Miami (FL, not Ohio) is, according to their FA folks, moving towards hopefully eventually being a 100 need met school. THis is at the expense of their merit awards. Heard it from the horse’s mouth.
WUSTL is $62k sticker, 18% students get merit awards, and $7,600 average merit award.
That’s not a ton of merit dough. My sense (although I don’t have data) is that WUSTL was a more aggressive merit money school in the past. Might they be another example of a school backing off merit as it climbs the ladder?
But this is a Tulane thread. Their merit program is working for them now and they’d like to keep moving up in the future.
This is the kind of thinking that add to the ridiculousness of the USnews rankings. There are about 4,000 school in the US. Mincing whether a top school is, for example, #15 or #18 is ridiculous. My facebook page is lighting up with the “fabulous” rankings of a school (Ithaca) in the “top 10” (but its really top 10 in regional universities north rankings), that Elon was #1 (well yes, in regional universities south) and in the past, a relative who bragged, due to some category rating, that UMBC was rated with Harvard. These rating systems are silly. This one remains my favorite http://www.rankyourcollege.com/ddmethod.html Be sure to refresh it several times for the true effect.
If the discussion is now about “best value colleges” , if the amount of merit aid relative to COA is now being discussed, Forbes has a great list of these.
Do you know if Tulane is still offering the $20k ish merit to a broader pool (e.g., top 20% or something like that) in addition to the full tuition merits which are much harder to get? I don’t think my S would get a full. Not sure he has anything that “special” on his resume. But a break on tuition would be welcome!
Also, how long will Tulane continue this broader program if they no longer “need to”, meaning kids will pick them over most other schools without it?
Fallen, you have mentioned before that my son might be interested in their Latam studies and Econ departments. I am going to try to take him down this fall to speak to someone there and maybe sit in on a class.
I’ll defer to FC on the opinion as to what it will take to get the different levels of aid. But if the rankings improvement really leads to a stronger applicant pool, then it would be reasonable to assume the tuition discounting may change with the stats. That said, show interest and apply early! It makes a difference!
He’ll do EA @jym626, and I believe Tulane is coming to the area and his school, so he’ll go to those. NO is something you need to see to fall in love with though!! 
@fallenchemist, your points are not proven with an annectodal example of your daughter or a few friends.
The scorecard for “buying” academic talent, and taking them away from the Ivy League is National Merit.
- Tulane 41
Let’s check in on the other merit buyers and focus just on private schools in cities):
Chicago 299
Vanderbilt 237
USC 235
Northwestern 216
Wash U 212
Northeastern 112
Duke 109
Baylor 88
Tufts 64
Rice 51
Fordham 51
Case Western 50
Emory 49
University of Miami 44
Boston 33
And note this quick list leaves out all the public schools that bought a ton of scholars to keep them in state. Or those that plucked from out of state.
And from the articles I glanced at, a chunk of Tulane’s scholars were from in-state, many local, so your anecdotes don’t override the data. Tulane isn’t winning many from the Ivy schools, and far less than their peers or other publics around the country. Curious which school had the most? Harvard? Stanford? Nope - University of Oklahoma (313).
I was Completely wrong? Nope…
:)) 
Why, because you say so?? That is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. By your reasoning Ivy level scholars prefer Oklahoma to Chicago, Vanderbilt and all other top privates. Some scorecard. How does National Merit buy anyone at the schools you name? Tulane awards $2,000 for NMF. Most of the schools you name are similar, as compared to Alabama and some other schools like Oklahoma that give full rides. So yes there are schools that entice students to attend by attaching huge scholarships to NMF status, but not at the private schools you name. Apples and oranges in the extreme.
Those amounts of money are not buying anyone at the schools you name. Chicago tops your list. Explain to me exactly how they are buying NM scholars at Chicago. I’ll save you the trouble. Chicago awards $4,000. Are you really willing to come on here and say you think $2,000 is the deciding factor in choosing one private school over another??? As compared to a full tuition scholarship in many cases? Please stop posting if you cannot get the simplest facts right. The next one on your list, Vanderbilt? $2,000 for those that get other merit scholarships, same as Tulane. http://www.vanderbilt.edu/scholarships/additional.php I am sure most of the others on the list would be very similar. What a ridiculous claim you have made. BTW, it should go without saying but clearly it needs to be said. NMF status does not equate to Ivy stats. Those 313 at Oklahoma do not all have Ivy stats, and probably not most of them. But you don’t know and neither do I, so the argument is specious. The scholarships I mentioned, however, have requirements of Ivy level stats. So yes, they do attract Ivy level students only, at least as far as stat levels go.
