<p>Congrats on your acceptance! Financial aid packages are usually not given out until March, I think. Maybe they give some earlier, I am not sure, but I was under the impression they do them all pretty much at the same time. If someone knows otherwise, please let us know. As far as meeting your need, it varies some with different students. Tulane doesn’t guarantee 100% of need, but most people say they either meet it or come very close. There are exceptions, but I suspect most of those exceptions come from people who think their need is greater than Tulane thinks it is, which is based on the FAFSA and CSS.</p>
<p>Tulane is actually pretty well known nationally, and getting more so all the time. I totally disagree that Tulane is not considered prestigious nationally. I guess that is a subjective word, and certainly there are people that don’t know much about the quality of the school. But that is true for WUSTL and Chicago as well, and they are ranked much higher. There are people that still think Chicago is some kind of public school. Once you get past Harvard and Yale and the like, you just cannot go by these kinds of criteria. If you define top tier as HYPSM along with schools like Duke, then you are right that Tulane is not regarded as being at that level. However, most people that know schools reasonably well would put Tulane in that next tier of schools. There was just an article yesterday or the day before about how active recruiters are at the Tulane B school, and I think Tulane actually ranked 12th in that category or some category similar to that, above schools ranked higher overall. This was specific to the B school, but it certainly gets Tulane known in the corporate world overall.</p>
<p>As far as getting jobs, it has less to do with the school reputation and more to do with how well you have prepared yourself and how you come across to the interviewers. No school will overcome the negatives of someone that scraped by with C’s partying and comes to interviews in torn jeans and using foul language (well, I guess there are a few companies that would like that, lol). I am not saying this would be you, I am just making a point that you shouldn’t be even thinking about where to go to school because you think it will help you get a job. It seems plausible on the surface, but again once you are past the top 10-15 schools in the USNWR rankings, it rarely works that way. Work decently hard in school, make good grades, get involved with projects and internships if possible, and learn to interview well. Those things will help land you a job more than exactly where you went to school.</p>
<p>Now what does help is going to a school that forces you to stay sharp and reasonably disciplined because your fellow students are smart and focused. I think Tulane definitely falls into this category. This is one major aspect where I found Tulane to be superior to going to a state school, where the competition to get good grades is much easier. I don’t mean competition in a cut-throat sense, Tulane isn’t like that. I just mean the other students by and large know how to write, how to study, and are smart enough to make it so that you have to work hard to make A’s and even B’s sometimes. There is plenty of partying, but too much and you will see some poor grades on your record. balance your life at Tulane, and you can do really well and have great memories for the rest of your life and a promising future. If that is the kind of atmosphere you are looking for, Tulane is a great place to be.</p>