<p>I am a Tulane alum, both undergrad and professional school, and have had three decades of experience myself in the candidate selection process (in my case interviewing medical school seniors for residency positions). This fall I happened to meet for the first time, the daughter of a cousin of mine who was visiting, and who was a high school senior knee deep in the college admissions process. In addition to being personally as impressive an individual for that age as I have ever met, she seemed to have an outstanding HS record, and had petitioned her public HS /school board to be allowed to do essentially her entire senior year at a local community college, taking college courses, and doing well in them, with a 3.8GPA at the community college to this point. In addition, being interested in medicine, she was spending time shadowing a sports medicine doc in her home town who could not say enough good things about her. SATS were 650/690.</p>
<p>I encouraged her to look at Tulane. She did, got really enthusiastic, and applied.</p>
<p>She was rejected this week. I was stunned, and I think I feel worse than her. It's hard for me to believe they have that many better applicants. I would think that her aggressive push to go above and beyond at the community college would have marked her favorably, but could her non traditional senior year actually have perversely worked to her disadvantage? Does a human being really look at the applications critically?</p>
<p>Fallenchemist, any thoughts?</p>
<p>She will ultimately do just fine, but Tulane really missed out on a fine one here.</p>
<p>Abitacov. Although Fallenchemist is the expert around here, I have been a rather compulsive CC Tulane thread contributor for several months now, so I think that I may have some insight. From what I have learned about Tulane over the course of this admissions process, Tulane, more so than many other schools, places extreme weight on “designated interest.” They really want a student who really wants to be at Tulane. so, my question for you is, did this student express interest, other than simply applying? Did she apply Early Action? Did she write a compelling “Why Tulane?” essay? Did she visit the school? Attend a local reception? Contact her admissions counselor?
As far as the community college route, I do not think that this would be held against her, but I can not say for sure. In fact, in my town, many students participate in a program where they spend half the day at the high school and half the day attending classes at our local community college. It’s looked at as an alternative to taking AP classes.<br>
I think that another factor may just be the sheer number of applicants. Just as an observer here on the Tulane boards, it appears to me that a vast majority of acceptances went out EA, with many accepted students committing to Tulane pretty early on in the process. I would imagine that the RD applicant pool had a tougher time because of this.
The student you mention sounds like a great kid, and I’m sure that she will succeed wherever she ends up. Just my thoughts…</p>
<p>I am sure others have thoughts about this as well.</p>
<p>You are no doubt correct that she was an excellent student that would have been good for Tulane, but unfortunately there are hundreds if not even thousands of applicants that fall into that category that do not get offers of admission. There are just not enough spaces for all the qualified students.</p>
<p>It is impossible to say what it was about her application that didn’t get her over the top. But I can say they are looked at quite critically by the admissions staff. Could someone have made a mistake? Sure, human error is always possible. But since we cannot see her entire application, including things like her essays (or if she even filled out the “optional” Why Tulane question), recommendations, etc., there could be factors beyond stats that made the admissions person think it might not be a good fit.</p>
<p>Hard as it is to do given how important this is in a young person’s life, they (and you) cannot take it as a statement about the applicant’s qualities as a student and/or as a person. The application is only a representation of that person, and try as they might to make the right call based on it, admissions can only use their judgement and experience to make an assessment based on that limited information. While I don’t usually suggest a student ask to talk to admissions about a decision they are unhappy with, it is something she can try to do. I don’t know if they will really tell her anything, they probably have a policy of not getting into specifics. Otherwise they would be overwhelmed with calls and arguments.</p>
<p>But you are right, she will do fine wherever she ends up, and of course she could attempt to transfer for next fall. It is always a little sad to see someone who is obviously a very good student that got excited about Tulane get turned down. Unfortunately if many didn’t, Tulane would have a class of 3,000+ when there is only space for about 1500. But at this point there really isn’t any secret, magic advice that will change the decision. Not that you asked for that. I guess in the end one can only be philosophical about it and hope that it is an experience that will help her handle future rejections (and of course, like with all of us, there will be some) with grace and equanimity.</p>