Diversity at Tulane

<p>Obviously New Orleans is a very diverse and culturally interesting city. However, I'm wondering if Tulane itself is actually diverse at all? From what I've seen (both in threads and in the Tulane Class of 2016 Facebook group) it seems to me that a very very large portion of Tulane's student body is made up of, for lack of a better term, "rich white kids," and a lot seem to be from East Coast prep schools...</p>

<p>This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is there any sort of diversity at Tulane?</p>

<p>I’m in the Tulane Class of 2016 Facebook page too, and I was a little worried by the lack of diversity I saw in there. However, from talking to current Tulane students and touring the campus, I think there actually is a great amount of diversity. The rich white kid stereotypes just tend to take over Facebook groups and internet forums more.</p>

<p>Honestly, not really.</p>

<p>There’s hardly any African Americans and even fewer Hispanics for a school of this size and in this city. There’s a well sized “Asian” population, however. </p>

<p>Most of the student body is comprised of middle class-upper class white kids, and a good portion are from the East. Something like 40% of the University is Jewish or culturally Jewish.</p>

<p>Office of Multicultural Affairs (OMA) is active promoting diversity on campus. The Multicultural Council (MCC) I’m chairing is also trying to reach out to the student body! We have 12 Multi-Cultural student organizations with over 1000 members in our council. We’ll have a great year next year with plenty of events and make you feel the diversity of Tulane!</p>

<p>

Tulanechild could certainly be right, and of course it doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) really matter to anyone. But this question comes up every year and all resources I can find, and as near as I can tell there are at least 3 independent ones, put the percentage between 25-30%. Actually, one of them cites the number of Jewish students as 1540 and then says this is 14%, but they are making the error that they are counting all students, including those attending the School of Continuing Studies (night school, essentially). Corrected for the traditional count of full time undergraduate, it would be about 25%. Just for accuracy, or at least some versions of it.</p>

<p>FYI, this would put Tulane around 10-15th among private universities.</p>

<p>I always find this conversation somewhat amusing. We are Catholic and from what I understand, Tulane is also about 25-30% Catholic, but you never hear that. Being from the deep South (largely populated with various Protestant denominations), during my tenure at Tulane many moons ago, I was quite surprised at how many Catholics were at Tulane. Now, New Orleans is largely Catholic I know, but I never expected Tulane to be because the large majority of students come from out of state. My son, a freshman, has many Catholic friends at Tulane, as well as Jewish friends, Christian friends of all denominations,and friends from a variety of other religious and cultural backgrounds. I really don’t get why the Jewish population seems to be such a hot topic for discussion every year. Tulane was one of the first major universities to admit Jews sometime back in the dark ages, so it seems only natural that the legacy exists today. One of the things we love most about Tulane is the way everyone there seems to be so accepting of others.</p>

<p>Very well said, kreativekat, and I couldn’t agree more. Although to be fair, the Catholic population in the US in general is much larger (24%) than the Jewish population (~2.5%), so I guess that is why people seem to want to comment on the relatively high percentage at some schools, like Harvard, Tufts, Brandeis, etc.</p>

<p>But New Orleans is an amazing place for diversity. In fact, even though its history is very dominantly Catholic, New Orleans had one of the first large Jewish populations in the US, going back many decades. It was also had one of the largest free black populations in the South, many living in the French Quarter and Trem</p>