Meet JHU_LaurenB - Summit NJ, Public Health Major

[JHU_LaurenB]

Hi everyone!

My name is Lauren, and I'm from the lovely state of New Jersey. More specifically, I'm from Summit, a suburb just west of New York City. I graduated from a small all-girls school, with no idea what I wanted to study at college. Obviously, I ended up at Hopkins, where I'm now a sophomore studying Public Health. I'm concentrating in the social sciences track of Public Health, and hopefully minoring in English and Economics. I had a brief stint as a pre-med (too much Grey's Anatomy) but I'm much happier now that I've settled into my major. I love the opportunities that PH at Hopkins offers in terms of research, study abroad, and study at the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

I've really bounced around in terms of intended major while I've been here, so my classes have spanned a pretty broad range of what you can possibly do at Hopkins. I've taken Chem & Bio, and their respective labs, IFP I-II (Introduction to Fiction and Poetry), History of Occidental Civilization, Calculus, American Bibles, Environment and Your Health, Microeconomics, The Harlem Renaissance, Economics of Health, English Literary Culture After 1945, Global Public Health Since WWII, and The Chinese Cultural Revolution. Hopefully I didn't leave anything out!

At Hopkins I spend a lot of time in Admissions--I work in the office of one of the counselors, as well as in Hopkins Hosting society and on the Student Admissions Advisory Board. I'm in a sorority, and I spend time as a Student Ambassador and tutoring in a Baltimore high school as well.

Please post any questions you have about Hopkins!

-Lauren B

[allen516]

Hi Lauren!

I read your profile and it seems you were really undecided about your major when you first got to Hopkins but now you know what you want to do. How did you decide? Did you get a lot of help from your advisor?

I am just concerned that being undecided might hurt me when I get into college. I have so many interests and I fear I might not decide by my sophomore year. Does JHU help undecided students?

Thanks for answering.

[JHU_LaurenB]

You really don't need to worry about being "undecided" when you apply to Hopkins, or for that matter, any other college. While many freshmen may plan to study certain subjects, at Hopkins you actually cannot declare a major until the end of the spring in the College of Arts and Sciences. Freshmen are considered "pre-major" regardless of their intentions to study Public Health, French, Neuroscience, History, or whatever else they want.

My advisor was helpful, certainly, but I found that it really came down to classes. I really enjoyed certain classes, while others that I expected to like drove me crazy. First semester's covered grades made it easy to explore classes across different disciplines, and that definitely helped me to rule out a few possible majors. Just by process of elimination, I knew that I wanted to study something in the social sciences--I'm terrible at math, but the prospect of a pure Humanities degree didn't appeal either. Throughout freshman year I came to understand more about the social sciences at Hopkins, and the Public Health program really stood out to me as one that I would both enjoy and succeed at.

Most of my decision to major in public health came down to things like that. What am I good at? What am i interested in? And what is the overlap between those two things? It might take a while to really narrow this down, but two full years is a very long time, and will involve a lot of classes, jobs, and general growing up. By the end of sophomore year I promise you'll know what you want to study.

Saying that though, there are a lot of resources for students who are undecided, as well as students who have declared. Freshmen have an academic advisor assigned alphabetically, who you meet with several times a year. The Career Center can offer advice about internships and jobs that may sway your interests academically, as well. Professors are more than willing to speak about their subject matter, and research opportunities on campus may help you decide which major to pursue. Hopkins doesn't really offer "undecided" and "decided" academic resources, which means that there is a great deal available to you as an undecided freshman or sophomore.

Here is the website for academic advising http://www.jhu.edu/advising/

and freshman advising http://web.jhu.edu/freshman_advising

Let me know if you have any other questions, I hope this helped!