Cafes are the havens of college campuses; places to rest between classes, caffeinate before another all-nighter and socialize for what will likely be the only five minutes of interpersonal interaction in either party's day. Hopkins is lucky enough to have six coffee shops (of varying qualities) present on Homewood campus alone. I took the liberty of ranking each of these cafes, from worst to best, to help you decide where to get your next caffeine fix.

6. Barnes and Noble

The Starbucks at Barnes and Noble is, undeniably, the least appealing café in any proximity to campus. They serve all the boring Starbucks drinks, but none of the good ones, and by good ones I mean green tea lemonade because that’s the only thing I buy. They won’t take Starbucks cards, which is enough to bump them to the bottom ranking alone, because if I’m buying a drink this overpriced I want to do so with the knowledge that, if I just buy several more, eventually I’ll get some sort of discount to allow me to convince myself I’m getting a good deal. The food isn’t even real Starbucks food. If they were the only Starbucks in the area, I’d appreciate them more. But, in full Starbucks tradition, there’s literally another one half a block down the street.

5. Levering

Levering café isn’t quite the worst on campus, but only because Barnes and Noble holds a fast claim to that title. With the food court downstairs, the old sandwiches sitting in that tiny fridge seem all the more unappealing, and there’s no drink you can get at Levering that you can’t get somewhere else that’s better lit and doesn’t play the same track of outdated pop songs from opening to close.

The couches are really comfortable when downstairs is full and you have to come up to eat your veggie udon, and the fireplaces are nice on the one day a year they’re actually lit, but otherwise, they really don’t have much going for them. If you’ve ever actually bought something from Levering café, let me know how it is.

4. Mudd

Mudd isn’t so much a hidden gem of a coffee shop, but it’s good enough that it deserves more attention than it tends to get. Maybe you frequent Mudd more if you’re one of those ~science majors~ who actually does things in the UTL or you take Nine-A.M.s in that massive lecture hall downstairs, but in the few times I’ve been to the Mudd atrium, those rocking chairs have seemed more appealing than any coffee would.

Not surprisingly, Mudd never seems to be out of bagels, which is an advantage over its big brother Brody, and there’s never a line long enough that you have to question whether that piece of toast is worth being late to class. If you happen to be in Mudd already, or you really, really, really want a bagel, I’d recommend it. Otherwise, poor Mudd just gets overshadowed.

3. Brody

We’re going to ignore the fact that the café’s real name is “Daily Grind,” both because I personally prefer not to associate my coffee with any questionable dance-move-related connotations, and because no one who’s in their right mind actually calls it anything other than Brody Café. Brody, in the kindest terms, is Decent, with a capital D. The plastic wrapped around every muffin makes you question exactly how fresh their daily supplies of pastries are, but it’s nice that they make the doors heavy enough that you can get a nice workout in to balance out that sugar.

Their coffee’s fine, the space is nice, and the location really couldn’t be better, but you can never escape that looming knowledge that once they call your drink and slide that tinfoil-wrapped toast across the counter, you’re going to have to descend back into the abyss of MSE. My most memorable Brody experience, honestly, is that one time I came in at seven A.M. after an all nighter and they actually still had bagels. This one’s a solid B+.

2. Real Starbucks

Okay, so Real Starbucks isn’t technically on campus, but it’s notable enough to still come in at a solid second place. Starbucks has the unique benefit of being close enough to campus that you can go get a frappe before heading to Brody without feeling like you’re actually procrastinating, but it’s far enough that you can pretend you’ve finally emerged from the depths of the campus bubble.

What’s more, Real Starbucks has that unique quality of being completely independent, which means not only can we look up to Starbucks as the college student we want to be, but we can actually use those poor, neglected gold cards from high school days. In short, Real Starbucks, with its fancy drinks and customer base consisting of equal amounts students and real people, is solid because it lets us forget the hell of Hopkins. Also, in the words of my ever-eloquent roommate, “their cake pops are really good, too.”

1. Alkimia

Alkimia. Love of my life. Nemesis of my wallet. The holy grail of campus coffee shops. It’s possible their lattes only taste better because I’ve just come out of my three-hour seminar class and I’m still in that miserable stupor of mid-afternoon workshop sessions. It’s possible that their beautiful, artful, delicious salads taste like the only real food on campus to me only because I just had to call my dad and ask permission to spend nine dollars on a plastic case of glorified lettuce. It could even be that the hordes of hipster grad students roaming free, with their androgynous haircuts and patterned sweaters, remind me of my home city, Seattle, and allow me to pretend I’m back in the world of real coffee, birkenstocks, and a significantly more predictable weather pattern. Whatever it is, I can guarantee if you take one bite of one of their earl grey brownies you’ll be converted over from any café whose name ends in the word “grind.”