SCEA will no longer be an option, but EA remains. http://tuadmissionjeff.blogspot.com/2016/04/tulane-goes-ed.html
Do you believe this means anything about how the admissions process turned out this year?
Wow, that is hard to say @izayaorihara. My instinct is no, this is probably something that would have to have been in discussion starting well before this admission cycle was off the starting line, given how many people would have been involved in approving it. There are no bureaucracies like academic ones, save the Federal government. I could speculate forever about how this came about, including if it was something President Fitts initiated quickly after arriving. No idea if that is true. At the same time, it does seem logical that the change in Tulane’s ranking (meaningless as that is in the abstract, and yet potentially highly meaningful in terms of moving forward) could have played a role as well. I am sure there were many, many factors and maybe this admission cycle just solidified the justifications for the move.
Personally I have some key concerns about how this affects admissions, but there is plenty of time to see if clarification is brought to bear on those concerns before the next cycle gets underway.
Thank you for passing on the news, as disheartened as I am about it.
potentially big changes in the way merit aid gets handed out. and they may stop doing the rolling notifications. the 12/20 notification date probably is so they can wait to dole out EA decisions until after ED decisions at other schools are done. Probably stating the obvious, but their priority must be focusing on yield. will be interesting to see what happens.
I think this is a good move for Tulane in that it should clarify those applicants who truly regard Tulane as their top choice. There are valid concerns regarding the impact on financial aid and merit awards, but other schools have managed that dance successfully.
I think it might be nicer for the applicants if all the decisions were released at one time instead of on the sort of rolling basis Tulane uses. It was difficult to see so many students get accepted before my daughter. She applied early in the early action cycle using the Tulane application, but didn’t get accepted until pretty late. But, maybe the way Tulane does admissions generates more interest in the school.
My son will be applying in two years so I hope they keep the generous merit aid in place. Otherwise, Tulane or really most any selective private university would be too expensive with an upper middle class income. Tulane and the University of Miami are the only two selective private research universities I know of that offer good merit aid to higher income families. Even though, our expected family contribution would be 60,000 plus, I just don’t feel like the Ivies or any of the schools are worth that much. Very happy Tulane gives merit aid or my daughter would have to attend one of our state universities . Does everyone think Tulane is becoming so competitive they may no longer offer much merit aid? I hope not since I actually have two sons that will be applying in two and then three years later.
That is, almost literally, the $64,000 question*. I feel like Tulane’s marketing/admissions strategy since Katrina has been brilliant, really worthy of Harvard Business Review articles and textbooks. Sure, there were aspects that caused uneasy feelings among some, but at least a couple of those aspects had to be that way to make the rest of the strategy work.
In any case, there continues to be the realities of budgets, class size, class quality, and now a renewed emphasis on diversification. That last, if you define diversification not only about color/ethnic heritage but also economic diversity, might be at odds with as much money going towards merit scholarships rather that meeting 100% of need and having more students that have more need. Because euphemisms aside, in Tulane’s case economic diversity still means more students from the lower end of the socio-economic scale, usually of color, while still meeting or exceeding Tulane’s academic standards.
But I don’t know how all of this ties into Tulane’s move to ED. Because unless you promise to meet 100% of need, and do those calculations in a reasonable manner and not one that counts monies and other assets that are not really there, then ED is really only there for students that need little or no aid. So maybe Tulane is thinking that they will get a better picture of who can afford Tulane by who applies ED, and they will continue with the merit aid as is for those that apply EA, which would be your kids who are yet to apply. I certainly assume that the DHS and PTA awards are unaffected. But if that is true, unless Tulane is very convincing that applying ED vs. EA doesn’t affect the judgement of those awards (a tough sell I imagine until there is a track record), then why would someone apply ED if they want one of those scholarships, even if they can afford Tulane? To state the obvious, by applying ED they have removed the use of the scholarship as incentive to attend over an Ivy or similar school for those students that can afford all of Tulane.
I don’t know, it is pretty complicated with a lot of competing factors. I imagine a lot will depend on details of the implementation as well as how they market it. But I will say that in general, in any business, no matter how good a business strategy is and how successful the business is, if you don’t at least reshape it on a regular basis, and sometimes change it completely, the business usually stagnates or worse. And Lord knows that college admissions is as dynamic an area as there is these days. Multiple “hard” factors are changing on a regular basis, not to mention the influence of social factors. Let’s see how it all goes.
*Many of you will be unaware that there was an early TV quiz show called The $64,000 Question in the late 1950’s. It was hugely popular for a couple of years, then fell off quickly in popularity and got cancelled. Part of the reason as well was a major scandal in another game show, Twenty-One, which caused problems for all the game shows. Of course $64,000 was a tremendous amount of money then. According to an online calculator I Googled, that is about $566,000 today. Frankly I would have thought more, but still it is a lot. It became embedded in American vocabulary for three decades at least to say, when confronted with a situation that was anything but obvious as to how to proceed, when asked what to do next someone would say “That really is the $64,000 question”. I only explained all that because when I said that phrase to a group of students that were deciding on colleges, I got a lot of blanks looks.
