<p>I think (and this is from memory) that if a student has at least a 3.6 they can request admission to the honors program after their freshman year. Here’s the website for the Honors program [Tulane</a> University Honors Program / Welcome](<a href=“http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp]Tulane”>http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp)</p>
<p>Correction: From the Nov 2009 “Live chat” with Pres Cowen:
[Tulane</a> Admission: Chat with President Cowen](<a href=“http://admission.tulane.edu/president/livechat110909.php]Tulane”>http://admission.tulane.edu/president/livechat110909.php)</p>
<p>^jvm626, thanks for the quick response!</p>
<p>My pleasure, pcp. Did your s get into Tulane? Apologies-- I can’t keep up with everyone’s acceptances!!</p>
<p>@ Youdon’tsay: As you may know, there are 5 levels of automatic merit awards. President’s ($25,000), Distinguished Scholars ($22,000), Founder’s ($20,000) and Academic Achievement ($15,000). There is also a $7,500 award, but I am not sure what that is called. In that I have been tracking these things for a while (weird, I know), I think virtually every student that get’s the President’s gets invited to Honors. There has been only one case cited where that wasn’t true, but at this point I am convinced that either that person was mistaken or it was an oversight by admissions. In addition, there are a handful of Distinguished Scholar recipients that get invited also. I have never been made aware of any other award recipient being offered freshman acceptance to the Honors Program. Since the criteria for the scholarships and the invitations are based on the same academic records, it follows that they are correlated.</p>
<p>However, as was pointed out, one can still take the Honors courses and earn their way in. But I think President Cowan misspoke when he said 3.4 and I think jym had it right the first time. At least, that according to the Honors web page. [Tulane</a> University Honors Program / Honors Program Requirements](<a href=“http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp?id=ProgramRequirements]Tulane”>http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp?id=ProgramRequirements)</p>
<p>Hope that helps!</p>
<p>Thanks for the correction, FC. The 3.6 is what I thought, but who am I to disagree with the president!?!?!?</p>
<p>Indeed!! I was almost fearful to post that without checking with him or Dr. Luongo first! But I figure that his talks are probably largely off-the-cuff while the website has very recently been updated. Either way, it is what it is and one would quickly find out the right answer when they got to Tulane and inquired.</p>
<p>I believe the GPA reqm’t in honors is that freshman/sophomore maintain 3.4 and for junior/senior it is 3.6…</p>
<p>jvm626, we haven’t received a decision yet. Eagerly looking forward to it though.</p>
<p>hovermom - two different issues. You are absolutely correct for the students already in the program, but (at least according to the link above) to get in after freshman year if you are not already in is 3.6 GPA. I will leave it to people smarter than I to derive how that is logical. I only report the facts as I see them, lol.</p>
<p>If the 25k year scholarship doesn’t cut down on my EFC and I already fall under the “no loans” policy…what’s the point?</p>
<p>I don’t mean to sound like a naysayer, but if it’s not going to cut down my cost of attendance one cent, why not give it to someone say who didn’t need financial aid?</p>
<p>They are independent decisions. Tulane is need blind for admissions, and merit scholarships fall into that process. See the second sentence of this link [Tulane</a> Admission: Scholarships & Aid](<a href=“http://admission.tulane.edu/aid/index.php]Tulane”>http://admission.tulane.edu/aid/index.php)
</p>
<p>It’s a complicated process, but I would hope in the end that if Tulane has a certain number of $$ budgeted for financial aid of one sort or another, it finds its way to students they would love to have attend.</p>
<p>There is a practical aspect to doing it this way though. Further down in that same link, as you undoubtedly read already
</p>
<p>So let’s say, just to make the example easy, that total expenses calculated by Tulane are $52,000 and that your family’s EFC is $0. With the scholarship that leaves $27,000 to be covered by federal grants and other sources, and I have no idea if there is a work-study component to receiving this aid. Now let’s say you got no scholarship but everything else is the same. Tulane has to cover the entire $52,000 from sources other than the scholarship fund. I can definitely see situations where this makes a difference. To the extent your family is able to contribute something, it might mean less work-study (if there is any) or other differences in how they cover your expenses.</p>
<p>Now I will admit I am largely guessing, but this seems like a logical explanation to me.</p>
<p>Tilgaham: Your earlier post implied your family had an EFC of more than zero. Any need-based aid will assume that the EFC is coming from the family. Depending on the combination of EFC and Merit/Scholarship aid, the calculated need based aid may be zero if expenses less Merit/Scholarship aid is more than the EFC.
To take fallenchemist’s exeample a step further, if a family did not qualify for the No Loan program and had an EFC of $30,000 and received a $25,000 Merit award, they would need to come up with $27,000/year rather than the EFC of $30,000 if there was no Merit award. I know, clear as mud.</p>
<p>Is non-Honors housing significantly different from Honors housing? That was a big draw to me for ds to be in honors.</p>
<p>Check this link for Butler House:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.tulane.edu/~housing/opt_infresh.html[/url]”>http://www.tulane.edu/~housing/opt_infresh.html</a></p>
<p>Youdon’tsay - The simple answer to your question is yes, Honors Dorm (Butler) is different than the others. At Tulane each dorm really has different characteristics, or at least certain kinds of dorms do. So Sharp and Monroe are very similar, and are your classic, older hall bath dorms. Not as bad, I think, as the UPenn dorm described elsewhere because there has been some updating, but not a luxury hotel either. These dorms tend to be the noisiest. Wall is the residential college suite style dorm that has a professor and his family living there. JL is the last remaining single sex dorm (female, so not applicable here. Well, not directly, lol). Butler is quieter, as you would expect, but still very social. It is also an older, hall bath style dorm, so again it is not anything special in terms of amenities. But my D finds it comfortable, friendly, and nice that she generally doesn’t get woken up by yelling and raucous behavior at 3 in the morning.</p>
<p>They are building a new suite style, residential college dorm next to Butler, but I am not sure what the plans for that are. The 10-15 year plan is to have all the dorms be residential college dorms. I would love to know what that means for the future of Monroe, Sharp, Butler and JL. But for your purposes of the immediate future, that is how it pretty much lays out.</p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Many who prefer a quieter dorm select Wall (the residential college) or Patterson (the wellness dorm).</p>
<p>And as an aside paperchasepop, its jym, not jvm :)</p>
<p>^A big apology, jym626. It must be my java training…</p>
<p>no prob, PCP!</p>
<p>My EFC is slightly under 10,000. A 25k scholarship doesn’t seem to knock any of that off. That’s why I made the comment I did.</p>