<p>FC: can you comment on christena’s situation please? what is your take on that one??</p>
<p>I have to agree with you rodney, absent some critical piece of information we are not seeing. Great academics, strong interest shown, good EC’s and community service, apparently…</p>
<p>Of course there might be something we are not seeing, but if you really wanted Tulane, Christena, then I would ask your admissions counselor for an appointment to talk on the phone and just let them know flat out that if they took you, you would put in a deposit. If, instead, you have another school you are more likely to go to even if Tulane said it was a mix-up and offered you a slot and scholarship, then just chalk it up to a screw-up and let it go.</p>
<p>Obviously there is satisfaction in knowing you “should” have gotten in, but it really isn’t important if you aren’t going anyway. Believe me, you are academically qualified at least, and most likely completely qualified. I suppose it is possible that Tulane had reason to believe that you were very likely to go somewhere else. Again, we cannot see the whole picture. But if they thought that and are wrong, then you need to tell them that.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>"christena: for you and only you, the question should have been asked as to why you were deferred in EA in the first place…did anyone call at that point??</p>
<p>You def fell through the cracks…is my guess if I had to…and it is not as unusual as you would think…"</p>
<p>Why should it be on her to figure out if admissions did its job? She worked hard and got stellar stats. Tulane looks for superior applicants, and from what I read here, they look for people who truly want to go there. Shouldn’t she expect in reciprocation that they carefully review her application? If she fell through the cracks, why would they defer her first, then deny her later…fell through the cracks twice? </p>
<p>That is a pretty lame excuse, and one would hope that is not the case. Regardless, either 1. they detemined they did not want her or 2. the school cared so little about her application that it “fell through the cracks.” She will have no problem finding a superior school that both wants her and that can keep track of her application…my advice to her would be to move on, unless Tulane is her dream school.</p>
<p>No Tulane missed the boat, I have access to both girls transcripts. I work with an independent (from the school) company in helping students apply for FAFSA and other scholarships. What we are seeing more and more are mistakes by guidance counselors. Guidance counselors face many obstacles in the appliation process. Heavier work loads as kids are applying to more schools, schools are adding more and more on to their applications and the supplements to the common app, and this is all concentrated into a few weeks where every senior wants total attention. Not to mention their regular work load, they aren’t just there for seniors. The schools look very close at the GC’s rec and to be honest, not sure they need to. Many simply do not have time for in-depth and they recs become very generic the later in the process a student gets them the forms. With Tulane, the forms are done individually and I’m just making an observation; there are those who fall through the cracks. I counsel students over and over to never assume; it’s hard I know but FOLLOW UP continually with your schools to make sure they know you are interested. If you receive an email and can’t attend a function, email back and explain why and let them know you appreciate their hard work in reaching potential students. In state love is a beautiful thing if it’s your number one choice.</p>
<p>She did follow up according to her post.</p>
<p>Besides, the prospective students get the same schtick from all schools…it takes so long to arrive at a decision because the school wants to give careful attention to each application. She applied EA. She was deferred. So a comittee would have reviewed it then. The application was supposed to get a second evaluation with regular applications. The application was pending for months.</p>
<p>Again, if it is her dream school and she still wants to go, then by all means follow up. But it is nonsense that it is somehow her fault that she has to call and whine to make sure Tulane did its job. And if they didn’t, who says they will fess up to it? I’m sure they will not be jumping all over each other to accept responsibility for having the application fall through the cracks. I don’t work in and never have worked in admissions, but my experience in life tells me that much.</p>
