"The Hopkins Effect," wrote a columnist in New York Magazine last March, explains everything from why New York Mayor and Hopkins alum Michael Bloomberg suffers from a plummeting popularity rating to why undergrads toil away countless hours in the depths of MSE.
"The classic Hopkins grad isn't just a dork," the author wrote. "He's a dork with a superiority complex."
But there is more to the stereotypical Hopkins student than a haughty fa?ade bonded with barrels of book smarts. Indeed, the Hopkins mentality is often referred to as something even more malevolent. "Cutthroat," or "throaty" for short, is the perception that students here are willing to do anything to keep their peers from succeeding.
The stories of cutthroat behavior are nearly as pervasive as they are malicious. Most ubiquitous are stories of students who steal notes from their peers not because they need them, but just so that a competitor wouldn't have them to study.
In other cases, students have pulled fire alarms before major exams, some say in an attempt to disrupt what little sleep their peers may be getting the night before a test.
But is this reality at Johns Hopkins? Are we doomed to spend our college careers trying to beat out the competition just so that we can advance to the next stage of life, whether it is medical school, law school, graduate school or a top-flight job?
Yes, says senior Brian Fishman, a double major in Biology and Psychology who says he laments the culture of trying to succeed at the expense of others.
Fishman believes that the so-called cutthroat attitude is particularly prevalent in classes that are graded on a curve.
"The problem is that the only way to do well is if other people do poorly," he said.
In turn, that leads to a culture of competition, particularly in an environment such as Hopkins that is full of highly motivated students.
"The curve motivates people to study too much, which sets a very high standard. Some people can't keep up because they want to have some semblance of a social life," Fishman said.
In classes with curves that do not pit students directly against each other, such as introductory physics, Fishman says that he has found students somewhat likely to help each other.
On the other hand, in classes such as Genetics, where students must use outside articles and obscure sources to find answers to homework questions, Fishman says he has found his peers are more likely to guard their answers closely.
"People are less likely to share information if they've sat at their computer for an hour or two to find the answer for that one question," he says.
Senior Aaron Seider, an international relations major, disagrees with the conclusion that Hopkins students are cutthroat. He believes that Hopkins' reputation derives more from legend than from fact.
"I think that it may have been true at one point and now it's sort of like an urban myth."
Seider says that for the most part, he sees Hopkins students as being focused on advancing themselves, but not necessarily at the expense of their peers.
"People don't attack other people to get ahead. They just work extremely hard at what they do. I think the fire alarms before the biology exam is more of a joke than a cutthroat act."
And while he concedes that there are a few people who are cutthroat, they are few and far between.
"I think there are a couple of people who are willing to do whatever they feel is necessary, but the vast majority of people at JHU, especially outside of the premed field, are not cutthroat at all."
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