You remain completely wrong in every other respect as well. The 135 full tuition/full ride scholarships I mentioned are national and international in scope. I am talking about the Dean’s Honor Scholarship (75 awarded), the Paul Tulane Award (50 awarded) and the Global Scholarship (10 awarded). Not one of these is designated as local to Louisiana, but instead every one of them is open to every student that applies and is accepted. The Global is international only, in fact, but internationals can also win the other two. A Korean student won the DHS this year. The state and local awards to which you refer are not awarded by Tulane at all, but by local politicians. I am afraid you have no idea what you are talking about. And when the “anecdotes” run into the hundreds, they aren’t anecdotes, they are data. I have followed Tulane for years. You clearly know very very little about the school.
You can continue to post here and subtly try to disparage Tulane, but you are not fooling anyone. Coming onto a school forum with false data, ridiculous claims, and a clear intention of just trying to take digs at the school is considered a form of spamming.
JYM – let’s just agree that the overall model is that the amount of merit money varies inversely with the strength of the school’s academic brand. Harvard does zero; Duke does a smidge; Rice and WUSTL do some; USC does more; Tulane does even more; Alabama and Oklahoma honors colleges do a lot.
Which is how it logically has to work. Every school is trying to poach kids that, if the money was equal, would usually pick the stronger brand. While it may not be the wise way to do it, the studies show very clearly that college choices are most often a function of two things – price and academic reputation.
Not that it matters, but IIRC, U Oklahoma used to offer full tuition for out of state National Merit students. That appears to have changed. They now say $67K is the award for National merit, http://www.ou.edu/content/dam/recruitment/scholarships/ScholDescription_15.16%20_res.pdf which seems to be around 3 years of OOS tuition only (not room/board/fees, etc) http://www.ou.edu/bursar/tuition_fees.html They do seem to have some other benefits https://www.ou.edu/content/admissions/nationalmerit/nmbenefits.html
And if one is going to look at the # of National Merit students they have, it should be in part relative to the total undergrad enrollment (which is 21K for U Oklahoma) Rice, for example, has only 3900 undergrads. So U Oklahoma’s undergrad enrollment is around 1.49% NMF, and Rice’s is around 1.3%. Vanderbilt, with around 6900 undergrads, is 3.4% NMF. As for the elite schools that don’t give any NM money, its kinda moot.
@fallenchemist - any time posters present hard cold facts that do not align with your fandom for Tulane, you belittle them and try to dismiss them.
You are wrong. I don’t have the time to educate you. Best of luck.
Actually, no clarinet, you are wrong. You have to look at percentages (and apologies for my initial math error). And its way more than NM that is used to cherry pick top students. NM is one metric, but its too simplistic to think that is all that schools use to try to attract desired students. Enrollment management is way more complex than that.
That’s amusing, @ClarinetDad16, because I am not seeing a cold, hard fact in your post that remotely relates to the discussion at hand. Saying you don’t have time to educate me is a very weak way of saying you have no refutation. At private schools, NM status is not used at all to sway enrollment from an Ivy to them, since the awards are all very similar and small. There is no refutation for that, because that is a cold hard fact.
I also notice you don’t have an answer for your completely wrong characterization of Tulane’s full scholarships. Is that because you cannot refute my cold, hard fact?
@jym626 - there is a fixed pool of NMF scholars that all colleges can compete for. Some schools far more successfully than others. These are essentially the top scorers nationally (awarded by state).
Just as some schools “brag” about their US News rank, some brag about the number of NMF in their freshman class. It is a way to fill their honors college, and a way to help recruit other students, faculty and donations from alumni.
