If you're thinking of attending Maryland private colleges, Johns Hopkins University is certainly worth researching. As one of the premier and oldest research universities in the nation, Johns Hopkins University attracts some of the nation's top students and faculty.

The focus of undergraduate life at Johns Hopkins University is on the Homewood campus, 140 acres of Georgian architecture in a park-like setting adjacent to the funky north Baltimore neighborhoods of Charles Village and Hampden. This is home to the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Whiting School of Engineering. More than 4,000 undergraduates call Homewood "home."

Johns Hopkins University has won the most federal research and development funding of all research universities. This is due in large measure to the work of the Applied Physics Laboratory, a division of the university devoted entirely to research and development. The School of Medicine, however, is the largest recipient of National Institutes of Health research grants to medical schools. The Bloomberg School of Public Health, the first of its kind in this country, ranks first among public health schools in federal research support.

In all, Johns Hopkins University has eight academic divisions that go above and beyond what you'd come to expect from Maryland private colleges. The Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the G.W.C Whiting School of Engineering and the School of Professional Studies in Business and Education are based at the Homewood campus in northern Baltimore. The schools of Medicine, Public Health, and Nursing are in east Baltimore, sharing a campus with The Johns Hopkins Hospital. The Peabody Institute, founded in 1857 and a leading professional school of music, has been affiliated with Johns Hopkins since 1977. It is located on Mount Vernon Place in downtown Baltimore. The Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, founded in 1943, has been a Hopkins division since 1950. It is located in Washington, D.C.

Johns Hopkins University also has a campus near Rockville in Montgomery County, Md., and has academic facilities in Nanjing, China, and in Bologna and Florence, Italy. It maintains a network of continuing education facilities throughout the Baltimore-Washington area, including centers in downtown Baltimore, in downtown Washington and in Columbia.