@nannypoo I apologize, it is nowhere near a safety school and you’re right, Tulane doesn’t want to be known as one.
@UofMorMSU @HoldensDad I believe it includes those who haven’t heard yet. It sounds odd to think that nearly 5,000 students would not be in the Facebook group. Then again, I could be wrong. Do most admitted students usually join the Facebook group?
I received a packet from Financial Aid today. It was worded very much like I have been admitted, and now it is down to why I should chose there. I haven’t received anything regarding EA decision, I expect that on the 20th.
Am I reading to far into this letter or does it actually mean something? I had my private admissions counselor read the letter without saying anything about my thoughts and they concluded the same thing. What do you all think?
@HWN2021 a lot of others got that letter and I don’t think it means anything. They just want you to submit the CSS PROFILE and stuff.
It would be nice if the FB-driven numerical analysis held up. Would like to think there are still 1,000s more EA acceptances to go. Does anyone know if there were a flood of acceptances on the last day last year?
On the Financial Aid letter, I agree it really does sound like it assumes acceptance. I am not saying that it actually means anything, but it really does sounds like it. Also, the fact that different people get them at different times seems odd to me. Almost seems like it must be a point in the review processes that it is sent. Villanova, by contrast sent a similar e-mail to all applicants at once and went out of its way to note that all applicants were receiving the e-mail and the e-mail indicated nothing one way or the other with respect to admissions.
HWN2021: When did you apply?
Are there any people on the board who did NOT get the financial aid packet yet?
I got the financial aid packet almost a month ago but I have not received a decision.
I applied EA, and have not got a decision or a financial aid packet. And I sent in my app a month before it was due.
My material was downloaded Nov 10 and I received the financial aid letter around Dec. 1. Have not heard about EA yet.
I emailed my local rep this morning and got a reply message that he is out of the country until January, and that the office will be closed Dec 21 for break.
Applied 11/15
Financial Aid letter 12/12
1771
Acemom (pasted below) has it right imho. This is the first year of ED at Tulane, so they were running a bit of an experiment. Tulane has been, and continues to be, a school that primarily rolls on EA rather than ED. And they are somewhat unusual in that they currently have both.
The sweet spot for ED are schools is the 10 thru 30 bands of the USNWR rankings. Penn, Duke, Northwestern, Vandy, WUSTL, Emory, Wake Forest. Those schools (all a little bit up market/brand from Tulane) offer a bit of a break on admissions in exchange for the guaranteed 100% yield on all ED offers made. It is a very effective tool for those schools to keep their admissions rate very low and fill up their class with kids who will have strong stats and who will tend strongly to be full or fuller payors. This band of schools typically fill 50% of their seats through ED. The schools even further up market (HYPS), however, eschew ED as a gimmick and only do SCEA/REA. Their brands are SOOOOO strong that they get full enrollment, great yield and low acceptance rates without having to resort to ED.
Since Tulane is still primarily an EA school, Acemom is surely right that the ED pool consisted of a lot of stretchers. While Tulane gets a lower yield out of EA, it does get massive numbers of very strong EA applications and it does reasonably well enrolling those kids. Mostly due to their aggressive deployment of large merit scholarship awards. Every school has a business model, and EA/merit just happens to be a large part of Tulane’s. One part of this model is that Tulane does some semi-rolling admissions for strong EA applicants. Many schools release all EA decisions on a single day. Tulane in contrasts still hustles to get some acceptances out very quickly and very early where they can, hoping to get a jump other chools. That approach absolutely hooked my kid (who graduated TU in May 2016) – TU was the first school she heard from.
So it is predictable (at least in hindsight) that the ED acceptance rate might turn out to be fairly low. Tulane wants to enroll the strongest class of students they can, and their algorithms (which are quite sophisticated) were telling them that accepting a lot of the ED applications wasn’t the way to get there.
The spring enrollment thing is a relatively new tool in the enrollment management game. I had not heard of that before from Tulane, so I’m not sure of the thinking behind it. It has been used extensively by some schools to manage (others would say game) their enrollment stats. Rankings darling Northeastern is the poster child for this. BU has also gotten in on this game. FYI, both those schools are in the same USNWR ranking band as Tulane.
They admit some academically weaker applicants for January, and the stats of those students do not get counted into the numbers reported for ranking purposes to USNWR. NE sends its freshman off to a study abroad program for first semester, then they start on campus in January. If you really like the school, it is one way to get in when your stats may be on the margin for regular acceptance. Also, some schools do report that they have more space in the spring – combination of fall graduations plus more upper classmen choosing to studying abroad in the spring semester.
The email biff is regetable. But my $0.02 is that the Tulane admissions folks (especially Jeff S) are really good people doing a hard job. It is quite a crazy task for Tulane to go from 40,000 apps to 1,600 enrolled students. Tulane almost died (literally) after Hurricane Katrina and the school had to do a lot of innovative things to get kids to apply and enroll in order to survive. The turnaround has been a roaring success. Now Tulane seems to be dealing with some problems of its more recent success. I think the experiments with ED and spring enrollment are things they are testing out as a way to evolve their model and make managing the crazy application funnel less crazy.
“Most people who apply ED are applying to reach schools because ED strengthens their application. Otherwise, why apply ED instead of EA? My guess is that the ED applications were not as strong as accepted EA apps in general. Hence, Spring admit is a way for these students to attend their reach school. Many, many colleges and universities offer Spring admit. It is nothing new or strange, though maybe new for Tulane. These students certainly have the option to turn elsewhere for their education. No need to get salty about it.”
Im pretty sure I received the financial aid packet before I even applied… Or close after
@FamilyCEO
Thank you so much for your kind words. Appreciated.
Still waiting on my ea decision even though people I know who also applied ea already heard back and got in
Same ^^^
does anyone know what time EA decisions will be released on tuesday?
This whole process has been a debacle. From the retracted acceptance letter, the staggered acceptance of students by random dates, info showing up on the financial aid page before people get the letter of acceptance, financial aid letter showing up for some and not others, also precariously in a large envelope that looks like it could be an acceptance letter, discussing info about acceptance statistics to the NY Times before decisions have gone out…get it together, Tulane!
For a lot of schools they say first come all the acceptances and deferrals and then the last round of decisions are usually rejects, is that the case for tulane? I applied EA and I still haven’t heard back, so I’m just wondering do you think anyone will be accepted at this point?
For people who have crunched numbers, is there still room for more acceptances?
I applied in early August for EA. I was wondering if I should I be prepared for a rejection next Tuesday since it has been sitting so long in review.