<p>If you had the opportunity to go to Tulane, but it was going to cost you full freight, would you say it was worth it versus going to a good quality public school that might cost about half of the price? Let's assume we are talking about schools like University of Maryland, University of Delaware, or University of Connecticut. </p>
<p>I know Tulane is a great school (and I realize that, in a Tulane forum, I might get some biased views!), but I'm trying to determine whether the advantages are worth so much more money if there is no scholarship.</p>
<p>S2 has applied to Tulane and will choose it if accepted over state flagship (though the school is USNWR ranked higher than Tulane), even if full-frieght. He may not choose it over other privates, however. His stats are quite good and he is looking forward to hearing from Tulane.</p>
<p>ReadyToRoll - If you have been reading the Tulane threads you already know I am a huge Tulane booster, although I like to think I am fair and have definitely recommended other schools to people in particular situations. I have also stated a number of times, although it has been awhile since it has come up and so the threads are old, that a university education is absolutely a value proposition. In other words it is, IMHO, absolutely ridiculous to go deeply into debt to get an education enywhere, even HYP schools. How much is deeply? That is obviously an individual calculation, but I would personally say anything over about $50K after 4 years, and that is still on the high side.</p>
<p>What if you don’t have to take on debt but it is not a trivial amount to you, i.e. you are upper middle class but not rich? Again, a very individual assessment that is impossible for others to say for you, but I would say that you can get a really good education at any of those schools you mention and the money can be useful for after college, whether it be post-graduate education or for getting that first house or whatever. And that is another factor: what are your post-graduate ambitions? If there is more school involved that might cost yet more thousands, it amplifies the importance of saving the money now. Certainly the overall fit of a school like Tulane might be much different that the ones you mention, and that is yet another factor that is mushy and therefore impossible to put into a neat little equation.</p>
<p>What it all boils down to, then, is that it is a very tough decision that ultimately rests on you and your parents weighing all these factors and deciding what in the end will serve you best. The only one I consider absolute is that it is foolish to go into significant debt for an undergrad education when there are so many quality options that are more affordable.</p>
<p>BTW, forget the rankings stuff. They truly are rather meaningless. Just an aside.</p>
<p>I also agree that substantial debt in exchange for attending a particular college is unwise. Given that it is a matter of marginally greater cost to someone who can afford it, then other considerations enter in. With that said, Tulane has considerable, and often underrated, educational value. For us, it offsets the marginal extra cost over State U.</p>
<p>idad- you certainly won’t get any argument from me that
LOL. In other threads, it was pointed out that if you went strictly by average SAT scores, Tulane would place about 28th. I say place, not rank, because it is a statistical fact. Add to that the things that you can only experience at Tulane, such as the charm and history of New Orleans coupled with the opportunity to rebuild the city, and it is a considerable (and underrated) education.</p>
<p>BTW, enything is obviously anything in my post above. Man, I hate that.</p>
<p>Will hopefully not be in the full freight position, but we actually did start looking seriously at Tulane when we realized that there were no state options for our son. Although we have some good state schools, socially, they were not going to be a good fit for son. After our visit to Tulane on an open house day, we decided to take the chance and take Tulane up on that personal application that was waiting for us when we returned from yet another disappointing state school visit. </p>
<p>If we are lucky enough for son to be accepted, we will be eating a lot of red beans and rice over the next four years. Although we are local, we want son to live on campus to experience the wonderful student life that Tulane has to offer. And we can’t discount the thousands we’ll save on plane tickets and winter clothes if he chooses Tulane over his midwestern choices.</p>
<p>Don’t know about past GPA averages, but S2 who will be attending Tulane in the fall had a GPA far better than 3.49. It was good enough for him to be accepted to UC Berkeley and USC (with scholarship). During orientation S2 spoke with many other students whose GPAs were north of 3.7 unweighted. GPAs are difficult comparative indicators. Some schools report weighted GPAs while others report unweighted. (An aside, S1 had a GPA of 3.46 and was admitted to UChicago.) </p>
<p>As for respect outside of New Orleans, we have found quite the opposite to be true. Particularly in the Northeast US, Tulane was highly regarded by all we spoke with prior to applying. It’s graduates attend top professional and grad schools throughout the country. Tulane is a great fit for S2, and we could not be happier with his decision to attend.</p>
<p>Perhaps TulaneJeff, of Tulane’s admissions office will see the above posts and be able to respond and provide this year’s average GPA. I found data on 2 websites that seem to contradict biograduate’s post:</p>
<p>CLASS OF 2014
Profile of Students
Interested in This College
(not admitted students)
UW W M CR W GPA SAT ACT
Average 3.65 4.05 683 669 672 30<br>
Low 2.61 2.75 500 470 450 23<br>
High 4.00 5.00 800 800 800 36 </p>
<p>As for the original question-- that’s a toughie. My s refused to apply to our state flagships (U or Tech) so I can’t compare cost issues. He did get into higher “ranked” schools, but the merit money was nowhere near as comparable to Tulane’s DHS and NM. That said, would I pay $51K out of pocket for Tulane? To be perfectly honest, probably not. We paid an avg of about $25/yr OOP (after merit $$) for older s’s school and felt it was well worth it. Would I pay twice that for Tulane? Really-- I dont think so.</p>
