Welcome back to “Deep Dive,” our blog series investigating the reputation certain schools have acquired for particular excellence in one program or another. Sometimes those front-running specializations far outrank the school’s general standing — as with Texas A&M’s agricultural science offerings — or they are simply stand-out departments at holistically competitive universities — like Business at Penn or Neuroscience at UMich.
Today we’re going to take a closer look at the biomedical engineering (BME) program at Johns Hopkins University, which is commonly considered one of the nation’s premier destinations for pre-med undergraduates and med school applicants. Is it really as fantastic as they say?! Well, despite the staggering duplicity of the Theranos scandal, it’s generally hard to get a reputation for greatness in an empirical field without receipts. The surgical robots have to perform, or it’s OVER.
Anyway, that’s our way of saying that, spoiler alert, JHU’s biomedical engineering scholarship has proven to be as impressive as it sounds… so let’s get into it.
The History of Biomedical Engineering at JHU
Not to be political (jk, have you met us?), but as Trump dismantles the academic freedom of American higher education, it is both depressing and inspiring to see how integral visionary leadership at universities has been to the technological progress and quality of life advancements that we take for granted. As we dig into the history of prestigious programs, we often find that these schools not only instruct students phenomenally well but that they are actually partially responsible for the development of the discipline itself.
That’s the exact case here; Johns Hopkins was among the co-founding departments (with Case Western, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Rochester, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Duke) who formally established biomedical engineering as a course of study in the ‘60s and ‘70s. In fact, Johns Hopkins “holds the longest‐running training grant for BME PhD education, founded c. 1961, in the nation.” Remaining at the helm of BME studies, BME became an independent department, rather than sub-department, in 1970, and by 1979 had launched undergraduate curriculum.
Normally, we wouldn’t get an unbiased opinion about the horse in question straight from the horse’s mouth, but in this case the numbers don’t lie! On their “Why Hopkins BME?” page, JHU has a pretty straightforward answer: “Both our undergraduate and graduate programs are consistently ranked #1 in the nation. In fact, our graduate programs have been rated #1 since U.S. News & World Report began ranking specialized disciplines in the early 1990s.” It feels cringe to say “not too shabby,” but when we see stats that good it’s basically a reflex… sorry!
The State of Biomedical Engineering at JHU Today
Part of the reason this series is so fun for us is that it really scratches the itch to see if “elite” schools are resting on their laurels or continuing to evolve in ways that meet today’s challenges and respond to the contemporary needs of their students. We’re glad to say that JHU appears to be uniquely attentive to the dynamism of this moment and this exact field. In 2019, JHU announced new curriculum — called “BME 2.0” — explaining that “the explosion of biomedical technology at the dawn of the 21st century has drastically changed both what we teach and how we teach it,” and declaring that, “with the prevalence of sophisticated technologies, combined with rapid advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, we are primed to develop a second‐generation curriculum to train a new wave of data‐driven biomedical engineers.”
They split BME into 7 focuses “to provide students the flexibility in their junior and senior years to personalize their education according to their interests and career goals” for the first time in the history of Johns Hopkins BME. Students can choose research concentrations in Biomedical Data Science, Computational Medicine, Genomics & Systems Biology, Imaging & Medical Devices, Immunoengineering, Neuroengineering, and Translational Cell & Tissue Engineering. Perhaps even more exemplary, BME 2.0 applies the “multi-generational learning” model used in med schools to undergraduates, harnessing the power of the hands-on “learn one ‐ do one – teach one” strategy.
If you’re looking for more accolades, you’ll find them; you can easily access the program’s outcomes by looking at the recent media, alumni news, and student opportunities publicly available on their website, but what speaks volumes to us, actually, is its integrity. If you are stalking the U.S. News medical school rankings, you’ll see Johns Hopkins “does not appear” on the 2025 list. That’s because, in late 2023, it withdrew from consideration alongside notable peer institutions like Harvard, Stanford, and Mount Sinai. Here’s the admirable reason cited by the interim dean: “The mission of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is to enroll diverse, academically outstanding students with a demonstrated interest in becoming healers and leaders in medicine and biomedical science. This goal reflects our commitment to the public trust, and it is not adequately assessed by the current measures used to rank medical schools.”
Now, if we’re being cynical (and sometimes you have to be), we can admit that this is not wholly selfless. After all, in joining the ranks of other top universities, they identified themselves as a stellar program and perhaps didn’t risk much. They might have disagreed with the criteria because they felt they were unfairly penalized or ranked lower than they deserved. But, on the other hand, these lists are widely circulated, and, in rejecting the most recognized evaluative system in higher education rankings, JHU forfeits the clout of being high up on the Best Medical Schools list. That’s really not nothing! Especially because one of their quibbles with the rankings was that it incentivized med schools to offer aid by test scores rather than financial need, making the med school admissions process even less equitable and preserving the status quo in a field that needs to create opportunities for aspiring doctors with diverse backgrounds.
These are all great signs, in our book, that JHU is not only continuing to make good on its legacy but keeping its finger on the pulse and building toward a better future. Woot!
If you’re hoping to get into top biomedical engineering programs like the one at Johns Hopkins, reach out to us for personalized guidance today.