Praying for the best!!! Thank y’all!
@fallenchemist I was wondering if you know how reliable the No-Loan Aid for families with incomes of $75,000 and under? My family falls under this category and my FA was selected for institutional review so I had to send in extra materials. I am afraid that because it is taking so long that I will not receive as much aid as I need.
@yng123
I cannot speak with any knowledge about the experience of applying for and the processing of the Tulane No-Loan program. I have known people that said they qualified and were going to apply for it, but none of them ever provided details of what happened next. They neither came back to say it went great and Tulane came through, nor did they ever say it was a nightmare and took forever.
I can only say that schools asking for a lot of detail and extra materials like receipts and the like is not at all unusual, and does take longer. But as long as you provide what they need in a timely manner, you should get an answer before the May 1 decision deadline. But I wouldn’t let the fact that it is taking a while make you too nervous. I have heard this same kind of thing from students applying for similar aid at other schools. After all, you are asking Tulane to subsidize you to the tune of $200,000 give or take a few thousand. So it is understandable they want all the i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
if i haven’t heard yet is it likely i did not get in/was waitlisted. a lot of my friends have heard
Well, unless a lot of people on here are just not posting, I think there are a lot of decisions yet to be released.
After being deferred, I was wait listed today.
@undecidedinSTL same here!
Waitlisted after being deferred EA. It looks like all the acceptances had already gone out and they were just deciding between waitlists & rejections …
@Brianna3 I think you may be right. Perhaps those who were already rejected were clear rejections, and the current rejection list they weren’t sure about. Well, it takes a little bit of the sting away to think of it that way since my son was rejected.
My daughter’s status changed from being reviewed yesterday, to waitlisted today 
Good luck to those still waiting!
i was rejected today
After being deferred EA, D was also waitlisted today. Honestly I’m not sure what’s going on with Tulane. There were many enticing emails early on along with the free application - and like many others we bought into the whole process. For those researching for future reference – beware of whatever marketing ploy is going on here. D got into quite a few other great schools so it’s okay, we were just left shaking our heads and still completely confused with the random and strange process.
lmao waitlisted after being deffered ea. great, i love waiting
Also waitlisted after being deferred. Not impressed with the Tulane process at all. Just cut to the chase from the get go and do not leave applicants waiting. I moved on after the deferral anyways and probably should have just asked to have my application removed. There are many other great opportunities. Interesting observation…only the male applicants were accepted from my school. No females accepted and today they were all waitlisted. Bizarre… Wishing you all great success as you begin your college journey’s.
I wasn’t going to say anything about some of the comments after being denied or wait listed, because I know it can sting or worse. But I just have to say that some of this is completely unfair. Every school that is even remotely like Tulane defers some EA and/or ED students into the RD round. They then also sometimes wait list those same students. Also, some other schools similarly turn down very high stat students that, in their estimation, are far more likely to attend elsewhere. It’s a judgement call, sometimes they turn down students that genuinely wanted Tulane and seem qualified (however, see third paragraph). But the fact that a lot of the same people moaning about Tulane’s decision also are listing great (!!) other schools they have gotten into and in some cases clearly stating that those schools were higher on their list anyway really seems to prove the point. I would note that this is not like a pro sport draft, where when a school “picks” (accepts) a student, they either have to sign with that school or not attend college at all. Virtually all students, especially at these upper levels, hold multiple acceptances and thus are more like free agents, at least to some degree.
The schools thus have to take measures to make sure they don’t have a shortfall of students that meet their academic and other criteria, but also don’t have too many and thus space issues. Trust me, this process is hard on everyone, but it is hard to come up with another way of doing it that simultaneously gives the student free choice of where to apply, where to go among the schools to which they are accepted, and at the same time meets the college’s need to attract the kind of student it needs in the right numbers. Frankly I am amazed they come so close to the “magic number” every year, and with great students. Only a very small number of schools are like Harvard and Stanford that have such high yields that it is easy to predict the class size just from the number they admit, and then they have the additional luxury of knowing that few people will turn down a wait list offer from them, and that student from the wait list only didn’t get in initially by the most hair thin difference from the ones that did, if even that. Tulane, Miami, WUSTL, Vandy, etc, don’t have that kind of situation because so many of the students applying to those schools are really trying for Ivies, and in the case of Tulane and Miami and USC and some others, Ivies plus Duke, Chicago, NU, etc. Not all students of course, but enough that it makes the job a lot tougher than at those other schools.
Of course, we cannot see those applications either. The student will swear up and down that they didn’t so this, but you would be amazed at how many applications Tulane gets from students with stats at the top of Tulane’s range with essays or emails that refer to Duke or Vanderbilt where Tulane should be. Or their essays just have gross errors in them. Of course they get those same mistaken submissions from students with lesser stats as well. The point being people get denied or pushed back for all sorts of reasons that are legitimate but we cannot know.
