applicants tell me, “I love your questions on the secondary.” We have some questions in our interview that get at what we value as well.

Click here for our Johns Hopkins secondary application essay tips >>

Does Johns Hopkins have any automatic screening of secondaries? [10:26]
No, not at all. It would make life easier, I think. But as long as I’ve been with Hopkins, we have never done automatic screening. Every application is reviewed. I probably read 40% of the applications, but every one is read by two different people. We made some major changes in our review process this past year, and not knowing that there’d be a pandemic, we decided to go ahead and plow through it, and it has not been easy. But we’re still on track. And, this is crazy, but our applications are up almost 25%. They’re up nationally, about 17%. But even among our peers, our increase is outpacing them.

The deadline just passed for the primary, but the secondary one is not until November 1st. But we’re going through every application, and I can tell you I doubled the number of screeners. And these are people who’ve been veterans of the admissions committee, but they’ve never had to screen. There are three of us who are screeners, out of a dozen, who’ve been on this committee for 20 years or more. “Screening” means we’re screening those to be considered for an interview. We screen every applicant who submits a verified AMCAS application, and then from whom we receive the secondary. So we don’t just base it on their primary; it’s on the completed application.

We truly use and believe in a holistic review process. So that includes the MCAT, as well as the academic record, meaning the course work they’ve done, as well as their performance or GPA in those courses. But it means that there are no cutoffs. There are students who I will say no to, but the other reviewer says yes, and it automatically goes to a third reviewer, and the majority wins. I know I’ve seen a couple students where I really wondered, is this someone we should be bringing in? But someone else saw something there that I may not have seen, but I’ll say, let’s see how the person does in an interview. And an interview doesn’t mean you’re in.

In addition to the two screenings before you get to the interview, any student invited to interview at Johns Hopkins will have two interviews, correct? [13:08]
That’s right. Everyone has to have two interviews. Both interviewers are members of the admissions committee, but one is always the faculty member and the other is a medical student. The medical students are actually selected by the rising fourth years to represent the entire student body, so we have 20 medical students on the admissions committee. They are terrific. They’re typically campus leaders. Not only that, they’re interviewing for residency themselves. They are in their final year, and yet they were able to do it. I always talk to them and see how they’re doing, and they’ll say, “This has been really incredible and has helped me with my residency interviews.”

Given COVID, are there other activities for the invited students? [14:07]
All virtual. If they were in Baltimore, they would be taking a tour of one of our principle housing residences. Housing is run by a corporation that owns numerous hotels that you’ve heard of. It’s a 23-story tower that we give a tour of. We’re not doing that. Then they would typically meet with me on Thursdays and with the woman who is our director, who reports to me, on Fridays. So for both days now we send out a video of me welcoming them. That was interesting because I pretty much did it in one take. It’s just 10 minutes giving a high level overview of what they can expect. We also did a PowerPoint presentation, and we present that from our financial aid office, which I think they’re delighted to have. And then on the actual interview day (so that’s anyone who’s been invited to interview) on Thursdays, I’m on the computer all day, and they meet with me and I give them some last minute things, housekeeping details. I ask them if they have any questions, and I serve as the traffic controller for Thursday interviewees. So I’m typically on a little before 9:00 our time, and as late as 5:00 in the afternoon. Even though it is eating up my entire day, I’m able to review applications online if I have 45 minutes. So I’ll do that while people are doing their interviews.

Watch: Med School Interviews During COVID-19 >>

Per AMSA, Johns Hopkins Medical received 6,016 applications in 2019. You’ve just said that you’re up over 24%, is that right? [16:11]
We’re at just under 7,000 applications. Last year, we actually saw a decrease, and we were puzzled about that. It was around 5,600 applications. Then this year we’re over 6,900 right now, and they’re still being processed, the ones that met the deadline. So we made it to 7,000.

In 2019, you interviewed 657 applicants and matriculated 120. When you get to the interview stage, statistically, your chances of acceptance go up dramatically, is that right? [17:03]
Yes, though last year, we actually cut the number of interviews to about 574 for the MD program, and roughly 90 for the MD/PhD. This year will be similar to last year, approximately. I know I’ve talked to some of our peers to see what they were going to do, because they’re experiencing an increase as well. One school said they felt like they needed to increase the number of interviews. Frankly, out of the 574 that we interview, we could easily admit 300 of those, so I don’t see the need to increase the interview numbers.

But then I do keep my eye on who’s accepting our offers with the new process, where you have the Choose Your Medical School tool, rather than when you had to enroll or commit to enroll. The first year of that, Linda, may have been the year you and I last spoke. No one knew what that meant. Everyone was committing to enroll. I think something like 96% of our students committed to enroll by April 30th. This past year, which was the second year, they got a little wiser, and I would venture to guess maybe 50% committed to enroll. Once you commit to enroll, you can’t stay on a waiting list. We actually went a little further into our waiting list because we weren’t sure who was going to come. Money played an issue more so last year than previous year, but who’s to say what will happen this year? As long as I’ve been doing it, there hasn’t been a typical year.