@X22011, I am completely with you. Honestly, I don’t like the concept of ED at all, as it puts pressure on kids to make uninformed decisions. Hopefully this is not the first step in a move away from merit scholarships. That brings up the question: are students who commit ED eligible for Tulane’s generous merit scholarships? What would Tulane’s incentive be to grant them to kids who have already committed to attend? I wonder what the ED accepted student body will look like, as Tulane is big on demonstrated interest. Will it be the kids with borderline stats? Or will it be the high stat kids who are hoping for a merit scholarship? This puts the next class of high-stat potential applicants in a pickle, unless Tulane can clearly articulate how the ED process intersects with their generous merit scholarships. In the past, applying SCEA was the strongest indicator of demonstrated interest. Does that honor now sit with applying ED? Or can a high stat student apply EA and still have hope for a merit scholarship? Our family will be anxiously watching this next admissions cycle.
A few years ago, IIRC, Tulane required applicants for the DHS to apply SCEA. Not sure how that worked out, but they dropped that like a hot potato the next year.
Am wondering if this might attract the less academic superstar candidates who want to attend Tulane and can afford to pay full freight. Agree that improving yield is a good thing, but depending on the # they accept ED and the stats of these students, one would hope to not see a drop in the average stats of admitted students.
@jym626: “Am wondering if this might attract the less academic superstar candidates who want to attend Tulane and can afford to pay full freight.” I think you may have hit the nail on the head; along with giving the university the ability to eliminate some degree of uncertainty in the ultimate yield. I thought that this article was very interesting: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/03/31/a-college-admissions-edge-for-the-wealthy-early-decision/?hpid=hp_hp-more-top-stories_college-admissions-710am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
ED will also help distinguish those who have Tulane at the top of their list, even those that would appear to have the grades to get into the Ivies. Tulane has always looked for those showed the most interest.
bye bye merit scholarships… I don’t see why they would give merit scholarships to ED applicants. It’s too bad to be honest. Hope I get in EA with a scholarship though.
Not a fan of ED, as I see it as a tool for schools to lure full-pay students, but more importantly I see at as only useable by wealthy applicants to the detriment of less wealthy applicants. If schools were held to their Net Price Calculator estimates, less wealthy students could know whether they could actually afford a school and try ED. However, in my experience, NPCs are just ballpark estimates, which can vary by thousands of dollars from what the COA for an individual student would be.
I am going to be attending Tulane University in the fall (yay!) as the class of 2020! I just heard about the addition of the Early Decision option next year and I think it’s a great leap forward for the university. By offering ED I see Tulane joining the top tier schools such as Vanderbilt and Rice and believe that it will do nothing but help the University. It will certainly weed out the students that are not completely committed to Tulane which is what they always aim to do. I know I, who was completely set on Tulane (Applied SCEA) would’ve applied ED had it been an option. However, I was awarded the Presidential Scholarship (25K/year) and I wonder if the ED application would make you less likely to receive merit money? However, I’ve seen with other schools that they value your interest and dedication to their school (and see that you’ll 100% attend if accepted) when you apply ED and will still award you with merit scholarships. Anyways, Best of luck to everyone on future endeavors and Roll Wave!!
Congrats on your decision and welcome to the Tulane family! To respond to your question, as I said above I know Tulane’s intent is to award merit money based largely on stats, the same way they have been the last number of years, regardless of ED or EA or RD. But I don’t know if that is set in stone for this upcoming cycle or not. I think, despite the easy logic of not awarding merit or less merit to “bound” applicants, that Tulane has a lot of incentives to stay on this path. Besides the ones I mention above, another would be the fact that word would get out quickly if this were not the case, which would then dry up the ED applications from both the non-wealthy applicants, and applicants that have stats that would normally qualify for merit awards. Clearly that cannot be what Tulane is hoping for by making this move.
Oh, and just so there isn’t confusion among others accepted to Tulane, the Presidential was worth $32K this year. The $25K is, I think, the Founders Scholarship. Not that there is a huge difference! Over half off tuition is pretty sweet!
So do you predict that in coming years they are going to potentially eliminate the EA option and just offer ED?
Barring any major change in college admissions overall, such as some major change in the rules all schools play by, I really doubt that EA would be eliminated, leaving only ED. I just don’t think that fits Tulane at all.
Many schools who offer both merit and ED require all applicants who are interested in receiving any merit to apply very near the EA deadline and before the RD deadline. This allows schools to essentially review the whole merit pool prior to handing out ED and RD decisions and helps applicants who are interested in applying ED know their out of pocket cost prior to enrolling but does not allow ED applicants to “shop” awards to see if they get better financial offers elsewhere which seems fair. Students who are not comfortable with the risk can apply RD.
Of course there might be changes, but Tulane has not done it quite that way so far. Tulane will have ED, EA, and RD. All will be considered for partial merit scholarships with no further application required. For those seeking full tuition or full ride scholarships, they must apply ED or EA and submit additional applications. Certainly Tulane will inform ED applicants of their partial merit awards when they send the official acceptance. But those same students, even though they have already been accepted, will have to wait to hear about the full awards. Since FA depends on those awards, I don’t know if they will wait to show how much FA they are prepared to offer, or go ahead with an early offer that is subject to change should they win one of the big awards.