Graduate Visit Day

Mike Bernard, our Academic Program Manager is your point of contact and your Graduate Visit Day host. He will answer your questions and provide help and can both be reached at [email protected]. Current Johns Hopkins students can also send a message to Mike  via Microsoft Teams.

You will also meet PhD student hosts, who will meet you during the various events!

Here are details concerning travel…

CAR

Whether you travel by car to either the airport or train station, or to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins directly, we will reimburse you mileage at the rate of 67 cents per mile. Please keep a record of how many miles you drive to ensure appropriate reimbursement.

PARKING

If you drive to the Homewood campus, please park in the underground “South Garage” parking lot at the main entrance at the southern end of campus. We will provide you with a pass that will pay your parking fee upon exit.

On Thursday night, drivers can park in the garage on West 33rd Street right next to the Study.  You will have to pay for parking on your own and the department will reimburse you.  Information will appear here shortly on how to set up an account with the parking garage.

AIR and RAIL

The University will help you arrange travel through the University’s Travel Office.  The department will connect you to the Travel Office, who will contact you separately and shortly to arrange your travel. We anticipate no out-of-pocket airline costs for you, though you may incur costs for transportation services like Lyft or a taxi, for which you will be reimbursed for all ground transportation, from your home to your home airport or train station and from Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) to your hotel and University, and the same for your trip home.

UBER ride vouchers are being arranged for you, right on your Uber app!  We will provide Uber ride vouchers paid directly by the Department of Mechanical Engineering, which will be added to your account using the telephone number and e-mail address you provided as your telephone number and e-mail address in your graduate application.  You will not have to pay for your rides if you use these vouchers.

Here’s what to do:

• If you don’t have it already, download the Uber app and set up an account, using your telephone number and the e-mail address that you are using with your graduate application.  Note: the telephone number has to be an American or Canadian number for it to work.
• The vouchers will be loaded to each account beginning at 1:00 a.m. Eastern Standard time on February 26, 2025.  You won’t see the vouchers until then.
• You will receive an e-mail from Uber with information about the vouchers.
• After the vouchers are loaded, look inside the Uber app and you will see a voucher for your rides for the entire event.
• For questions and concerns, please contact us at [email protected], but wait until the voucher is downloaded.

If you don’t use the Uber app Free ride option, you can travel from the airport to the Johns Hopkins University’s “Homewood” campus and the Inn at the Colonnade by using a taxi or airport shuttle to the hotel or the Light Rail or MARC train to Pennsylvania Station, which is just a little over one mile from the campus. There are plenty of taxis, Uber, Lyft, and free Johns Hopkins shuttles at Penn Station to bring you to the University and the Inn (and you should be able to use your free Uber ride). The nearest stop to the Inn is the Interfaith Center, at Charles St. and University Parkway. The hotel will be one block to the northwest of that stop on University Parkway.

Please keep your receipts for your airport-to-hotel travel and mileage information to drive to and from your home airport to submit for reimbursement.

For visitors whose homes are not local to Baltimore, the department will cover one nights’ hotel stay for Thursday, February 27 and, if necessary, we will cover Friday, February 28, 2025, if your travel plans require another night’s stay. We have reserved accommodations at The Study at Johns Hopkins, 3215 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218.  The Study is across the street from the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University.

We have reserved your hotel room. Do not reserve a room separately.

The hotel has reserved the rooms under “Mechanical Engineering – Graduate Visit Day.” Your name will be on the guest list when you arrive. We will cover the cost of parking at the hotel, as well.

Check-in and Check-out Time, and Storing Luggage

Check in will be at 3:00 p.m. on your arrival date. Check-out time will be 11:00 a.m. on your final day at the hotel.  For those departing at the end of Graduate Visit Day on Friday, February 28, you will want to check out before meeting in the lobby. The Study will store your luggage for you in the hotel.

Are you within 30-45 minutes’ drive from Baltimore?

Those who have to drive here from other areas but are within 30-45 minutes’ drive from home have the option of staying over on Wednesday and Thursday at the hotel. We will assume you will not stay in the hotel unless you request a room. If you would like to stay in the hotel, please let Mike know right away at [email protected].

Staying over an extra night?

If you need to stay an extra night on Friday, please contact us at [email protected] as soon as you can.

Here is the schedule of events for Graduate Visit Day.  All times may be flexible depending on weather and schedule changes.  Watch this space for updates.

ARRIVAL

If you can, please arrive the afternoon of Thursday, February 27, 2025 as events begin in the early evening.

For those of you visiting on alternate days, we will work with you individually about your schedules.

