Baltimore's not a great place, but if you stay on campus, Hopkins is very safe. As well, even off campus, if you know where to venture and where not to venture, I don't think it's worse than other big cities. I live in Anne Arundel County, and have been in and out of Baltimore countless times in my life (not to say I particularly enjoyed it).
MIT, Georgia Tech and Carnegie have no classics programs. That's a deal-breaker.
The schools to which my son applied all had to meet certain criteria. Two of those criteria were that they had to each have a decent engineering program and a decent classics program.
Hopkins is one of the best compromises between the two - very good classics, very good engineering. Harvard falls down a bit on the engineering, but one of the saving graces is that Harvard students may take courses at MIT. And their classics program is better than Hopkins.
Maryland has really great engineering (probably not quite as good as Hopkins, though, at least not overall), but doesn't have anywhere near the classics program of the other two, but DOES have a fairly competent program. We know folks who have graduated from the program at undergrad and graduate levels.
Each school of the original eight to which he applied had both programs.
The school which was probably the best, with regard to these two specific criteria, was Princeton. But, they didn't accept him, so that's not a choice to be made.
“Is your son going to enjoy socially keeping up with the Harvard elites? Clam bakes at the Cape during weekend breaks?”
Sure. He's pretty flexible, cleans up well, and really likes clams.
“AS for the snob factor,...”
There is some certain amount of “snob factor” to which you're referring. But the majority of folks who go to Harvard are from more modest backgrounds. They're there because they scored really, really high on bunches of standardized tests, got really great grades in high school, and did a bunch of cool things outside the classroom.
To be sure, legacies and rich kids are overrepresented, when compared to the general population. But legacies are still limited to 10% of the incoming freshmen class (70% of legacies are rejected for admission), and the very well-off are less than a third.
“In civil engineering, doesn't a meal ticket for life require a masters degree or more?”
I don't think so. My brother did fine in his engineering career with a bachelors. My cousin became president of a large civil engineering firm in a large southern city with only a bachelors degree.
But not to worry, a masters degree is part of the plan, anyway.
sitetest
I grew up and lived in Baltimore City for many, many years and graduated from HS there – Western HS on Falls Road.
The area immediately around JHU is not all that bad compared to other areas (the area around Johns Hopkins Hospital is a different matter) or even Glen Burnie or Severna Park or Brooklyn Park :) , but it’s not totally safe either, as if any place is now days. I currently work in a small town in Lancaster County PA in the heart of Amish country and believe me, it’s not completely idyllic; there are drug problems, hold ups, muggings, armed robberies, home invasions, etc. If your kid has good common sense and some “street smarts” he should be fine where ever he decides to go to school.
I know people who graduated with engineering degrees from both MD and JHU – both good schools for engineering. But Maryland has a well deserved reputation as a “party school”; not to say that all kids who go there are part of that scene or that it doesn’t happen at JHU, but it’s something to consider.
Personally if Hopkins is offering a good package I’d seriously consider it. An engineering degree or any degree for that matter from Hopkins opens a lot of doors and offers many post grad networking opportunities that a lot of schools can’t quite match.