Johns Hopkins Engineering Innovation — Residential, Homewood Campus

Students take one college-level Johns Hopkins course for the whole four weeks — Explore Engineering Innovation or Sustainable Energy Engineering — and earn three Johns Hopkins University credits. Class runs nine to three on weekdays in the university's own teaching buildings, with a lunch break in the campus cafeteria and optional faculty lectures afterwards on many days. Instructors hold Johns Hopkins faculty appointments and typically have a doctorate; teaching fellows and assistants, among them local high school teachers, graduate students and former students of the programme, work alongside them. A class holds eighteen to twenty-four students, who work in project teams of up to four, at a stated ratio of twelve students per instructor or better.

The figure shown is the school's own published estimate for a residential place at the Homewood campus, made up of the application fee, tuition and the residential fee, which covers the residence hall and all meals. The school publishes a lower estimate for its commuter format, where the student sleeps at home, and separate estimates for its online and hybrid formats — ask us and we will send the current figures. Health insurance issued by a United States provider is required before enrolment is confirmed and is not part of the estimate; students without it are pointed to a summer-only plan the school names, for which it publishes no price. Travel, souvenirs and personal spending are not included.

Most students live in Wolman Hall, the university's residence hall a few blocks from the teaching buildings; about sixty live in the adjacent Scott-Bates Commons. Suites hold two to four students with their own bathroom and a small kitchenette with a compact refrigerator and sink, and the halls have central air conditioning, laundry rooms, common areas and, in Wolman Hall, a movie theatre, a game room and an exercise room. Suitemates are assigned by the residential staff and specific requests cannot be accommodated; rooms are assigned by the gender the student gives on the application, and the school asks anyone for whom that does not work to contact its office. The residential side of the programme is run by Summer Discovery, which provides the live-in residential advisors. Students check in on the Sunday before classes begin and may stay until the morning after the final day; the school states plainly that it cannot house students before check-in day or after that morning.

Every meal is part of the residential package, from dinner on check-in day to breakfast on check-out day. Students eat in the campus cafés — breakfast before class, lunch in the hour-long break in the campus cafeteria, dinner in the evening within a set hour. Dietary allergies and restrictions are collected on the application forms.

Weekday evenings belong to the residential staff's programme — films, karaoke, games and more — or to the campus athletic facilities and homework. Every Saturday there is a field trip with the residential staff; the school lists the Baltimore Zoo, Hershey Park, the Udvar-Hazy Center and local state parks among past destinations. Sundays are for rest, activities run by the residential life staff, and finishing project work. On many weekdays there are also optional afternoon lectures by Johns Hopkins faculty and graduate students about their current research.

Students are a few blocks from the academic buildings, the dining halls, the campus cafés and the recreation centre, and they have access to all of them. Classes are traditionally held across several university buildings including Latrobe, Clark, Krieger, Maryland, Shaffer and Wyman Park. The residence halls provide wireless internet, laundry rooms, common areas, and in Wolman Hall a movie theatre, a game room and an exercise room; students also have library access on campus.

The programme is built as a preview of life as an engineering undergraduate rather than as a summer camp: real university teaching buildings, real credit, a residence hall shared with students from across the country and around the world, and a schedule that leaves evenings and weekends to the people you live with. The signature moment of Explore Engineering Innovation is bridge day, when the teams load the bridges they have built until they fail.