THURSDAY AFTERNOON (Optional)

If you arrive early, you are welcome to visit the Mechanical Engineering Graduate Seminar, which begins at 3:00 p.m. in Mergenthaler Hall 111, the hall’s main auditorium. This is the walking path from The Study to Mergenthaler Hall.  The seminar will also be available on Zoom.

Dr. Bridget Benner from Brown University will present a lecture on “Flow-Induced Oscillations of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines.”

THURSDAY EVENING

6:30-8:30 p.m. / 1800-2030 – Dinner and Information Session at The Study

We cordially invite you to join us for dinner in The Studio 3 and 4 rooms of The Study on the second floor.  A catered dinner will be offered that has meat and vegetarian options. After dinner, we will have an information session in Studio 1, where Mike Bernard will present information on the department’s graduate program.

FRIDAY

8:15 a.m. / 0815 – Check Out if Departing on February 28

While the Checkout Time of the hotel is 11:00 a.m., visitors will be on campus the entire day.  If you are leaving the event and going home on Friday, February 28, please check out at the hotel’s front desk around 8:15 a.m. Your luggage will be stored at the Study and can be picked up when you leave the event.  For those staying over on February 28, check out time will be on Saturday, March 1 by 11:00 a.m.

8:30 a.m. / 0830 – Meet in the Hotel Lobby

On Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., we will meet our visitors staying at the Study, in their lobby to escort everyone to our presentation area. It will be about a 10-minute walk to Shriver Hall’s Clipper Room on the second floor. Please dress for the weather.  If you have ambulation concerns where a 10-minute walk will be difficult, please notify us right away so we can arrange transportation. We will show you various buildings where your faculty interviews and lab tours will take place.  We will take a very brief detour to point out the locations of buildings where your faculty / visitor interviews will take place.

For those driving to campus and not staying in the hotel, you will want to park in the South Garage on the Homewood Campus. Parking information is in the “Travel” section  of this page.  We will give you parking passes to pay for your parking.  Shriver Hall is one building away from the South Garage. Go to the northeast entrance of the garage farthest away from the drive-in entry point, take the elevator or stairs to the Hackerman Hall breezeway and turn right. Shriver Hall is the next building with the white pillars and sky blue tympanum with the Hopkins seal.

9:00 a.m. / 0900 Breakfast and Deep Dive – Shriver Hall, Clipper Room

We will enjoy a continental breakfast provided by THB Bagelry .  We will then meet professors, researchers, and students for a Deep Dive into one of four research areas: fluid mechanics, robotics, biomechanics, and mechanics and materials.  You will have the option to attend one of the four research Deep Dives. Most of you will be taken to labs for tours. Mingle with our research and get to know our people and our work!

11:30 a.m.-12:00 noon / 1130-1200 – Graduate Student Panel – Hodson Hall, Room 213

You will meet a cross-section of graduate students at a Graduate Student Panel to ask the hard questions, out of sight of faculty and administrators, about what it’s really like at Hopkins. It’s a great time to ask the questions you might be reticent to ask faculty members or administrators.

12:00 noon / 1200 – Lunch – Shriver Hall, Clipper Room

We will have a “Meet and Greet” lunch in the Clipper Room. Here you will have a chance to meet additional students and faculty in an informal environment.

Note that a few visitors may have interviews with the faculty during the morning, though most will be in the afternoon.

1:00 p.m. / 1300 or 4:00 p.m. / 1600 – Campus Tour

Visitors will be given a walking tour of campus to see other parts of campus. We won’t see the entire campus, but we will show you as much as we can.  A second tour will occur later in the afternoon.  Each visitor will be assigned either the 1:00 or the 4:00 tour, depending on their faculty/visitor interview schedules.

2:00 p.m. / 1400 and through the afternoon – Meet the Faculty

You will be scheduled to meet with individual faculty members to discuss your questions and interests, along with visits to laboratories to meet current students. Each visitor will receive a schedule tailored to them.

You will not only get to meet professors in whom you are interested and professors who are interested in you, you will also meet professors and students in other labs, even if there is no specific interest between you, to get a well-rounded perspective of the research being conducted in the areas of interest noted in your graduate application. These are called “informational” visits.

You will receive an e-mail notification with your interview schedule several days before Graduate Visit Day.

Do you want to speak to specific professors?
If you have specific professors with whom you would like to speak during faculty and visitor meetings, please contact us at [email protected] with your preferences. We can’t guarantee that every request will be accommodated, but we will do our best to do so.