<p>They take a holistic approach, and stats are not everything…that is what schools say. If you look at scattergrams of highly competitive schools, some with perfect stats get denied, and some with below average stats get accepted. To assume that the reason she was denied is because Tulane at least twice had her application fall through the cracks seems unlikely and is an assumption of a lack of competence. It seems like an awful lot of errors, and my guess the denial was no accident.</p>
<p>Sometimes my mind is going faster than my hands. By guidance counselor i was not making note of Tulanes. The high school. The GC from their school had about 20 applying to Tulane and had numerous forms to fill out, these girls did apply EA, and met all criteria. All of it. Both were confused yet neither called to ask any questions. I fully understand the logistics of stats aren’t everything but if what the schools say is true when one visits; their rigor of courses and their GPA matter most.</p>
<p>As this clears up both are starting to ask questions about did their information arrive correctly. They did not see what was sent in; not their fault as the school does this so they can seal the envelope with the school seal. Not their situation but another student, luckily in time, found the wrong scores and grades had been sent with their transcript. </p>
<p>I’m not on here to argue over who is right. Obviously each situation is different. I do not know yours but my observation was based on this ISOLATED admission and the confusion from the high school office. Yes, based on what I saw this year students definately need to keep track of their materials once they are told they have left their high school. Tulane can’t read minds, they have no idea yet they do have counselors assigned to each region and the kids are encouraged to follow up. Looking at these counselors on college websites they appear to be just as human as the rest of us; these things happen.</p>
<p>First of all, Tulane has admitted to students when they accidentally created two files or made some other error that kept an application from being completed. Second, sure, in a perfect world a student and high school that has done everything right shouldn’t have to follow up, but human beings make mistakes. If it is important enough, one follows up to be sure. I do it all the time. Don’t you ever check a FedEx tracking number to make sure something made it there, even though you did everything “right”?</p>
<p>Having an early app fall through the cracks is more than just a mistake. It would involve a multitude of mistakes by multiple people. And to make the same mistake when they review the file again in the regular application pool would require the same mistakes to be repeated.</p>
<p>Please explain how this could possibly be a mistake. Maybe I’m missing something, but how does a school mistakenly review a wrong file, or mistakenly attribute somebody else’s stats? If possible, how could that mistake not get caught by an admissions committee, and then repeat the same failed process during the regular application pool?</p>
<p>Seems to me that the applications are not being reviewed very carefully if you see that as realistically possible. Again, I’m no admissions expert, so if you explain to me how that could be possible I might see it. But to me it seems that it would require so many mistakes to be repeated that it would be nearly impossible to accidentally deny a deferred EA.</p>
<p>My first waitlist is from Tulane. :C After being accepted to Cornell, UCLA, and UPenn, my pride is a bit injured. Then again I didn’t show much interest in Tulane and my application was crappy since it was one of the last schools I applied to. But still!</p>
<p>@sbaum1994</p>
<p>how do you know you were accepted to Penn? RD for Penn doesn’t get their decisions till this Thurs, and I assume you werent ED or else then you would not have admission to all the others since you would have withdrawn your applications? </p>
<p>( I just ask because my daughter is a RD applicant to Penn and if Tulane waitlisted you but Penn accepted you, then it might restore some crazy unrealistic hope for her getting into Penn, LOL!)</p>
<p>Sorry I should’ve clarified! I got the likely admitted student letters first, followed by later letters. Cornell sent me a letter guaranteeing that “you * will be offered admission to Cornell” and then Penn sent me one saying that “we intend to admit you [me] to the class of 2016”. So yeah, they aren’t official admittance letters, just pre-admit likely student type letters. And here are my stats:</p>
<p>Decision: Deferred</p>
<p>Objective:[ul]
[<em>] SAT I (breakdown): 2150, 740 critical reading, 700 math, 710 writing
[</em>] ACT: 33 composite (34 english, 32 math, 35 reading, 32 science, 33 combined eng/writing)
[<em>] SAT II: US History 780, Chemistry 750, Molecular Biology (before I had taken bio ap) 730
[</em>] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 4.0
[<em>] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 7 out of 650~ students
