<p>Thanks for the information, gowill! It hadn’t sounded as though the parent program was as full as the student program – I’m glad to hear there’s more going on than I realized.</p>
<p>Arlmom2, no problem. I was nervous about my first trip to NOLA with just me and my son. The trip was wonderful and my son was sold. Fortunately, with my son’s scholarship we were able to swing the rest of the tuition. My second child is a different story, so I know what you are going through, waiting for offers etc.
I would recommend you stay somewhere on St Charles, you will feel more comfortable walking around on your own if the need arises. Have fun and good luck in your decisions.</p>
<p>My son tweeted: only kid at Tulane honors weekend without parents #nerdlife #raisedbywolves #fun #college #partytime</p>
<p>Hopefully he’ll sign up for some courses. He seems to like it. I’ll find out if he loves it when I pick him up on Tuesday.</p>
<p>BTW- Admissions told my husband that they prefer students to come down on their own. No parents necessary.</p>
<p>My son said he felt like a grown up. Good thing, he’s about to make a very grown up decision (with gentle guidance from his parents). Kinda old school, but I don’t remember my parents being so involved with my life at the same age either.</p>
<p>Can’t wait for my first visit to NOLA. Hope everyone is having fun :D</p>
<p>Well, he may have felt like the only one, lol. But in reality he wasn’t because I know there was a kid there from the western USA without parents. I bet there were a few others, there are always at least a handful, if not more. But the important thing is exactly what you say, it really allows them the experience of navigating this on their own. Not to get off topic, but this is a huge part of the reason it is important for kids to go away to college, unless it is just impossible.</p>
<p>Hey Skiermom! He’s definitely not the only one without parents here. On our tour today was a girl from Chicago without her parents present!</p>
<p>He actually told me there were about ten without parents. He must’ve had a great day because he says he wants to be part of the Tulane class of 2017. Still not a lot of details. Patience.</p>
<p>It is a great program and makes Tulane very attractive for the kids. The one thing that would have been great if you could have been there is hearing Scott Cowen’s talk. He is very persuasive and engaging.</p>
<p>I have all the confidence in the world that Tulane is a great fit for my son thanks to comments shared here. I think I can even handle having him 20 hrs. from home. Tulane will definitely be unique enough to hold his attention. Technology helps us know what it’s like at the school from our home in Upstate.</p>
<p>Hope everyone is enjoying the full program. Can’t wait to read about the experiences.</p>
<p>My daughter had an excellent experience at Honors Weekend. She stayed overnight in one of the dorms, and really got a sense of life at Tulane. Their scholarship offer makes it possible financially, which is a very good thing. I think it’s one of her top two choices at this point, though she’s still waiting to hear from several schools (about admission and about money). </p>
<p>She loved the option of getting to register now, even without having made the commitment to attend. My understanding is that Honors students who’ve been admitted can do this even if they can’t go to the Honors weekend. It’s quite a nice perk.</p>
<p>I was surprised about a couple of things, though. </p>
<p>First, at the two student panels I attended, 8 of 10 students who spoke were involved in Greek life. When some of us asked about this, their answer was that students who are involved in several activities are more likely to have also joined sororities and frats. That concerns me, because at least for now, although my daughter’s interested in a lot of activities, Greek life isn’t one of them. </p>
<p>The other surprise was that there didn’t seem to be a lot of emphasis on the academics. Given that it was honors weekend, that seemed strange. I was hoping to hear more about the academic options and the level of rigor. Someone mentioned the ease of doing double – and even triple (seems nuts to me) majors, but a bit more information about some of the innovative combinations students have pursued would have been helpful.</p>
<p>I was particularly impressed by President Cowen. He seems to be a straight-talk kind of guy, and took the initiative to talk about issues like crime, rather than waiting for us to raise the concerns. He also had a great description of the predicted weather on move-in day, which was basically “99 degrees, 105 percent humidity, and you’ll feel as though you’ve landed in hell.” (probably not a verbatim quote, but close)</p>
<p>As with some others on this site, over the weekend, I also heard other parents praising Fallen Chemist’s incredibly helpful posts. And I of course joined in. (We also commiserated about our children mocking our time on cc.) Thanks again for all of your help and guidance, Fallen Chemist!!</p>
