You all are making me a bit self-conscious about writing off Hopkins so fast! Combination of unfavorable finances and not liking the area/curriculum. Personally, I didn't think the boost to my ego would counteract how unhappy I'd be in Baltimore, stressing about the grading system and lamenting how much less money I would have spent on another school for the same education.
To the OP, I'm sorry you were leaning towards JHU and then got a discouraging finaid package! I think if it were the one place you can imagine yourself being happy at, then you might want to go and deal with the costs and debt. But remember that a lot of the people who are saying that they'd pay anything to go to JHU aren't actually in that situation, and if they actually had to make the choice might not be so sure. I would have said a similar thing about one particular school, until I was offered a financial aid deal at another school that made me look back at what I was really attracting me to my supposed "dream school". I.e. how flashy the facilities were and how highly the school was ranked. When I reevaluated the two on more concrete criteria (*money*, clinical training, curriculum, student body, etc), my opinion changed dramatically.