6:30 p.m. / 1830 – Dinner for anyone who can stay – Lao Sze Chuan

For anyone who can stay later, we will have dinner together at Lao Sze Chuan on the corner of 33rd and N. Charles St., about one block east of The Study. Lao Sze Chuan has just opened and welcomes new guests.  Set in an exquisite dining room with window views of the city, Lao Sze Chuan offers Chinese and Szechuan cuisine, with menus for those sensitive to certain ingredients, who avoid pork, and for vegans and vegetarians.. Of course, the Department will pay for dinner.  Enjoy a wide variety of delicious foods on the menu!  We will meet in the central first floor lobby of Latrobe Hall at 6:10 p.m. and walk to the restaurant.  Contact Mike at [email protected] if you would like to go.

Graduate Visit Days will end when these events are completed. You will receive an e-mail offering the chance to critique and assess Graduate Visit Day. We look forward to your feedback to help make the event better in future years.

Of course, you will want to dress for the weather.  In past years, temperatures have been as cold as 14 F / -10 C and as warm as 80 F / 27 C!  We have had sunny days, cloudy days, rainy days, and occasionally, snowy days.  Average temperatures are usually a high of 49 F / 9 C and a low of 29 F / -2 C.  Check this link for weather in Baltimore.

For the Thursday night dinner, dress is casual and comfortable – you’ll be eating, drinking, and mingling.

For the events and the one-on-one faculty visits on Friday – dress at least business-casual (or business, if you prefer) but be comfortable. You will do some walking, some sitting, some lab-visiting, and some socializing. During the year, we usually dress “business casual” in the offices and labs in Mechanical Engineering, though some labs dress casually. There is occasional opportunity to dress more formally at special events.

Graduate Visit Day is like a “job interview” where you and we are deciding whether or not we are each others’ “best fit” for your graduate school experience. Weather may also dictate your clothing choices. Dress accordingly and comfortably.

Here are some tips to prepare for an interview with our faculty members:

• Visit the Faculty page for a list of our faculty and their research interests. There are links to their lab sites where you can view their research in detail.
  
• Visit Google Scholar for a list of publications by our faculty members. See if your school’s library or local library will give you free access to articles.
  
• Be prepared to talk about what interests you about their research. On each Faculty member’s “full profile” pages are publications of their recent papers, which you can often look up in Google Scholar or your school’s or local library. Read a couple papers. While you won’t be expected to know, much less understand everything in the papers, that fact that you took interest and can discuss what you read will impress professors.
  
• Sometimes, professors would like to see your resume and/or transcript, so have copies of them available that you can send to faculty either before or during your in-person or virtual interview.
  
• Think about how your research interests, skills, aspirations, and goals will mesh with the research currently conducted by the faculty members in whom you are interested.
  
• Think about how you can contribute to the success of the faculty’s research – your skills, work ethic, and dedication.
  
• Our faculty are very friendly and have had your experience when they were graduate students, so they have “been in your shoes.” While you might be nervous and eager to impress your interviewers, remember that this is an informational and exploratory conversation where not only our faculty are learning about you, but you are also interviewing the faculty to explore if their research is what you will want to do as a graduate student.
  
• Be friendly, be professional, be inquisitive, and be appreciative. The faculty are just as grateful that you are considering them as you are grateful that faculty are considering you.
• Do you want to speak to a specific professor(s)? If you have a specific professor with whom you would like to speak during faculty and visitor meetings, please contact us at [email protected] early with your preferences. We can’t guarantee that every request will be accommodated, but we will do our best to do so.

The Study will provide you WiFi access and connection information.  While on campus, you can connect to the free JHGuestnet wifi.

This “Life in Baltimore” slideshow will be presented Thursday evening. Baltimore’s a grand city…charming, historic, vibrant, and multicultural!

There are plenty of attractions and things to do in and around Johns Hopkins University. There are a multitude of cultural events throughout the city and surrounding areas, as well. Check out Visit Baltimore for a host of grand and fun things to do.

If it’s your first time in Baltimore, check out the Inner Harbor downtown, which has a lot of beautiful sights to see. An, Uber, Lyft, or taxi ride would the be quickest way to get there (you can use your Uber voucher, too).

If you like a quieter scene, check out the Baltimore Museum of Art, just south of campus on Art Museum Drive. It’s a 10-minute walk from the Inn at the Colonnade, and a stone’s throw from Latrobe Hall. Their sculpture garden is very nice. Also, on the east side of campus on Charles St. and St. Paul St., which run parallel to each other, are some fun little cafes and places to sit and contemplate.

Want to know why Baltimore is a great place to study and live? Watch this:

We all very much look forward to meeting you, and hope that your experience here will compel you to choose Johns Hopkins University as your graduate school. Please contact Mike with questions, and we’ll see you at Graduate Visit Day!