I am assuming your son or daughter didn’t get in? My son didn’t get into schools we really felt he should have, including his own father and sisters Alma Mater and it was incredibly disappointing, but I think it’s unfair to now try to disparage Tulane when it’s where your child wanted to go. Admissions nowadays is super competitive and doesn’t make sense… I will give you that, but these schools get so many applications and the super selective schools no longer only care about a kid with great grades. Lots of cookie cutter starlight A students, but just look at the rape culture on many selective universities campuses. It’s high, ansmd they are trying to change that. Just because you’re a straight A student doesn’t mean you’re a good and moral person. A lot of schools are trying to look at character too and also, a school like Tulane definitely is looking for kids they think are a good fit… They turn down deserving students all the time.
Should I expect to get off the waitlist? 89.5 gpa, 34 act, girl at my school got in ED with 87 and a 27 act (wealthy and white), corresponded a lot with AO who seems to like me.
If you read up the thread you will find discussion of waitlist chances and also the role of full pay in the ED rounds at Tulane. Basically, WL odds range from abysmal to fairly grim, particularly if you need $ aid. Tulane did not accept a single student off its waitlist the past three years - enrollment deposits were higher than expected and the waitlist was (and is) LONG. While Tulane has made some adjustments this year in enrollment management and, purportedly, WL length, the words of Admissions Director Jeff himself (see his blog) and related ## and realities are sobering. At this point, it won’t be so much about your stats relative to accepted students (they WL’d you and hundred or thousands of others so know you can do the work and fit in) but about their institutional needs and related factors – and they won’t know for sure about going to the WL until after May 1.
The sound advice from others on CC is to love the school that loves you, put your deposit down, and move on. If Tulane is your absolute #1 and you’re determined to hang on through June, convey those thoughts to admissions in a short letter of enthusiasm and keep a modest, realistic bit of hope, knowing the likelihood is extremely slim in today’s competitive admissions climate. Sorry to sound discouraging. We’ve been through it - tough stuff.
Good to know. My parents HATE Tulane, so even though they’re one of my top choices,
My daughter is going to decline. Hopefully it will open a spot for someone. I don’t think offering a fee waiver for applying is the way to go. Too many kids are applying and they are not really interested in Tulane. It looks like they want to lower the acceptance rate using fee waivers. We feel used.
Tulane eliminated their application fee 10 plus years ago in the spirit of making the application economically accessible to all and to eliminate the work involved with the administration of the fee itself. From a Forbes article on the top schools with no app fee: “I checked in with some of the admissions officers at the schools that don’t charge application fees and asked why they set up their policies. At Tulane, admissions director Faye Tydlaska says her school dropped its $45 fee in 2008 because it was already granting so many admissions waivers, including to all Louisiana applicants, and to anyone who asked. It realized only about half of applicants were paying and the money raised from the fees was negligible. “It was such a hindrance to students,” she says.”
As for someone who applies to a school they are not interested in only because there is no fee…hopefully they get what they deserve, especially at a school where admission has become as competitive as it has at Tulane. It’s not as though Tulane doesn’t emphasize demonstrated interest as being critically important and essentially requiring their supplemental essay to be seriously considered. You can’t just press a “free” button in the common app in order to become a viable applicant…you have to do some extra work as well.
I guess the alternative would be to raise the fee and eliminate any waivers so that only the seriously interested with the means to pay the fee would apply. That way the couldn’t be “gaming the system” to lower the acceptance rate. I mean, why try to make the application more accessible to economically limited applicants when you are attempting to increase the socioeconomic diversity of your student body and moving to an emphasis on need-based aid over merit? They should instead make the application less accessible to the very students they are attempting to target and enroll…makes perfect sense. Insert eye roll emoji here:
Remarkable increases in application numbers and yield which have led to a reduction in the numbers of admitted students and thereby a 13% admission rate. An incredible recovery for a school that was just about decimated by Hurricane Katrina.