Hey everyone! I am starting this thread because I haven’t seen that much information about the Paul Tulane Award at Tulane University for this application cycle. Can anyone who has applied in the past years, has won in the past years, or maybe is a parent of either, explain what Tulane is looking for within the essays. Obviously they want a strategic answer that is outside of the box, so what I mean is, how are they viewing these and truly deciding which one is better than another. What can make my essays truly stand out if most ideas and answers sent in are all unique in their own way?
The admission staff was impressed with your ability to successfully convey complex ideas - my son’s award letter said something like that. My son is more logic/reasoning versus creative. I would suggest you pick prompts that work toward your strengths. Additionally, I think you are competing with yourself rather than others. How well reasoned is your idea? Consider a competing applicant with a superior idea, but poor presentation - so I imagine it is less about the creativity of the idea than the argument behind it. Admission Director, Jeff Shiffman, remarked several years ago at one of the admissions events, that for the college essays - you know that you are on the right track if the essays seemed to write themselves.
We can only speculate what they were looking for. I can share my son’s experience with DHS. Note that for Paul Tulane, the essay questions change each year. For DHS, they seem to stick with the ‘box’ theme every year. My son applied to both and thought he had a much better shot at Paul Tulane because he is not that creative, and probably stronger in writing essays.
I know people have viewed videos of previous winners of DHS on YouTube and some probably thought, ‘These aren’t so great…’. Keep in mind DHS also has an accompanying essay to go with the project, so the box is just one aspect of many. Some applicants did not even submit a video but sent some other form of a creative project.
From the letter it seemed like they looked at his box project, essay and his total application (course rigor, extra curricular) to select the winners. This is consistent with what is stated on the website: “Typical scholarship recipients rank in the top 5 percent of the class, have a rigorous academic program with honors and advanced placement courses, and have an outstanding record of extracurricular activities and score near the top of the range in a college admission test”.
I agree with @callmom – they are trying to get to know YOU through your answers; it’s not necessarily giving the ‘right’ answer, or telling some kind of feel-good story. My son has a very dry sense of humor that definitely comes through in his writing. Tulane seemed to appreciate the risk and transparency … other colleges and his high school, not so much, lol.