When you have close to 7,000 applications, and you’re trying to get it down to 500 lucky people who are going to be invited to interview, how do you do it? What makes an applicant jump off the application page for you? [19:19]
We have 12 very different people who are our screeners. Two people besides myself, so three of us, are not physicians. Two are researchers. I am obviously not a researcher or a physician, but I’ve got the experience. And then everyone else is an MD, and in some cases, an MD/PhD. You’ve got surgeons, cardiologists, bioethicists, HIV researchers. It’s just a fascinating group. Psychiatrists. I only meet with them once a month. They get their files weekly from my staff, and I only meet with them once a month, but I send them emails and I track how they’re doing, and I remind them that it is incredibly important that we get people who know what it means to interact with patients, who can talk about why patient care is so important, why doctors have the role they have on a medical team.

Are you a competitive applicant at your dream school? Check out the Med School Selectivity Index to find out >>

I don’t say, “These are the cutoffs,” or anything, but I tell them that our GPA for applicants and MCAT were X last year, just for applicants, and then invited to interview, people admitted, and then those who matriculated. And I don’t say you have to have a 3.93 to get an interview. I don’t say you have to have a 521 to get an interview. But at the same time, they know that if someone is in the 50th percentile on the MCAT, that’s not as competitive. We’ve got too many extremely qualified applicants just by the numbers. Their job is to look and say, “Okay, we know that the people who come to Hopkins are campus leaders,” as undergraduates, because that’s who they are when they come to Hopkins as well.

One of the things we think we do a good job of is training people to be medical leaders. We take advantage of that and look for people who’ve been in leadership positions. We also know we’re a great place for anyone who is interested in serving the public. That is something you can definitely do in Baltimore. And because they get out in the community, and we want them to be comfortable with that, familiar with that, we’re a great place to learn. One of the things people don’t realize about Hopkins is that it’s a great place for primary care training. And we have a primary care leadership program. We know that our students who do that program will be leaders of primary care, teaching primary care, not just seeing patients, but actually teaching at major academic institutions. And so we look for people who we think are going to be these future leaders in medicine.

About what percentage of the class goes into primary care specialties? [22:22]
It’s not high enough. The primary care leadership track is actually something they can only choose once they’re out of Hopkins. That is, by design, small, though the number has tripled since it was introduced about six years ago. But I would say in a class of roughly 120 graduates, maybe 12%, 14% will go into what I think of as primary care. What the Department of Education thinks of as primary care may be a little more expansive. For instance, going into internal medicine, which some may not think of as primary care, really is. I think it is, but some people think when we’re talking about primary care we’re thinking family medicine, pediatrics, and then certainly geriatrics. That’s part of the program here as well, especially if you’re doing the primary care leadership track: You get early exposure to mentoring. You get mentoring all four years, but they have mentored workshop, which is with primary care folks in geriatrics, family medicine, pediatrics, internal medicine, and so forth.

Is there anything that you look for in applicants today or value more in applicants today than you did two or five or 10 years ago? [23:32]
I would definitely say knowing what type of students succeed at Hopkins. I look for people who have perhaps overcome challenges and are capable and have the resiliency to figure out how to make things work. I think one of the things we do better today than we did when I came to the medical school in 2000 is support our students. Even though we have a lot of support, when we changed our curriculum, we introduced the college system. All of our students are assigned to one of four colleges, which has nothing to do with your intended field of medicine. Some schools call them learning communities. The students have support throughout with faculty members who serve as their mentors and advisors for all four years, and then you still have the resources of the Dean of Students office. But we know that times are different today. They certainly are different than from when you and I were in undergrad and grad school I’m sure. We had to be resilient. But we also didn’t have the same pressures then that they have today.

Students compare themselves to other people. We didn’t have social media, so we weren’t able to figure out that we weren’t as good as someone else perhaps. I was no slouch when I went to college, but I remember toughing it out. Students today have a lot more pressure on them, external pressures, let’s put it that way. So we offer more support to the students with the wellness program. We have a woman who works with students who encounter academic difficulties, which no one would think of when they come to Hopkins. But sometimes they’ve had to overcompensate for issues affecting their learning in college, and they’ve had that down pat, but then you get to medical school and it’s like a fire hydrant with the cap off. This woman has done a great job. It’s just a handful of students, but that kind of support means a lot.

I’m not saying that we look for this in the application, but if someone clearly expresses unease with asking for help, they’re not going to get very far. You have to be able to ask for help. Particularly if we’re talking about this kind of student, I think at Hopkins and at other medical schools, it’s difficult to ask for help. It was difficult for me as a freshman in college, 120 years ago, whenever that was. But you learn. It’s okay to fall. It’s how you pick yourself back up.

How do you view letters of intent or correspondence from waitlisted applicants? [26:58]
I don’t pay any attention to them at Hopkins. We want there to be a level playing field, and if you’re interviewed that’s your shot. The way we do our admissions process is that we have a vote at the meeting, and we don’t even tell the admissions committee how someone has done. Maybe three months later, three of us will sit down and review the transcript of the meetings and the scores. That dictates who gets in, and that will dictate how far we can go. We know our yield will be X percent, so we try not to load it up with people who were fortunate enough to be discussed earlier.

We notify people in three rounds, depending on when they interview: December, end of January, end of March. And yet the percentage of acceptances is about the same relative to however many were interviewed. If they were discussed and they’re placed on the waiting list, once we know we’re going to use a waiting list, we go by their initial voting score. An additional letter means absolutely nothing to us. I don’t welcome them at Hopkins. I know that’s probably heresy compared to some medical schools. As I said, we want there to be a level playing field. I also know a letter of intent is not a contract. They may be sending it to numerous other schools.