In “1,000,000 hits and 1,000,000 tips for Juniors” @TulaneJeff offers sound advice for prospective Tulane applicants which is applicable to every other college as well.
The only point that I question is #4, “Trust your college counselors.” I’d give a “Maybe yes, maybe no” to that one. There is a huge range of know-how among both public and independent school counselors. So definitely be open to what your counselor has to say, but don’t stop there. Use Web sites, guide books, College Confidential, other online resources, campus visits, and even the grapevine to figure out what schools best meet your needs and how to get yourself there (and then pay for it).
And in tip #13 (“Start visiting colleges soon!”), Jeff wisely notes that summer isn’t a great time to see most campuses. They’re often deserted then or filled with “students” who don’t actually go there during the academic year. But keep in mind that many colleges … especially southern schools like Tulane … start the fall semester by around the third week of August. So if your high school begins later, the end of summer can be the ideal time for a college trip. You won’t be worrying about missed classes or assignments, and you can combine a trip to campus with a last-hurrah summer vacation.
@Sportsman88 … Good question! In the late summer before 12th grade, my son wrote an essay for one of the Tulane scholarships because his mother (that would be me) advised him to get it out of the way before the craziness of senior year kicked in. Then Tulane changed the prompts, and so his efforts were wasted. Just what a teenager wants to do, eh? … write extra essays! :’( And, of course, Mom’s credibility as college counselor went down a few notches in the process.
So my own lesson-learned-the-hard-way tip for juniors is to make sure that you’re using the newest prompts. Granted, some colleges (possibly Tulane included) may accept responses to outdated prompts if the student explains his or her well-intentioned early-bird efforts. But most kids (and my son was one of them) don’t like to ask admission folks for special favors, especially when they’re already asking for a pile of money.
Thanks! My daughter is in a demanding school and is writing a distinctino project in HS so any college essays she can knock out in the summer will reduce stress in the Fall.
I remember the dreaded box on the Tulane app when I was in HS and I eventually tossed it aside. :-S My daughter is much more creative at 17 than I was.
If I remember correctly (which I rarely do these days ), my son received a Tulane application in July following his junior year, and he filled it out early … maybe at the beginning of August (???). So, because he had already finished the new application, it made sense for him to forge ahead with the first scholarship essay. So that’s where I went wrong. The application itself was current but the Paul Tulane Award prompts hadn’t been updated yet.
Unfortunately, Tulane begins next school year on the 5th Monday of August(!). Our HS has already started by then, so it’s not looking good to get a visit in during the school year, prior to application deadlines. I keep looking for an open date (Spring Break this year won’t work). Are offices and departments open during the summer? Professors are there? How bad is it to go over summer, given that is the only option? Is it worth it?
Thanks all. Our initial visit will be June so not ideal but is what it is. If D is still interested, we’ll try to get a second visit in this Fall. August 1 would give her two weeks before she goes back to school which is better than nothing. Yes, it’s the scholarship essays that we are looking at in particular.
@2muchquan-I would vote NO on the summer visit if it’s before classes start at Tulane. While there is some summer session action on campus, you will not get the real feel of the place. I think that it was our February visit that put Tulane at the top of my son’s list. Sure, the 70-degree temperatures were a big plus, having just come from 30 degrees and knee-high brown snow in New England. But, more important, my son noticed that Tulane students were often outdoors, walking in pairs or in small groups, smiling and chatting with one another. When we went to Rice two days later, he liked the school well enough but observed that the students often walked single file and were wearing earbuds. I’d noticed the same thing, too, but hadn’t mentioned it because I wanted my son to draw his own conclusions. Had he visited these two universities in the summer, he wouldn’t have been able to get the same sense of them that he got during the academic year.
Similarly, he initially saw USC in the summer (completely deserted that day, he didn’t like it at all) and then again when it was bustling the following April. This second time he saw a whole different side of it and liked it.
Granted, plenty of kids fall in love with colleges during the visit yet are disappointed once they attend, or they may even enroll in a college they never visited and adore it. It’s often impractical to see every college that a child is considering.
But Tulane is one school that I feel really shows itself well during a term-time visit. Touring on a quiet, steamy day in July or early August doesn’t do it justice. So if you can’t plan a spring break or late August trip, how about a long weekend between now and the end of April (barring March 18-28, which is spring break) or maybe Columbus Day in October?
Totally agree with @Sally_Rubenstone about the long weekend visits. A very important aspect of “getting” what Tulane is all about is balancing observing the campus life during term, and then seeing the area around campus (Oak and Maple Street areas, Audubon Park, Magazine Street, as well as where the kids sometimes go for weekend entertainment besides Oak and Maple, such as Frenchman Street and the Marigny area to listen to music and I assume other entertainment. I have been to many schools in my time as a result of my career demands, and I can truly say that I never was on a campus that was as defined by where it is and is as symbiotically connected to it as Tulane and New Orleans. Certainly NYU isn’t NYU if it isn’t in Greenwich Village, and there are some other schools that certainly are significantly different by being where they are than if they were somewhere else, but not like this. It is hard to explain or describe. I will add that the relationship between the students and the locals is very good, much better than most city schools. Especially after Katrina, as Tulane became totally involved with the city in ways that remain unmatched elsewhere.
Ideal, it would seem to me, would be there were a holiday your school took on a Friday or Monday that Tulane doesn’t, like maybe a teacher conference day. If it were a Friday, one could fly down Thursday evening, spend all of Friday on campus, including sitting in on a class or two. On Saturday one could explore those areas I mentioned, or at least in part, have a wonderful brunch on Sunday and head home. No short visit to any campus is going to give your child the complete sense of what it is like to actually attend the school, but this is as close as one can reasonably get I think.
Thanks @fallenchemist and @Sally_Rubenstone. We’ll see what we can do. I’d like to show them some love before applications go in, because I understand that’s important. I also saw a lot of high-stat kids getting deferred this year. I think a trip is important for both my D and her chances.
For some reason, and I could be just totally wrong on this, I thought the 32,000 was the number of EA/SCEA apps. Not sure if that makes a lick of sense, though.
My D (a junior) and I made an official visit during a Louisiana preview day last fall (it was awesome–better than any of the mid-Atlantic schools we saw). She has also attended two meetings held in our city (we are Louisiana). Should she visit again? Tulane is definitely at the tip-top of her list. The admissions counselor for our part of state spent some time with her, and she wrote a hand-written note. Should she visit again as a senior? Can she do an over-night?
Tulane doesn’t set up overnights. I don’t think she really needs to visit again, although of course visiting NOLA is always fun. Does she have the stats for an auto-admit, since you live in Louisiana?