The numbers I posted are just freshman NMF at a school. And they are often recruited with a merit scholarship, either directly (eg USC) or perhaps indirectly (eg Vanderbilt). As Tulane has many significant academic merit scholarships (few are filled with NMF) - the NMF winners are selecting either other merit offers or other colleges and turning down Tulane’s money.
@Northwesty - what about Vanderbilt?
They buy a ton of students with many very large merit scholarships.
Learn more about Vanderbilt’s three signature scholarship programs:
Ingram Scholars — students who plan to combine a professional or business career with an exceptional commitment to community service. The program supports students who are committed to developing their personal roles in the solution to societal problems and who have the maturity and initiative to lead positive social change.
Cornelius Vanderbilt Scholars — students who combine outstanding academic achievement with strong leadership and contributions outside the classroom.
Chancellor’s Scholars — students with outstanding high school records who have worked to build strong high school communities by bridging gaps among economically, socially, and racially diverse groups and who have demonstrated significant interest in issues of diversity education, tolerance, and social justice.
The approximately 250 recipients of these scholarships—one of our three signature scholarship programs—are guaranteed full-tuition awards plus summer stipends for study abroad, research or service projects.
Not surprisingly with that $$$$, they landed 237 NMF. That dwarfs the total of most Ivies…
So they have achieved the academic reputation, but keep the merit strategy to buy the scholars they want…
Clarinet – WUSTL ($1374 per student – 18% of students getting $7636 on average) and Rice ($2958 per student) do a little merit. USC ($4847) and Vandy ($4520) are more aggressive. Which makes sense since they were both outside the top 25 if you go back a ways and they have been big climbers on the ladder more recently.
Miami is $6274 and Tulane is 8,211.
There’s not a lot of merit money in the top 25 overall. And the overall business model is that you find it more as your go down the ladder, and less as you go up.
But individual schools can vary in how much money they devote to this and how they spread those dollars around. There’s a whole industry devoted to optimizing that variable pricing model.
Clarinet,
Yes, there are schools that offer top scholarships for elite students (Vandy, Emory, Tulane, Rice, WashU, Ohio State, Chapel Hill and other schools that use the Stamps scholarships, to name a few). And being a NMF is one feather in the cap of the candidates for these scholarships. But it is one metric. For the schools that just offer NMF momey (not talking about outside/ corporate $, talking about school $) the amount they offer the NMF students can vary greatly. One of my son’s got Tulane’s $2k/year NM money (on top of his other scholarship), whereas my other son got a measly $750/year for his NMF from Rice (if you haven’t figured that out yet or read older posts, thats where older s attended). These are not apples to apples comparisons. IN some cases students select a school because of a large NM ( and/or other) merit money they receive. In other cases the NM money is a drop in the bucket, and almost an afterthought.
As an aside,Oberlin is known for being one of the most generous private schools. Looking at merit $ ONLY (not discussing need) over 81% get some merit money, with an average being around $15K. But oh, its only a LAC and only ranked #23, so its at the “lower end” of the top 25. Cue sarcasm detector (obviously).
Oberlin’s policy has nothing to do with generosity. The Ohio LACs are an almost pure perfect example of this market and the pricing model work at work. See article linked above.
It started lower down on the ladder – Ohio Wesleyan. Then crept up to Denison. Oberlin resisted for a while but finally relented (70%; $13k average). Kenyon held out the longest, and they still do less than Oberlin (22%; $13k). Kenyon’s brand must be stronger than Oberlin’s, despite their similar USNWR rankings.
At the top, guess what? Amherst, Haverford, Pomona, Vassar, Middlebury, Barnard, Wellesley, Bates and Williams are all 0% merit. Swarthmore is 1%. Ladder climbing W&L is 13%/$35k average.
QED : )
OK, OK. As was said earlier, this is about Tulane. Don’t get me wrong, great conversation. But we have wandered too far. I think we can all agree Tulane will do something different or keep doing the exact same in the future, because they moved up even more in the rankings or didn’t.
Let’s go back to appreciating that, for those for whom the rankings have an impact, the Katrina effect is gone or nearly gone and Tulane gets the boost that has been denied it for too long. That is the point of this thread, after all.