[</em>] AP (place score in parenthesis): European History (5) United States History (5) Chemistry (5) English Lang (5)
[<em>] IB (place score in parenthesis): didn’t take
[</em>] Senior Year Course Load: currently taking AP Government, AP Calculus, AP Studio Art, AP Biology, AP English Literature and plan to take the test for AP Human Geography
[<em>] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): National Hispanic Scholar, National Merit Commendee, AP Scholar with Honor, Scholar Athlete
[/ul][ b]Subjective:**[ul]
[</em>] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): CSF, Health Science Majors Program, National Honors Society, Track and Field, Cross Country
[<em>] Job/Work Experience: Freelance Digital Artist (all four years, ad and web design), Medical Illustrator (illustrated one book, junior year), Tutor, Paid Intern as an ICU Quality Care Analyst
[</em>] Volunteer/Community service: ~200 hours at a hospital (sep interships), yearbook, local church stuff, coach for junior track
[<em>] Summer Activities: UCLA nanoscience program (one week), took an anthropology course at a community college, interned at hospital
[</em>] Essays: Decent, for Tulane not the best 
[<em>] Teacher Recommendation: didn’t read
[</em>] Counselor Rec: didn’t read
[<em>] Additional Rec: didn’t read
[</em>] Interview: didn’t get one
[/ul]Other[ul]
[<em>] Applied for Financial Aid?: nope
[</em>] Intended Major: Don’t remember, think I put Biochemistry
[<em>] State (if domestic applicant): California
[</em>] Country (if international applicant): n/a
[<em>] School Type: Public
[</em>] Ethnicity: Hispanic/Latino
[<em>] Gender: Female
[</em>] Income Bracket: ~180k
[<em>] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): being published/illustrating a book
[/ul]Reflection[ul]
[</em>] Strengths: volunteer work and work experience probably
[<em>] What you tried to focus on in your application - any hooks you tried to make for yourself: see above
[</em>] Weaknesses: SAT score, could’ve done way better if I had studied or taken a course probably
[<em>] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Didn’t show enough interest I guess.
[</em>] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected: Accepted to UCLA, UCSB, UCSD, Trinity College, University of Rochester, Loyola Chicago, Indiana University and will be accepted to UPenn and Cornell[/ul]</p>
<p>Wow. Then it’s obvious that, at least at this point, tulane’s decisions MUST be based on their guess re: whether the applicant is likely to matriculate or not; it seems for the stronger applicants, they won’t accept them if tulane suspects the applicant is likely to go somewhere else. I guess that keeps their yield numbers looking as good as possible; that might be the reason they do that?</p>
<p>splokey - that is part of it probably, but it is more that they don’t want to risk having another class of 1600+. Let me clarify. To be fair to those students with great stats, they would have to offer the top scholarship of $27,000 like they did to those already admitted with similar stats. Well, they wouldn’t have to but they would. Now let’s assume some of those students either don’t get into the very top rated schools they hoped to or they do get in but decide they cannot afford it after seeing the FA package. They may then decide Tulane looks pretty good to them and all of the sudden Tulane has a class that is too large again.</p>
<p>To make this point even further, you know what they call the top position in admissions in many universities? VP of Enrollment Management. Because that is exactly what they are trying to do, which is to get the best group of students possible from 40,000 or so applications for 1500 slots without going too far over (too crowded, not enough housing, etc.) or too far under (lost revenue). But since some significant percentage they do accept will go elsewhere, they have to estimate who is likely to accept their offer of admission. A very very tough job.</p>
<p>So we all guess why they do what they do and many complain about seemingly baffling decisions, but the people in these positions have been doing this (and in Tulane’s case quite successfully) for years, so I tend to defer to their experience.</p>
<p>Yeah, I was waitlisted too, just found out. Definitely dented pride! But then again, so far I’ve gotten into 3 of my top 5 schools (in at Vassar, Wellesley, and UChicago with merit, waiting for Harvard and Stanford) so I’m not too fussed. But… still. :S</p>
<p>Quick stats: 3.8 unweighted GPA (I think), 2370 SAT, top 15% of class, National Merit Finalist with good recs. I did do a Why Tulane essay, and I thought it was quite good! Was also waitlisted as Wesleyan.</p>
