<p>Tulane is a great school–underrated by US News in my opinion, and New Orleans is a great city to go to college at–am awaiting to see what sort of aid is offered.</p>
<p>honestly although I’m an applicant my self and was accepted with 22k from what i have seen and been learning on this site i would have to imagine that you would receive 27k with honors invite 25 at worst. Also, it seems that when highly qualified applicants like you apply and are accepted it is because you showed interest in Tulane and did not simply use it as a “safety” (even though you might have) and as a result did not get deferred to RD like the other highly qualified applicants who have shown no interest. </p>
<p>that is just my best guess though, but who knows, and like fallen said if aid is an issue with your stats you should apply for the DHS and PTS.</p>
<p>I would also add that these applications are due December 15 and involve some work and in the case of the DHS, extra recommendations. So he doesn’t want to wait too long. Besides, the highest aid offered at this stage is $27K, and there is about a 97% chance that is what will be offered in this case unless there is something I am missing in his resume. Full tuition is worth about $40K so why not go for it anyway?</p>
<p>We all agree with you, Tulane is ill served by the USNWR fiasco they call a ranking system. Fortunately it seems not to have hurt the school very much at all, with exceedingly capable students choosing Tulane in numbers that are actually in excess of the target capacity.</p>
<p>I would consider Tulane in the same grouping as Emory, Vanderbilt, etc–certainly not a safety school by any means. I know a couple of really solid candidates rejected last year–and that who really wanted to go to Tulane. And New Orleans is a great city.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth, I haven’t heard the phrase ‘USNWR’ once since I’ve been at Tulane. We’re happy being college kids here at Tulane and in New Orleans, and couldn’t care less what USNWR thinks.</p>
<p>I agree that the ranking from USNWR doesn’t matter and I’m not sure if this has been addressed in the past…but why is the ranking so “low”? ( in comparison to what it should be?)</p>
<p>oliver17 - It has been addressed, as you might suspect. But in short out of all the factors USNWR uses in its rankings two really dominate: Peer assessment and 6 year graduation rates/retention. Here is something Cowen said fairly recently: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1209529-retention-rate-graduation-rate-usnwr-rankings.html?highlight=usnwr[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1209529-retention-rate-graduation-rate-usnwr-rankings.html?highlight=usnwr</a></p>
<p>And here is an older thread that contains my basic thoughts on the matter, mostly concerning graduation rates. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1099674-next-rankings-us-news.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1099674-next-rankings-us-news.html</a></p>
<p>I didn’t talk so much about the peer assessment portion there, and hopefully Tulane’s problems in that area are waning. But right after Katrina the school was closed for a semester, then they eliminated some fairly noticeable programs like civil, electrical and mechanical engineering, computer science, and a handful of others. Naturally the press only highlighted the cuts, with little context regarding the grand plan the school had formulated, or the increased emphasis in the remaining programs. This, plus the sensational footage of what New Orleans looked like after Katrina, really killed peer assessment. No matter that the footage was of areas far from campus, it would be like showing South Central LA during the riots and having people think that is what was going on at UCLA on the other side of town. Those kinds of impressions are hard to erase, but I think Tulane is definitely recovering from that inaccurate PR.</p>
<p>So as graduation rates lose the Katrina effect over the next couple of years (and keep improving on a historical basis also) and hopefully the peer assessment improves, things will stabilize for Tulane in that area.</p>
<p>Hello everybody. My daughter was also accepted to Tulane recently, with numbers nearly identical to those of Stevest’s son. She was generously and thankfully awarded a Presidential scholarship with honors invite, so if these awards are primarily numbers-based, Steve’s son will likely receive the same ($27K). I’m not sure what showing interest in a school entails, but she has not yet visited Tulane, and, while her Why Tulane essay was not necessarily long or strong, it was to the point – she named some of the TIDES seminars she’d love to take, spoke about the appeal of service learning and ended with a mini-mini ode to President Cowen and his efforts (which she’d read about online) post-Katrina.
Even for families not dependent on financial aid, to my mind a savings in excess of $100K is substantial – particularly when many of these kids will likely attend grad or professional school.<br>
After reading FallenC’s above referenced talk by Scott Cowen, I wonder what are the practical ramifications of having a record student enrollment? How has housing been affected, and are the students able to get into the classes they want? Are the classes overcrowded?
Also, Cowen mentions Tulane’s undergrad retention rates have been a chronic problem for decades (thus not Katrina-inspired). Do any of you know why?</p>
<p>Congrats and good luck to all!</p>
<p>Thanks for the info Fallen. This topic has been on our minds here for a while now and I really think that you have cleared it up a bit for me. What has been driving DH and me nuts is how Penn State (a very popular school for those in our area) has a higher ranking than Tulane. While I’m sure that there are many very bright kids who attend Penn State, I happen to personally know many (for lack of a better word…) “average” students who attend Penn State. Most of these kids (including my own niece-a freshman and nephew-a junior), could never in a million years gotten into Tulane. This ranking system is really crazy.</p>
<p>Got my letter today (about a week after online notification). $8,000 a year in merit. Kinda was hoping for more but I know don’t deserve it. Congrats to all of you who have been admitted and good luck to all prospective students! :)</p>
<p>Thank you FC. I knew you’d be able to answer the question in great detail. It is so nice always knowing that your are there with an answer. ( No pressure in the future or anything.) I know I speak for many when I say you are the pulse of Tulane on CC. So, you might know if this is true- to answer OHDavid’s question, I have heard that the retention rate at Tulane is a little low because of the partying atmosphere in New Orleans. Some students just can’t handle it.</p>
<p>OHDavid - Congrats on the good news! Hell yes $100K+ is substantial. Hope she is going for full tuition.</p>
<p>Showing interest entails demonstrating that one has done something to show that they have truly considered the school beyond just filling out a form. It doesn’t have to be a visit or even attending a more local event. To me it sounds like your daughter did the perfect “Why Tulane” essay, because she showed detailed knowledge of the TIDES courses and service learning at Tulane, besides brown-nosing President Cowen lol. Kidding on the last of course, but it does she she made the effort to research the school in some depth. That is showing interest!</p>
<p>To answer your other questions, housing has not been affected at the freshman/sophomore level very much, if at all but there is not quite enough housing to accommodate everyone that wants to live on campus beyond that. They are absolutely addressing that issue with a plan to add significantly more rooms over the next decade, with some of them coming in the relatively short term (2-5 years). One is a new dining hall that will have rooms above it, and possibly rooms in other wings attached as well although less sure about that last part. I can only assume that once that is built the old dining hall, Bruff Commons, will come down (maybe along with some of the old dorms like Irby?) and newer dorms with more capacity and obviously more modern will go up. They also just announced a new building that will occupy a space on the Zimple Quad. <a href=“http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/112612_zimple_house.cfm[/url]”>http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/112612_zimple_house.cfm</a> I read a couple of years ago that Tulane’s plan is to try and have all the dorms be of the residential college nature, where a professor and his family live in the dorm as well and there is more of an effort to have a cohesiveness that centers around living in that dorm. I also read very recently something Cowen (or someone else in the administration) said about exactly how many new rooms they want to add with the goal that all who want to live on campus all 4 years can do so. The current number of students that can live on campus is 3,800 and the goal is to get to 5,100. That’s a pretty substantial increase. [Tulane</a> University - Homecoming visitors bring questions to annual Town Hall meeting](<a href=“http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/110212_townhall.cfm]Tulane”>http://tulane.edu/news/newwave/110212_townhall.cfm)</p>
<p>Classes are definitely not overcrowded and there has been no impact on students getting the classes they want. The main effect is that there are a few more classes that have gone from 15-20 students in the class to 20-30 in the class. There was some initial confusion because they closed out classes too early, but once that was fixed I have not heard anyone complain about this issue at all.</p>
