<p>^^ same 10char</p>
<p>I called BC after receiving an email from Northeastern about the CSS profile thing. I guess the deadline for BC’s FA for REA was back on november 15th, but they told me to just submit it…</p>
<p>to roaming rocks: can u expand on academic rigor comparison between the schools? Thanks!</p>
<p>Take this for what it’s worth, as a parent’s observations about their kids are certainly less than objective.</p>
<p>Tulane: S is in his third year in the Freeman business school. He doesn’t study very much and has rarely had to submit essays that require critical thinking. It is considerable “read, memorize and regurgitate” for the grade. He has a 3.1 GPA. Never has there been an instance of “I need to stay in this weekend and study because I have a heavy workload”.</p>
<p>BC: D is in her first year so it is still early days. She is in the honors program and the Western Civ class (that may not be the exact name) requires roughly 80 pages of reading per class (meets 3x per week) and regular essays contemplating Socrates through Thoreau. The course load is much heavier, and the students are more serious. A chunk of each weekend is spent on homework, with a considerable amount of fun mixed in. </p>
<p>Both of them love where they are and neither could imagine themselves being anywhere else, but from my perspective the two schools do not offer a similar level of challenge. Nor are they competing for applicants of the same academic profile. My impression is that BC requires a much higher level of academic commitment.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While the test scores may be similar (but I don’t really believe either of their numbers since neither school publishes its CDS), the telling stat is top 10% of high school graduates. Tulane = 59%; BC = 80%, a significant difference, even accounting for the fact that BC likely has more kids from small schools.</p>
<p>Tulane: Percent of students who return for sophomore year: 87%</p>
<p>Ouch, that doesn’t look too good.</p>
<p>So you’re comparing a 1st year honors student in a liberal arts class with a 3rd year student who’s a business major who has probably completed any writing component two years ago? </p>
<p>Look, I’m not arguing BC couldn’t be more difficult for certain majors than TU but you really aren’t making a convincing argument when you compare two completely different situations. </p>
<p>For instance, I was a finance major. I never wrote a paper after my freshmen year, for the most part. I DID however have a ton of math to do along with financial modeling and code writing for my laptop. My then gf, now fiance, was a political science major at another university. She had tons of papers to write. She was also a few years younger than I was. I wouldn’t use our two experiences to judge which was the more difficult university. Nor should anyone else. I know you didn’t say you thought you were being objective but it’s hard enough to compare students within the same university based how they did in one class (due to the different professors teaching it) but to do it across two universities in two different fields of study at two different grade levels is stretching it. <-as you can tell by run-ons, i clearly was not an english major.</p>
<p>Bluebayou and I are in agreement in that it’s strange that neither school provides its CDS. Although again, the CDS is relatively new and not everyone does it. If you don’t trust the data put out regarding test scores, you shouldn’t trust the top 10 % data either. They are reported the same way by the same people.</p>
<p>For the percentage that return for sophomore year, 87% would be bad except that you’re talking about a school that costs ~$50,000 a year in New Orleans. How many parents do you think pull their kids after they go out too much? I’m guessing quite a few. Also, 75% of the kids that go there are from more than 500 miles away. I’m guessing there’s more homesickness in that number than anything else. I do agree that Tulane should do a better job at that though. I’m not sure how you make students feel more at home but I’m guessing scheduling some sort of dorm activities or something, game night perhaps. lol, never underestimate the importance of a good game of Taboo.</p>
<p>Also, i know i’ve asked this before but I’ve never gotten an answer. How long have universities and colleges been filling out the CDS? </p>
<p>As best as I can tell,
Harvard did not start using it until 2006.
Penn just started doing it, even more recently than Harvard.
USC may still not do it.
Since Aug 29th, 2005, TU has been a little busy drying out. 
They will hopefully start providing one. </p>
<p>So I am curious how long have most universities been providing the CDS?</p>
<p>I applied early action! can’t wait for the decision! ^.^</p>
<p>Sorry this thread got hijacked by the way.</p>
<p>benetode:</p>
<p>Cornell has ten years’ of CDS online, as does Cal Berkeley & Carleton, to name a few. P’ton goes back to '03, as does Penn State.</p>
<p>Based on what I can tell, the CDS has been around since at least 2002.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Sure, they could be worse. :D</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To paraphrase Jack Nicholson: Harvard musta thought “we couldn’t handle the truth…” Or, they had something to hide. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>New Director of Admissions. The former, Lee Stetson got a lot of flack on cc for not publishing their CDS (and hiding his numbers).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No surprise there. 'SC has a historical reputation for playing games with numbers; for example, excluding special admits like athletes. It’s only been recently that they (appear to) post the full stats of 100% of the matriculates on their web site. But w/o the CDS, we’ll never know…</p>
<p>Back to the original programming. </p>
<p>Good luck to the EA’ers. Waiting for snail mail can be nerve-wracking, particularly for those on the west coast.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree that Tulane and ALL other universites, colleges, LACs should put them right on their own websites. I was just curious because nobody had heard of these when I was looking at schools, not that long ago (slightly over a decade.) With regards to some schools with a decade of CDS, I wonder if they had it originally or just backdated the info by going back and filling in the forms based on previous years numbers so people could see the trends over a longer period of time. It might appear that schools have been doing this for ten years when they really have only done it for 4 or 5 but have just gone back to put in the data from previous years to help show the school’s trends. I am not suggesting this is necessarily the case but again just a curiosity of mine. I would hope when Tulane does start using the form, they’ll go back and fill in the 5 previous years or so. I’m not holding my breath on that one though. :)</p>
<p>Best of luck, to EA’ers!!</p>
<p>I’m guessing that USNews got together with CB and the other partners and agreed on a standard format in ~2001/2002, when they went live. At that point they probably requested the matriculant data for '99+, which would have been that year’s Juniors. </p>
<p>re: LAC’s. Colgate got with the program this year.</p>
<p>Man the snail mail is a nerve-wracker.</p>
<p>Poop.</p>
<p>^^ I kinda like snail mail. There’s much less anxiety that comes with it because there’s no set date to look forward to. If BC said that they were going to let us find out on December 20th at 5 PM then I would be freaking out up until then. But with snail mail, I have no idea when it’s coming. The only problem is, I wish they’d move up their deadline form Christmas to the 15th… :(</p>
<p>uhhh… I applied EA. was there a financial aid supplement we had to fill out? because I definitely did not…</p>
<p>I’m a parent of a wannabe BC’er who has applied “early”. I’m glad to hear that the decisions may start to be sent out as early as Dec 15th because I can’t get my daughter to focus on completing her regular decision applications due to the anticipation.
Good luck to everyone.</p>
<p>just a heads-up for those awaiting letters: BC has been known to mail them over the course of a few days (“working as fast as they can”). Thus, your Honors acceptance may not be mailed until Thursday+ when other letters are batched processed on Tuesday.</p>
<p>Dear OneDown&OneToGo : Obviously, your daughter should be doing the secondary, regular decision applications and essays NOW rather than waiting for the Boston College decision. While she might be saving work if the BC news is positive, imagine trying to do all of the extra work if the BC news is negative? Seriously, as we have written in several chance-me threads, now is indeed the time to go after the secondary choices with a heads-down determination since it is the only proactive option that your child can follow.</p>
<p>I hope that everyone will post here AS SOON as they’re accepted! I can’t wait to find out!</p>