<p>Arlmom-To address your Greek concern, I think that when Tulane needs help with a crowd, ie move-in, campus tours, panels, they turn to the Panhellenic Council (or whatever it’s called) for volunteers. That may give you a skewed view of things. D1 is not involved in Greek life but is certainly involved in clubs and organizations.</p>
<p>I want to echo Vitrac’s statement. Greek life is significant at Tulane, but not nearly like it was when I was there. And even then, I was not Greek and I didn’t feel at all left out of anything. My D is also not Greek and it makes zero difference. It is NOT the kind of atmosphere where the Greek kids don’t associate with the non-Greeks. Most students have many close friends where one of the two is Greek and the other not.</p>
<p>As far as not focusing on the academics, I actually thought the same thing when I was there 4 years ago with my D (well, I was there for a couple hours in the morning and then had to leave, but based on the program and her report later I was similarly surprised). A few months later I was in a conversation with someone responsible for HW and I got the impression that they used to emphasize those things more, but got a lot of feedback that most of the kids had done their research and knew about the course offerings and programs already. That made sense, given the level of students we are talking about. The students on the whole were more interested in finding out about the “softer” issues, things that are harder to know about because they are not in a catalog or whatever. They wanted to get the feel for being on campus. And of course getting registered for classes, getting Tulane bling, etc.</p>
<p>Thanks for the nice comments, we all like to be appreciated. Make no mistake about it, I got mocked for my time on CC as well, for a while anyway.</p>
<p>Fallenchemist, Vitrac and others, is Tulane’s Greek system a residential system wherein the members live together in frats and sorority houses, or is it more of the club type wherein they have a dedicated room or small building on campus for get-togethers, but don’t all live together?
Thanks.</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>LOL. The frats have members living in the house. Not sure of the capacity of any of the houses, these are not huge places like I have seen at schools like Alabama, etc.</p>
<p>The sororities do not have members living there, except for a very few that maintain the house or whatever. You hear the old story that there was a law that said more than X number of unrelated women couldn’t live together, called the brothel law. But I heard that same story while visiting at least 2 other schools with my D, WUSTL being one of them, and I forget where the other was except I know it was somewhere completely different, might have been Northwestern but I really cannot remember. Anyway, usually it turns out those stories are myths, and the real reason is that the houses tended to be smaller because sororities didn’t have the kind of money frats had.</p>
<p>Whatever the case, there is moderately limited residential for the frats; and “club type”, as you called it, for the sororities for all practical purposes.</p>
<p>I can speak a bit to the fraternity side of things since I have a sophomore boy who is in a fraternity. I think it is fairly standard, depending on the size of the house of course though, for about six to eight members to live in the house. It is typically sophomores. Truly, the houses are not that nice that it would be a place you would be anxious to live. My son tried to persuade us to let him live there, and we just said no. He is glad we did now. At the time we were the meanest parents in the world. :)</p>
<p>At honors weekend, they did mention that one of the sorority houses had a larger group residing at the house than any of the other sororities because they had the capacity for it, but there was no indication which one that was. </p>
<p>Tulane is a very open campus as far as mixing socially. Anyone truly concerned about the impact of Greek Life on their student’s experience should try to relax about that. It is great for those who want to be involved and I think pretty much anyone who wants to be involved can be. And if your student chooses not to be part of Greek Life, he or she will find other things they are interested in to fill their time. You should really just think of Greek Life as one more club that your student might choose to become involved with at Tulane. It definitely doesn’t seem to be nearly as exclusive as it is on other campuses that I am familiar with, and that is both from the perspective of being able to join a Greek organization and also the mixing of Greeks and non-Greeks socially. Of course close social bonds will form among fraternity and sorority members, but that is true for those involved in other clubs that are fairly active as well.</p>