<p>Finally, the freshman retention issue. It seems to stem from two areas relatively unique to Tulane. First is that Tulane has more students from 750+ miles away from home than any other university in the USA. Thus homesickness, travel hassles, etc. wore on a small percentage of the students more than at many other schools. They have addressed this by instituting more programs to help students deal with these issues. The other is that it is in New Orleans, and there is always some percentage of students that fail to discipline themselves between partying and studying and wash out. Again, a significant effort has been undertaken to give students alternative activities, to make sure they are more aware of the issue upfront (when I was there many years ago nothing was ever said, and more than a few of my classmates flunked out), and to have RA’s and professors be aware of developing problem cases. Not a nanny state of course, but enough to hopefully keep people on track. Tulane is now around 90-91%, and they want to get to 95% retention. If they are reporting their stats accurately (which is always in doubt if you follow the news on these things), many of Tulane’s peers are in that 95% range.</p>
<p>Whew! That’s enough for now. Cross posted with oliver cause it took me awhile to type that!</p>
<p>jozuko - Yeah, there are a number of schools that rank higher than Tulane but have substantially lower test scores and it drives me a little nuts, but you just have to take it as a core belief that the ranking system is truly flawed and so the comparisons are meaningless. It’s hard to do until you really see in detail how bad it is. Penn State, while a fine school of course, probably beats Tulane on peer assessment. Is that just because they are so much more well known nationally? Who knows, I cannot read the minds of the people that respond to the survey.</p>
<p>I just came across and article in the NYT and this is what it had to say…</p>
<p>"The U.S. News & World Report’s annual college rankings came out earlier this month and — knock me over with a feather! — Harvard and Princeton were tied for first. Followed by Yale. </p>
<p>Followed by Columbia. </p>
<p>It’s not that these aren’t great universities. But c’mon. Can you really say with any precision that Princeton is “better” than Columbia? That the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (No. 6) is better than the California Institute of Technology (No. 10)? That Tufts (No. 28) is better than Brandeis (No. 33)? Of course not. U.S. News likes to claim that it uses rigorous methodology, but, honestly, it’s just a list put together by magazine editors. The whole exercise is a little silly. Or rather, it would be if it weren’t so pernicious."</p>
<p>I think that explains it pretty well.</p>
<p>It does. Good to see the NYT come around on this. What I wish the writer had stated outright, rather than imply, is that “better” in the context of universities is a highly qualitative term, not quantifiable. After all, if acting is your passion is Harvard really “better” than NYU? On the surface the answer is no if you are one-dimensional in your interests. The answer could still be yes if you want to compliment your education with other areas where being at Harvard and around all that intellect would fit better. Obviously a lot of famous actors and actresses have gone to Ivy schools, and not always after they were already famous.</p>
<p>Anyway, that is the real issue at its root. The entire premise is flawed, so of course the methodology of USNWR is flawed. But even within the parameters USNWR states, they assume correlations that are completely unproven. Does it really “prove” that School A is better than School B because the retention rate is higher? As already stated, there are numerous complicating factors. As there is with virtually every measure they use.</p>
<p>Wow FallenChemist! Thanks for replying in such detail. My daughter will definitely apply for the full-tuition scholarship. By the way, I read the essay prompts on the Paul Tulane application and loved them, e.g., “All you need is love. True?” – and I’m also a huge admirer of Frederick Olmstead. You all may disagree, but I feel I can get a sense of a school from its essay prompts.</p>
<p>I agree with Stevest: Tulane can’t be considered a safety by any applicant, particularly in view of today’s admissions scenario. </p>
<p>I know little to nothing about US News rankings – why is retention rate heavily weighted for purposes of ranking, i.e., has retention rate been shown to affect one’s undergraduate educational experience?</p>
<p>OHDavid, I don’t know the “official” answer to why retention is rated heavily, but I am guessing it is because it reflects the student body’s satisfaction with their educational experience and readiness for the academic coursework.</p>
