How to Get Into Johns Hopkins University: Strategies and Essays That Worked

Johns Hopkins is probably most famous for its elite premed education. The university’s steadfast dedication to health dates back to the institution’s founding; Johns Hopkins University’s eponymous founder was a philanthropist passionate about improving public health and public education. Each year, Johns Hopkins students are accepted to medical school at a far higher rate than the national average—premed graduates today enjoy an 80 percent med school acceptance rate.

While Johns Hopkins is renowned for its reputation in medicine, its other programs should not go overlooked. The Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts & Sciences houses one of the nation’s earliest creative writing programs and its French department was named a “Center of Excellence” by France itself. Alumni of the Whiting School of Engineering often go on to work at companies like Amazon, Google, or Accenture, or receive prestigious fellowships like Fulbrights. Students with an entrepreneurial spirit benefit from Johns Hopkins’ FastForward U program, which provides up to $30,000 in funding to students working on their own startup.

On that note, if a Johns Hopkins alum says that they are working on a startup, they should be taken seriously. In 2014, Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures was founded to help translate research done within the Johns Hopkins’ ecosystem into the market. Since then, their portfolio has come to include over 130 companies that have collectively raised over $3 billion in venture funding.

No matter what course of study your child pursues, Johns Hopkins is likely a strong choice. According to the Johns Hopkins website, only 6 percent of the class of 2021 was unemployed six months after graduation. Over half the class had joined the workforce, one-third had enrolled directly in grad school, and 5 percent were pursuing nontraditional employment, such as enlisting in the military or entrepreneurship.

As an “Ivy Plus” university with a student-faculty ratio of just 7:1, Johns Hopkins is understandably selective. Read the guide below to learn more about the university and how to be considered a competitive applicant.