<p>Someone told me this is getting Tufted? Or something. Hmph. I still would have liked to get in, but yup, probably wouldn’t have gone. I’ll probably give up my spot on the waitlist.</p>
<p>For all of you feeling a little “dented pride” (as tashlae calls it): try not to. It has everything to do with how Tulane has to manage their numbers, and nothing to do with your merit. Obviously, those of you that got into Ivy schools, WUSTL, Duke, and many other extremely competitive schools are more than qualified for Tulane. And Tulane knows that, so (for the reasons I just gave above) they don’t make you an offer. Since so many of you A) have been accepted at other extremely fine universities and B) admit that Tulane was a “safety” for you, their reasoning seems to be validated. Don’t let it affect you in the least, and best of luck at the school you choose!</p>
<p>Oh, they were totally justified in waitlisting me based on that reasoning! Just from reading over threads in this forum, there are lots of people who have Tulane as their first choice and they got in, so Tulane is making the right decisions. </p>
<p>I’m just mildly miffed. And the article about Harvard only accepting 3% RD isn’t helping my stress levels right now :P</p>
<p>3%??!!?? Wow, that is a new low I imagine. But then Harvard only accepted about 6% last year when they didn’t have ED. So I guess that isn’t a complete surprise. Schools like Harvard (and there are only a few others) have the advantage that they know about 90% of those that are accepted will attend. Makes enrollment management so much easier!</p>
<p>tashlae - I wish you the best of luck with Harvard, but I hope you know that you will do great wherever you end up. It is far more about you and your talents than about the particular school you attend. The 3 you have gotten into are all fantastic. Personally I really like UChicago, but that is just me. Vassar and Wellesley are obviously also really great.</p>
<p>WAITLISTED…
2270 SAT
ranked top5 out of 330 at a competitive public school
All A’s
6 APs this year…
what?! Am I missing something? The funny thing is that Tulane was one of my top 3 choices. There is NO WAY I will wait for Tulane now… I’ll be declining the waitlist…this hurts a lot…</p>
<p>fallenchemist-- thanks for the kind words! I’ll definitely have a hard choice to make in a couple of weeks. </p>
<p>As to everyone else, good luck!</p>
<p>Just wanted to chime in here and add my two cents. The admissions process is always such a crap shoot, and it’s kind of comforting to think that a school is actually making some effort to determine whether a student would actually enroll in and be comfortable at a particular college. </p>
<p>Personally, I threw all my hope and time and effort into an ED school I was absolutely convinced was right for me, only to be rejected. I was absolutely heartbroken–I literally cried for days and sunk into quite a depression. But in retrospect, I can see how I probably wouldn’t have been happy there, and how Tulane is a much better option for me. As a first generation, low income student, the aid Tulane is offering is such a blessing to my family and I really count myself lucky to have an out of state option in a city as unique as New Orleans.</p>
<p>Everything happens for a reason. If you weren’t accepted to Tulane, the right school for you is out there. And if it’s really a top choice and you have the option to remain on the wait list, do it. You really never know. If it’s meant to be, it will be. I was recently rejected from a school which I applied to for free, and, while I put some effort into the application, I was really indifferent as to whether I was accepted, and I think admissions committees can see that. Students are more than just names and scores and numbers, and that gives me hope. I’m a pretty competitive student and I’ve been rejected from numerous schools, scholarships, etc. Maybe ten, twenty years ago I would have been a shoo-in for some of these things, but the fact of the matter is that there are just so many qualified candidates. Sometimes it’s just not your day, and sometimes things work out exactly as they’re meant to. </p>
<p>I truly wish the best of luck to everyone; I know that these past few months have been extremely emotionally taxing on me and I can’t wait for it all to be done and to move on to the next chapter of my life. :)</p>
<p>P.S. I just wanted to note that I still hold a lot of respect for the institutions from which I was rejected; obviously they’re worthy of my time and respect, or I wouldn’t have applied there in the first place. So please, if you’ve been rejected/waitlisted from Tulane, no need to disparage the school. It isn’t just a safety school, and they don’t simply turn down candidates for being “too good.” I’ve been accepted to more competitive schools, but I can say definitively that my heart is with New Orleans and Tulane. :)</p>