<p>mamae is correct in that this is the reasoning USNWR uses. I should point out that freshman retention is a relatively small factor in their calculation, graduation rates are a much bigger factor, nominally 4% and 16% respectively. However if you don’t retain freshman your graduation rates are already at a disadvantage. Here are their published criteria. I am also including something they call graduation rate performance,which counts for another 7.5%:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The problems with this entire thing are almost too numerous to go into. Starting with the assumption that retention reflects directly on the quality of a university. USNWR claims this is widely accepted. So was the earth being flat and at the center of the universe at one time. Even very recent history is full of things that seemed obvious that did not stand up to actual study. I know of no foundation for this assumption. The same goes for graduation rates, there are numerous confounding variables that can play into that number, natural disasters being an extreme example but of course also numerous systemic ones. And they apparently don’t correct for double counting in the sense they penalize you for a lower freshman retention rate then again because those same freshmen that left never graduate. Then they go on to factor in something called predicted graduation rates. This one is colossal crap. Read their statement. “Based upon characteristics of the incoming class and the institution”. It is based on a formula they just made up! Unbelievable stuff, really.</p>
<p>Obviously I have an extreme dislike of the USNWR rankings. There are numerous problems I haven’t mentioned as much, such as the unreliability of the data that is reported to them regarding class ranks, GPA, etc. So I better stop here or I never will.</p>
<p>I do have to mention one other thing I just noticed though. Not sure how I missed this in the past. Under graduation rates USNWR says “Note: This excludes students who transferred into the school and then graduated.” So if a student transfers out it is presumably because your school is of lesser quality and counts against you, but if they transfer in it isn’t because you are of higher quality and so should count for you? Isn’t this a bit inconsistent?</p>
<p>I also meant to mention something in post #78. Well, to pose a question really. Couldn’t one equally argue that a really “good” university is so rigorous that many of the freshmen just don’t make the cut? That their standards are so high so as to insure those graduating are in fact of the very highest caliber? I am not actually arguing that myself, just positing a perfectly valid alternative that would say that lower retention is in fact the indicator of highest quality, or at least provides an example showing the uselessness of retention as a measure of quality.</p>
<p>Alternatively, I have read many people bemoaning the fact that so many schools seem more like “country clubs” with the fancy dorms and dining options. I think this is a bit of an exaggeration in most cases, but does go to show that there are factors that keep students or loses them that go beyond the presumed mission of a university.</p>
<p>OK, stopping again.</p>
<p>Most rankings and most people focus on admissions exclusivity and academic reputation. Since that methodology is basically measuring “Yale-ness”, no surprise that Yale always does well. And Yale would do well regardless of whether it is doing a good job delivering education to its undergrads or not.</p>
<p>More recently USNWR and others have tried to rate schools also in terms of their results rather than just reputation. Using retention rates and graduation rates is an attempt to measure how well a school does with the students after they enroll. If kids leave and don’t graduate, then something must not be working at a school. </p>
<p>Turns out that retention/graduation rates also correlate strongly with Yale-ness. Kids who are motivated and talented enough to get into Yale are motivated/talented enough to get out of Yale at very high percentages (regardless of what Yale does with them).</p>
<p>TU punches 10-20 slots above its rating in terms of admissions selectivity. But it gets pulled down by retention/graduation rates. Part of that is Katrina hangover. Part of that reflects how far away TU is located from many of its students – kids tend to stick more at schools within a car drive from home. Part of that also reflects what the student experience at TU has been historically. </p>
<p>It isn’t that TU is bad at retention/graduation – approaching 90% I think. But the high ranked schools retain/graduate kids in the mid-90s.</p>
<p>TU is doing things to improve its retention/graduation rates, has been rated an “up and coming” by USNWR for several years and continues to become more selective. TU is doing all the same things that schools like BC and USC and WUSTL have done to move up. So the USNWR ranking should go up, although the rankings move glacially.</p>