<p>bchristian, when you say that Tulane has the best academics of the rest, what do you mean?</p>
<p>Explain how Tulane would have better academics than Lehigh, particularly in the business area, which is one of Lehigh’s strongest, along with its engineering.</p>
<p>That’s OK, John always amuses me this way. Especially since some of his stats are just wrong, others border on dishonesty by omission. Tulane’s Student:Faculty ratio is between 8:1 and 9:1, not 14:1. The graduation rate is out of date and severely Katrina affected. Lehigh’s math SAT 75% is 710, not 720, but more to the point he so obviously leaves out the CR scores because it hurts his argument. Tulane CR 75% 700, Lehigh 630. Most of the rest has little to do with anything, but let him rant, it is no problem.</p>
<p>Just checking a few other of his “facts”, his endowment per student for Tulane is off by a huge amount. Tulane’s endowment at the end of 2009 was $859,000,000. If he is counting all students, undergraduate, graduate and professional students it is somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 students, which still overstates it by about 1,000 because there are a lot of part time students that attend University College, the extension program. If there are essentially 10,000 full time equivalents, the endowment is about $86,000 per student. No idea where his number came from, just way wrong.</p>
<p>Lehigh’s number is about right, but they also apparently don’t count part time students at all, if they have any. If Tulane did that, the number would go up to about $95,000.</p>
<p>No idea where they got those numbers, but they are just wrong. It was reported as $809,000,000 as of June 30, 2009 [Tulane</a> University - Overview](<a href=“http://tulane.edu/tef/]Tulane”>http://tulane.edu/tef/) and then was reported as $859,000,000 at end of 2009, which are the latest numbers. It was at $1,000,000,000 in 2007 but like all investments came down in the financial crisis. These numbers are reported to the Department of Education, not to mention having to be filed with the IRS as a non-profit and thus are publically available.</p>
<p>I am quite confident the $859,000,000 at the end of 2009 is the latest available and is accurate. The $1,000,000,000 was nice for the nanosecond it lasted.</p>
<p>yes, I would tend to agree with that, but since we are using June 30, 2009 figures for the other schools in our comparison, we would have to use the $809 million figure for Tulane’s endowment.</p>
<p>alam, the purpose of this execise is to show that it is now clear that Tulane is a better academic institution when compared to Lehigh and Rochester - no more, no less.</p>
<p>Apples to apples, John, as you say if you want to use the June 2009 figures. Lehigh only counts full time students. $809MM/9500 students = $85,000 per student.</p>
<p>^ weren’t you trying to make the point that Lehigh was better? Are you contradicting yourself? Unless you are using some sort of subtle sarcasm that I am oblivious to.</p>
<p>fallenchemist the total student figure of 6,996 students for Lehigh was used for, including its part-time students, but again you knew this already:</p>
<p>LOL, in any case, academically there really cannot be a great deal of difference between Tulane and Lehigh. The decision for the OP should rest on the other factors.</p>