As far as the gender thing, I think that the situation at citybus’ school might be just a partial coincidence, but it is perfectly plausible that Tulane is trying to increase the male population at the school. Every incoming class for at least the last 7 years has been predominantly female, to the tune of about 57-43%. Which is very close to what is happening nationally (56-44% I have read). I think one class about 3 years ago was really skewed at about 62-38% IIRC. That isn’t healthy for any coed institution, both for the students and the school. It is obvious why it is especially bad for the women, although it isn’t great in many aspects for the guys either. For Tulane, it also risks more transfers from female students who are unhappy with such an imbalance. That hurts retention, a key factor Tulane is working hard to improve and has improved considerably. Anyway, given that fact, it isn’t surprising Tulane seems to be favoring the men in acceptances. I guess we will see if it is true when the CDS for this year comes out. That data is very clearly broken down by gender.
The rest I won’t comment on, but those two things were just really being unfairly characterized as something Tulane is doing wrong. Especially the deferrals and wait listing. I really do understand the deep disappointment many feel at this time of year regarding all highly selective schools. Far more people get disappointed than pleased, and the number of the former rises quickly the higher you go up the selectivity ladder. Virtually all the students end up having wonderful college experiences.
My experience with Tulane’s recruitment strategies (albeit anecdotal, not official) is that the students who are besieged with enticements to apply are students who are actually in the ballpark. Some may be at the lower end of Tulane’s traditional “admit range,” but they are not out of it entirely, and thus a strong senior year could make them even more viable contenders. These students also receive a free Tulane application to go along with the enticements.
Many colleges, on the other hand, pursue students who don’t have a prayer of acceptance and then extract an application fee to boot, once the student acquiesces and applies. (Check out this related CC thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1731244-what-are-your-stalker-schools-and-have-you-caved-in-to-them.html ).
As a parent myself, I know how painful it can be (frustrating, too) when a child is waitlisted or denied, yet I do agree with fallenchemist that the Tulane process is fair and, in spite of the avalanche of mailings, more reasonable than most.
Finally, speaking as someone who used to be on the adjudication side of the desk in a college admission office, I can assure all of you that there were times when my favorite applicant was waitlisted or denied. So those of you who got bad news from Tulane–or from anywhere–please know that you may have had big fans in the admission office but, nonetheless, there was something in your file (test scores? GPA? course selection? etc.) that wasn’t quite what the college was seeking. Yet that doesn’t mean that some folks in the admission office weren’t rooting for you.
All of this talk about being selected to receive a free application is silly. I believe all applications are free at Tulane.
Yes, Tulane does not charge anyone an application fee. The fact (at least I assume it is a fact based on feedback here) that the recipient of their “special application” or other marketing piece might easily infer that they are being given a special break is beyond trivial. It’s marketing, it is supposed to make you feel warmly towards the school and about yourself. The fact that it is free and therefore saving that family another $75 or whatever is a bit less trivial.
I think @Sally_Rubenstone is spot on, and she knows it from the inside. While I completely understand how personal this feels to a student, and to many parents, one has to step back and realize that with the sheer numbers involved, it isn’t personal at all but is instead simply the current state of college admissions, especially at the highly competitive schools.
I think that Tulane doesn’t smell of being a highly competitive school, so the more than competitive applications feel insulted LOL. The it isn’t personal thing is a two way street when many kids would have banged that applicaton out in 15 mins.
You are welcome to your opinion, of course. But by any reasonable definition of “highly competitive”, Tulane definitely is. The average SAT scores for the incoming freshmen are consistently in the top 35 of the country for national research universities, that is non-LAC’s. That’s top 35 out of about 2500 4 year schools. The same basic range is true for other academic measures and for acceptance rates. Is it in the same range as Harvard or Stanford, etc.? No, obviously not. Those 25 or so schools are labeled as “most competitive”. I realize with the recent phenomenon of 5-8% acceptance rates, mostly due to the common app and high levels of marketing, acceptance rates of 20-25% don’t seem as impressive or challenging any longer. But a very few years ago those numbers were, in fact, considered to be “most competitive”.
So you can be as dismissive as you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. Also, I don’t remotely understand your second sentence. What does the time it takes to complete the application have to do with anyone taking the acceptance decision of a denial personally? Especially since if they only spent 15 minutes on it (remember there are two short essays, one of which requires actually knowing something about Tulane if it is going to be anything other than cliche) I would think that would make them take a denial far less personally. It isn’t clear what you meant, at least to me. Sure, if a student spent hours on an application, agonizing over every word, then I could see them being more disappointed in being denied. I am not saying they won’t take it personally, I am just saying that by understanding the process, especially the numbers involved, that they shouldn’t take it personally. Easier said than done, I admit.