DD and I did a private visit in January, including some good discussions with folks in the Honors Program. She got a great feel for the school in our 3 days there, and doesn’t feel she even needs to go back until August. She says she’d be 100% happy at Tulane, and is 95% likely going to be there in the Fall, barring the small chance of an alignment of pending admissions decisions and a financial aid miracle from other schools.
I’m wondering if having to return with her for Top Scholars at the second date in March is really necessary, or whether she can just wait and attend one of the numerous Orientation dates later by herself. It seems that Top Scholars is not as set up for solo students, but that Orientation is set up for students attending alone. Registering for classes at Top Scholars would be a plus, but if you can just register for classes at Orientation, and she goes to one of the earlier Orientation dates, it seems like there wouldn’t be that much of a difference. I am assuming that students who go to Top Scholars don’t need to go to Orientation as well, but I could be mistaken on that. I guess I could also be mistaken about how hard scheduling can be for a freshman.
Go to one of the earlier Orientation sessions and she will still pretty much be able to get the classes she wants. My son just went to Orientation and got all the classes he wanted at the times hew wanted.
Given the choice, I would send her to Top Scholars. My DD was at the first orientation, but her group was the last to register. Not all the classes were available, they claimed they were saving spaces for subsequent orientation groups. There was a designated date in the summer when all spaces opened up. She added and dropped classes as they became available. Certainly it all worked out, but I suspect at Top Scholars she wouldn’t get closed out of courses. In addition she can meet other Top Scholars and possibly choose a roommate who would want to live in the honors dorm.
You are right that if one goes to TSW, one does not have nearly the need to go to Orientation in June. My D did both mostly for fun, because she knew that at Orientation she would be able to get more of a feel for Audubon Park and Magazine Street while everyone else was registering for classes. Also she was still checking out roommate possibilities, although she ended up meeting her roommate through the Facebook matching program, or maybe it was Roommate Click.
But I somewhat disagree that it is very difficult for a student to attend TSW alone. There are perfectly safe hotels right on the streetcar line, such as the Hampton Inn St. Charles. So she could fly in Saturday, taxi to the hotel, eat at the restaurants very close by, and take the streetcar to Tulane the next morning. The people at the desk of the hotel would be very helpful in making sure she got on the streetcar OK. Or of course she could call another taxi. The nice thing about that is the taxi could drop her off at Freret and McAlister, so she would only have to lug her suitcase and sleeping bag half a block to the LBC where they store them for the day. From there she is staying at Tulane anyway, they are taking care of the rest. And she would no doubt meet someone she could share a taxi with back to the airport, or perhaps even met a parent/student that have a car and would take her back to the airport with them. Of course if you are lucky enough to live in a city that flies directly to NOLA, like Dallas or Houston or Nashville, etc. there is always the possibility of a flight early enough to get her to NOLA on time for the proceedings. That would eliminate the hotel altogether.
Finally, you would have to check with the Honors office, but I know in the past they have let Honors Program students register right after the last TSW from home. My D went to a TSW, but she didn’t actually end up finalizing her registration until a couple weeks later. No big deal. But she did attend, so that helped. Also, as dolphnlvr says, getting classes during the Orientations is usually not an issue either. In fact, most students get the classes they want at Tulane, they just sometimes have to wait until the first day of class and play the “add/drop” game. True, for really common classes like Calc I or beginning Spanish you might not get the time slot you wanted, but that’s college. It is very rare at Tulane for a student to get shut out of a class completely.
But she is going to be on her own sooner rather than later anyway. Unless she is very shy or something, she can handle going to TSW alone. Mine navigated it on her own after the pre-lunch talks. I had to leave on business.
@bigmacattack. As usual, I agree with @fallenchemist - but you’d need to make sure a hotel would let her check in by herself. D1 had a research trip where it was an issue; some hotels have a minimum age.
When she was looking at schools two years ago, D1 did one college visit with a friend that involved a flight and non-trivial transit from the distant airport and one by herself by train.I think it was a useful part of her transition.
One advantage of TSW is that the students seem to be registering ahead of everyone else. So if your daughter is interested in really high-demand classes (which apparently includes some of the studio art courses) this could be a great chance to get them.
Excellent point, I hadn’t thought of that. Tulane used to have rooms they would rent for a nominal fee. They weren’t anything fancy to say the least, they were on the ground floor of Monroe. But that was years and years ago. I have no idea if they still do that. Might be worth a call.
Not seem to be, they definitely are. And that is another excellent point about certain art classes, like glass blowing. Those are indeed one of the few examples of limited space where they really cannot expand the class size, even if they wanted to.
I don’t like it as much as the old paper catalogs for serendipitous browsing, but here are the course offerings in general. It won’t contain any new courses created for 2015-16, but that doesn’t affect most freshmen.
It is divided by school, obviously, so you will probably focus on the School of Liberal Arts and the School of Science and Engineering, and of course if you are a business major the AB Freeman School of Business. The other two undergraduate schools are Architecture and Public Health/Tropical Medicine. I am not sure what that last link to Newcomg-Tulane College is about, but it seems to contain a lot of ROTC courses. It must be where courses that don’t exactly fit a school get placed.
If you want to see if a course you found and liked is available in the fall semester, then you need to check out:
Just make sure the term in the upper right corner is set to Fall 2015, which does not appear to be available yet. That should be appearing very soon, since everyone is going to start registering for next fall soon. But for now that tool is useless, just keep checking back to see when the Fall term is loaded in.
So I recommend for TSW that you browse the general catalog, make a list of courses you think you might like to take in the fall, and when you meet with an advisor during TSW you can work together to see what fits into a schedule. Most people take 5 courses and a TIDES course (1 credit usually, no real work involved usually).
In addition to the excellent other points made in reply to my question, once DD saw the observation that Studio Art classes can fill up, she decided to go to Top Scholars weekend. She is unsure of her major, but is sure she wants to do a studio art minor. Tickets are booked and room reserved.