<p>As to the original question, we would have paid full-freight. Though the scholarship S2 received was welcome and we won’t be turning it down, it was not the deciding factor for him or his parents. Further, since he received scholarship offers from most of the schools to which he applied, it did not enter into the cost benefit matrix other than as an affirmation that Tulane wanted him.</p>
<p>biograduate is the latest incarnation of SJUHawk. He got mad at me on another thread when I simply pointed out that Florida State U reported weighted GPA’s and that the GPA they did report didn’t make sense when compared to the top publics. I also made a comment about how admitted student stats were always higher than actual attending student stats because many of the accepted students were using FSU as a safety and actually went on to Harvard, Duke, Tulane, etc. He went totally ballistic, it was bizarre.</p>
<p>Anyway, that is the root of his dredging up this thread and making those comments.</p>
<p>Step 1: If money is no object then you should go where you will be happiest and have the best chance to succeed. College is more than just an education it is a wonderful experience. If you have limitless resources, go where you will have the fullest experience and best education. If that, for you, is Tulane, go for it. (If money is a concern, proceed to step 2). </p>
<p>Step 2: If money is a concern then consider the return on investment. Return on investment has been discussed here before but here is a link to college ratings based on ROI: [What’s</a> Your College Degree Worth? - BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?)</p>
<p>As you can see, state schools vary. If you are accepted to UC-Berkeley then from a financial point of view Tulane is not worth the money. For the schools you mentioned, Maryland (No. 86) has a slightly better return on investment than Tulane (No. 96). If it is UConn, then Tulane has a better ROI ranking (96) than UConn (122). Tulane versus Maryland or UConn are tough choices. If you are talking about the University of Vermont (ROI rank of 210) it makes the decision easier. Again, this is purely from a financial point of view.</p>
<p>Couldn’t agree more RisingChemist. Whether one uses the calculations of a publication like Business Week or some other analysis, if finances are a major issue then one needs to use considerable discretion as to where one picks to go. Personally, I never like to see a person come out of undergrad with more than $20-25K of debt, give or take.</p>
<p>Just to be clear on another point, I didn’t mean to imply that biograduate was SJUHawk under another name, I just meant he seemed quite similar in his vitriolic rants regarding Tulane and his utter disregard for easy and obvious facts and the conclusions that lead from them.</p>
<p>In any case, hello to all from NOLA, I have met 6 different parent/incoming freshman families just on the plane ride and at the hotel, and they are all fantastic. Everyone is super excited.</p>
<p>We are in NOLA, it’s 1 AM and we just returned from Frenchman St. Heard Leah Chase at Snug Harbor; she is amazing. Need to be up in less tha six hours. I think I may be a bad influence on the kids…</p>
<p>Have fun everyone!! Hope the weather is good for move-in!</p>
<p>And FC, you must have spotted a tiger trying to change his stripes. Good job.</p>
<p>And to clarify again- I agree with those who said they should review their personal financial situation to decide on their ability to pay for any school. We scrimped and saved and told our kids we would pay for their undergraduate education at the school of their choice. Since younger s is considering professional or grad school, he wanted to be more careful with his undergrad school funds. That said, he didn’t want to go to the ginormous flagship U or the local flagship Tech (he claims because he wanted a better male:female student body ratio!) Tulane is a great fit for him and he is very happy. How much does that happiness cost?? I guess it is priceless-- though I don’t know if we’d have paid 200K for it, knowing he’d probably then be going into serious debt to fund a professional post-baccalaureate education. He wanted to re-allocate some of the $ we saved for undergrad to be used for grad school.</p>
<p>My point is, returning to the OP’s question, it is a difficult, multi-factorial question. Would he have chosen TU over other schools he got into if he’d gotten only the $25K scholarship instead of the DHS? Might he have gotten a Community service scholarship instead of the DHS? All unknown variables. He turned down a top 20 school that was a good fit for him and that he liked, but the merit scholarship wasn’t as strong, and he wanted to go farther away to school (this particular one, though he really liked it, was too close to home for his liking), but if he’d gotten only the NMS money (2K) from Tulane, he might have chosen the closer school, as it offered significantly more merit $ than that and we’d have saved on travel costs, but would still have been a big out of pocket expense.</p>
<p>Coming back to ponder again-- if we had been able to get ds to apply to the ginormous flagship U and he had to choose between it and full-pay Tulane— well he REALLY did NOT want to go to a huge school, and if those were his only choices, we might have gone ahead and paid the full freight at Tulane with only the NMS $, but we would have expected him to go back and revisit the State U again before making the final decision. We did promise we’d fund their undergraduate, and we didn’t want to reneg on that offer. </p>
<p>To complicate things further, after he got into TU in October with the initial 25K scholarship offer at that time, he decided not to finish his applications to some other schools that were on his list. If he had not gotten the preliminary scholarship, or had gotten less $ at that time, he probably would have completed more of the applications that were in process and he might have had different choices. The subsequent award of the DHS finalized his decision for sure. Its all very complicated! So OP, I feel your pain-- these are tough decisions to make.but I wish you the very best with it!</p>