Hello, I was recently accepted to Tulane Class of 2020.
Tulane is one of my top three or so schools. I love practically everything about it and I think it is a really cool and beautiful and fun school. However, I am from the Northeast. My only concerns with attending Tulane are in regard to food and temperatures. I don’t consider myself a picky eater, but I do know what I do and don’t like. One thing that I am nervous about is that I won’t like most or any of the food that is local style of New Orleans. I’m not the. Biggest fan of seafood, but I am open to trying it among other things. What do you think ? If I were to end up not liking, say Crawfish, would I be miserable at Tulane? Would it be difficult to find a place to eat that serves a variation of food? I’m sorry if these are silly questions, I just don’t know! In addition to the food, I’m apprehensive about the weather. Obviously, I would love to escape the brutal winters up here, but is the weather in Louisiana unbearably hot? Are the buildings at Tulane air conditioned? Oh and finally, I almost forgot about this one, it is more of my parents concern, but obviously still worth asking… How is the area around Tulane in regards to safety? My parents are quite concerned about that and refuse to look past it and appreciate all the other wonderful aspects of Tulane.
Food: While I hope you come to find that you love the variety of foods New Orleans offers, you will find there is plenty of “ordinary” food as well. And while seafood is certainly an important pillar of the local cuisine, NOLA and Gulf cooking also feature lots of spices from mild to flaming, fresh veggies, marvelous desserts (including their own unique take on sno-cones), etc. You shouldn’t have any issues there, but do yourself a favor and be adventurous, Not just about crawfish (a lot of people can’t do them at all or unless someone else prepares them, so no worries), but the food in general. No one likes everything.
NOLA is really really hot and humid when you move in and for the first 6 weeks or so of the semester. I just about choked when you asked if things were air conditioned. Yes, of course. Most people think the A/C is too cold much of the time for those weeks, because it is always running. But for most of the school year the temps are much more pleasant while everyone up here freezes. The next 5 days, for example, are highs of 70-75 and a lot of sun. Is does rain a lot, especially when it is hot. NOLA is classified as semi-tropical. But there are a lot of really nice days when the north is chilly to frigid, and just when it starts to get really hot again, it is time to go home for the summer. So to most people the weather is a big plus. It gets chilly sometimes, a day here and a couple of days there adding up to maybe 10 days total where highs are about 45-55 and it is still kind of damp, so feels colder. But it only snows about once every 10 years, and of course it is very light as compared to what we see in the Midwest to Northeast. A dusting at most, generally. It is a big event, lol. The next day you might be in a swimsuit sunning yourself on the roof of a building.
There have been extensive write-ups on here about crime, both around campus and in NOLA in general. I will leave it to you to find some of those write-ups, but in summary serious crime on campus in virtually non-existent. The only incident I can recall in years was very recently when some young man had the very bad idea to imply he had a gun (it was a BB gun as it turned out) and took 3 students in the main student center to the ATM and made them give him money. One of the students was alert enough to notify campus police somehow, or something like that, plus his face was recorded on campus security. He ran when he saw the police (after getting some money) but was caught a couple of days later. No one was hurt at all, and as I say that is exceedingly unusual for Tulane. The campus is a very safe “bubble” where petty theft among students is usually the worst thing to have to worry about.
Like all universities, there is crime in the areas around campus, but the level at Tulane is lower than almost all other major urban universities such as USC, U Chicago, Duke, Temple, Penn, BU, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and I could go on and on. Tulane is in the nicest part of New Orleans, surrounded by large homes, a gorgeous park, regular neighborhoods, etc. Drew Brees, the quarterback for the NOLA pro football team, lives next to campus in a gated community. The campus police are trained in the same fashion as NOLA police and have much of the same powers and often assist NOLA police at times like Mardi Gras. Both patrol within about a 2 mile radius off campus as well. There are shuttles for taking students almost anywhere they need to go, safety escorts on demand, phone apps tied directly to campus police and to the shuttle service so you don’t have to wait alone and/or in the dark, etc. Like all major cities NOLA has plenty of violent crime, but it is almost all centered in 2 areas miles from campus. It is also almost exclusively criminal on criminal crime.
When you put all that together with common sense such as not walking alone at 2 AM through that park I mentioned, Tulane students have a great record of being safe. I won’t kid you, like all universities things happen, virtually always off campus. You do hear about the occasional robbery sprees. They tend to be the same person or small group and so come in a spurt, and they have pretty much always caught the person involved eventually. No place is 100% safe, not even rural campuses. But Tulane can put its safety record up against the best of them, and it is always highly aware of the need to stay on top of things, such as making sure NOLA replaces burnt out street lights quickly. That is an example where things had slipped some years ago, and the school threw its weight around and got something done. There is a big plus to being the largest private employer in the city.
Bottom line, your parents shouldn’t worry. My strongest argument is that Tulane is almost 60% female. Do you think any of us would have sent our kids there, and especially our daughters (including mine) if we thought the risk was unacceptably high? That doesn’t make any sense, and they should see that. We aren’t stupid, we just did our homework and learned the truth.
Thank you, this is extremely informative and helpful! @fallenchemist
Here is by far the most snow NOLA sees every year: