Tulane or Emory

Colleges and Universities A-Z Tulane University
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Hi. D has been accepted to both, has done overnights at both and she loves both. With scholarships: (Tulane $30,000 yr and Emory 20,000 yr - (no FA :frowning: ) Emory will be about 8,000 more a yr. than Tulane.

D will be studying Gender/Sexuality and likely going to law school.

Emory pros:
better academics?? maybe??
less greek??
Better reputation??

Emory cons:
3.2 GPA needed to maintain scholarship - D had 3.75 GPA w/ 9 AP’s so I think she’ll be fine but we can’t afford w/o scholarships
$8,000 more per yr.

Tulane Pros:
cheaper
warmer
Honors Program? benefits?
better city life
better food
2.75 GPA needed to maintain scholarships

Tulane Cons:
party reputation actual too wild parties??
sport infused atmosphere (a turn-off for D if it is too intense)
less serious academically?? maybe?? Might this be better for GPA/law school?

Thanks so much for your feedback!

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@gettingaclue

I will mostly let the Emory folks talk about Emory, although I know it fairly well. They do have great facilities, thanks to all that money from the Coca-Cola empire. And their admissions is a notch more selective than Tulane’s. It’s not a huge difference, but it is there. As far as reputation, though, I think it depends somewhat on where she ends up settling, and in any case I have found through the years, and it continues to be confirmed by the success of my D and so many of her classmates, that this factor is usually overblown. Outside of perhaps the Wall Street types recruiting from the Ivies and a few other selected schools, generally speaking it is more a matter of what you can put on your resume as to how you spent your time as an undergrad, and how you present yourself.

As far as the $8,000 per year, only you know if that is a major amount to your family. To state the obvious, it most likely matters a great deal more to a family that makes $75,000 per year than to one that makes $300,000 per year. Certainly I would say that there is nothing about almost any highly selective school (for undergrad) compared to another highly selective school that justifies straining the family budget.

I also wouldn’t worry about the party reputation. I promise you the Emory folks head into Buckhead and other parts of Atlanta quite regularly and party plenty. If she doesn’t attend the parties at Tulane (or Emory), they can’t be too wild. It won’t leave her with nothing to do on the weekends. I have lost count of how many times I have said to someone on here “There are plenty of people at Tulane that are like you and just want to go to movies, hang out, take in a concert, try new restaurants sometimes, wander through the art galleries, etc. Just find them”. If I could wave a magic wand and have them appear in the auditorium at Tulane at the same time, the place would be cited for breaking the occupancy fire code. To be fair, it would be the same in Atlanta. Both great cities with lots of options that don’t have to include drinking and wild partying. The key at Tulane, or anyplace, is to be a little outgoing and do some planning for these activities. Except for the hanging out. Going for pizza and hanging out doesn’t take a lot of planning.

Also I had to chuckle a bit at the sports. Tulane WISHES that it was a “sports infused atmosphere”. It is certainly there, and with the stadium now on campus I am sure there will be more interest in the football team at least. But Tulane is a very long way from intense when it comes to sports. If my D (not a sports person in general) were still there, she would probably have fun with some friends at some tailgate activities and then go off and do something else when game time came around. Tulane is not even close to being dominated by the sports scene.

As usual I typed more than I meant to before getting to what I think is the most important factor. If she is confident about her major of gender/sexuality studies, then I strongly urge her to look hard at the Newcomb College Institute and the Newcomb Scholars program. I think these resources/programs could be a unique and superior experience for her, and for enhancing her law school prospects. Although law schools do focus on GPA and LSAT scores, there is no doubt that a record of accomplishment beyond those can push one into the acceptance column at any school, including top law schools, if it is a close call. But even beyond how it might or might not enhance her law school prospects, the experience for her could be life-changing. She should also look at the Tulane Scholars program as an alternative to the Newcomb Scholars. She would be assigned a professor in her field as a mentor from the start, and have enhanced opportunities for internships and fellowships in her area. Again, I cannot speak to what Emory offers that might compare to this, but I know this is a strongly positive area for Tulane.

Clearly this is a luxurious choice for her to have to make. Talk about not being able to go wrong! But I understand it is still a choice she has to make and wants to make the “more right one” for herself. I think that if she A) takes advantage of one of the two scholars programs I mentioned, and B) can establish a group of friends fairly quickly that also don’t want to just do the frat parties, etc., then I think she would have a great career at Tulane. BTW, I believe the Tulane Law School runs a clinic for helping people with gender/sexuality issues. That is something else she should check out. I think Tulane offers the kind of opportunities she is looking for.

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Thank you, thank you as always for your clarifying information, @fallenchemist. You are a saint.

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My s chose Tulane over Emory for several reasons. First and foremost it was the cost difference, as he got the DHS at Tulane, buy he also loved the feel of the school and wanted to be a bit further from home. He also ended up as an engineering major which would not have been an option at Emory, but that is not your daus concern. BTW, you did get FA, a very generous amount from both schools. Its merit aid, not need aid


Agree with FC that sports is unfortunately an afterthought at Tulane. Hopefully with the stadium back on campus there will be more team spirit.

And yesEmory kids have options off campus, as ther eis an active nightlife in Atlanta and there are manuu other colleges in the vicinity, but its not really Buckhead anymore, FC. Times have changed!

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@ jym626 : That just makes sense, students shouldn’t go to schools that offer nothing remotely close to their interest (unless they are the 3-2 types, which many students aren’t)
There should have been no competition there

@fallenchemist : I think midtown and the Highlands are much more common now and so is Decatur. The Highlands is quite awesome and is midway between Emory and Tech essentially, and there is a mixture of things like restaurants and things like bars (some for a college age crowd and many for working adult crowds). The Emory Point is up and coming and has some nice restaurants with bars inside (some with live music) that can be well populated. I agree about the NO food scene, but apparently for the relatively liberal southern city that Atlanta is, the food scene and many of the homegrown and local restaurants are nothing to scoff at. But usually Atlanta’s best options are purely southern or all American in nature whereas NO has non-chain restaurants of many cultures which is quite awesome. But when you take into account the demographics of Emory, Atlanta’s dining options are more than acceptable.

As for oppurtunities
Emory has gotten kind of serious about opps for UG humanities students and has always had ILA (which hosts the interdisciplinary studies major when she can essentially design her own major and have a nice intellectual community). One other program that could help her delve further into academics is Fox Center Fellows which seems to be gaining ground among those in the humanities doing an honors thesis (you can’t get honors at Emory for just having a high GPA, and who blames it for not wanting to do it that way. Used to be like that at Tulane, but they reversed it: http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp?id=ProgramRequirements . I wouldn’t want such a reversal to happen at Emory because it could only do harm considering the level of pre-professionalism. We want to incentivize deeper engagement with academics than merely earning high grades as some students earn them in the sketchiest way possible, especially pre-professions. Honors based on GPA may reflect careful course selection more so than anything else and really would not mean that much ):http://chi.emory.edu/fellowships/index.html#6 .

Again, this is a choice based upon fit. One thing perhaps kind of cool at Emory is that it seems to be trying to get more “interesting” academically (other than already being kind of serious) in that it is rethinking the liberal arts and how courses should be designed in light of what a liberal arts education is. Things like the University Course has come out of it (and there is one that got some national attention that will be offered in the Fall on the Ferguson movement). The course offerings are very responsive to what is happening in the country/world and that may be at least partially owed to how diverse the campus is. Often this isn’t something that someone like me (who was a STEM major) would consider, but I imagine a humanities or social science major would want to know what the curriculum or state of intellectual climate is at a school, especially if considering a major in something so interdisciplinary like WGS. Look into it at both schools I would say. Sounds like your D is perhaps more intellectually driven and should explore differences in that area (not primarily in the student bodies, so much as course offerings, university wide seminars, whatever).

6

to clarify, bernie,
When he started school he didn’t have engineering on his radar. He started in a different direction, so that wasn’t part of his initial decision-making process. It was just fortuitous that it was an option when he changed majors.

7

Well thank goodness then


8

He did pick up a summer class at Tech when he was in town for a summer internship, so its all good :wink:

Am a big supporter of Emory, and agree that the Decatur/Poncey Highlands/VaHi area and the Beltline are great options for the young crowd.

Well, off to the dogwood festival!

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@bernie12

To be clear, any large city has dining options that are high quality, and the bigger the city the more diverse the options, usually. NOLA is a bit of an exception in that it has unusually diverse options for a metro area its size. Quite a bit of that is historical, of course, but also NOLA is one of the few cities with so much convention traffic and tourism relative to its size (not to mention Mardi Gras and the festivals), that you have to factor that population number by some significant amount. Especially since visitors eat virtually every meal out. I love the food in Atlanta for certain cuisines, just as you say. I know you can find anything in Atlanta you want, but you just have to hunt a little harder and maybe travel a bit farther for certain types of meals, at least the best ones. Atlanta remains one of my favorite cities as I remember it, and I am sure it still would be if I could get there more.

You are right, naturally, about Tulane dropping the thesis requirement to graduate with highest honors of summa cum laude and magna cum laude. They are GPA based now, starting about 2 years ago. There were just too many high achieving students in some areas, especially business, that felt that doing a thesis shouldn’t be required for recognizing their high performance in the classroom. I had very mixed feelings about it at the time, but since a lot of the students in other fields (and in business if they want it of course) want to graduate with departmental honors, they would still need to do a thesis, I believe. And there is the Tulane Scholars Program I mentioned, and Newcomb Scholars, which both involve completing a thesis as part of the program. This way those students that are more “traditionally academic”, for lack of a better term, can pursue that focus. I could easily argue both sides of this issue, but I think you make the essential point that it is great that both sides exist and students can choose or not choose to take that into account as a factor if the schools they are considering do it differently.

Anyway, thanks for weighing in on this forum as well. The OP’s D has an interesting choice to make, and should have as much info as possible. In fact, I am a little concerned we are giving her too much to look into with only a couple weeks left, but oh well. What can one do? Just shows how excellent her choices are.

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No, not too much info at all!! We knew about both Tulane scholars and Newcomb scholars but are looking more closely at them. Really, both your and @jym626 info has been super useful. :slight_smile:

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@fallenchemist:
Again, I agree on NO. That isn’t even diversity for such a small metro, it is diversity period
an insane amount that I really appreciate (NO is like a much more interesting version of my hometown, Savannah)

As for the thesis: Now, that would be a cool addition to Emory’s business school (I feel this deserves more than a certificate:.http://goizueta.emory.edu/degree/undergraduate/curricular_options/business_research.html and that independent projects/faculty collaboration should be encourage)
the idea of a thesis/more research emphasis because while I suppose the courses at GBS are more rigorous than normal (with a semi-high workload and a grading distribution) for a business school, it would be nice to offer a more intellectual component, but I suppose those who want that would just go to upper-level classes that allow them to directly consult companies and the like, but I still feel that isn’t enough and I don’t think I care for how much they function independently from the college. The whole reason I disagree with credentialling GPA’s even further (as in further than them being rewarded with better job placements and grad/prof. school offers) is because I just feel like it isn’t high school anymore AND the schools are selective which assumes that many or most of them are capable of “making the grade”. It is a university where contributing a body of work/giving back to the academy should be rewarded and credentialed by the institution itself.

Unless most of the “A” work you’ve done is earth shattering (unfortunately it hardly ever is, that is not what “A” means anymore
who knows what it means. At the very least I suppose it means, “your work was alright or better than everyone else’s” which can sometimes mean the 10-20% of students who did not make an A) or shed new light on a topic, then those students are indeed being rewarded for working hard, but are also being rewarded for obedience in many of social sciences (many social science classes unfortunately have “tell me what to do to make an A on the paper” syndrome. Needless to say, this can stifle creativity or deeper thinking and make many students simply try to “tell the instructor what they want to hear”). The same happens in many science courses. I like things like physics, chemistry, and math where problem solving ability is often being rewarded and sometimes both process AND outcome are rewarded. However, biology (which was one of my majors) is often a different story and many biology classes (which I think at many institutions, especially selectives, often have higher grades than the others because of the pre-health penetration. Advanced and intermediate courses at Emory for example, are much less stringent than general biology, which honestly isn’t but so stringent itself) are not taught or assessed in ways that reward actual scientific/scholarly thinking so more than algorithmic problem solving and regurgitation (luckily at Emory, many instructors are trying to fight that stereotype, but it is nonetheless a research university so you will have your stronghold of faculty who do not buy into evidence about learning or simply believe that designing a course in which surface learning is the key to success takes much less time away from their research). To give many high GPA people honors who went through such a curriculum is honestly rewarding surface level learning (which we mastered in high school
) that occurs much less than a pursuing a genuine research project. As you can tell I am very cynical about the way education is done, including highered. It is like a system has evolved to incentivize and reward only certain types of learning.

But I digress: As far as the prospective major of the OP’s daughter, I do like the fact that Tulane’s dept requires a capstone project: http://tulane.edu/liberal-arts/gender-sexuality-studies/major.cfm
especially in light of what I just said. Emory maybe only has like 4 or 5 depts that do that and only 2 that I can think of off the top of my head, Human Health and ILA. Emory’s Department requires a senior seminar, but not a capstone. One thing that the dept. at Emory could have going for it is that it contributes a good deal to the intellectual life of the campus (IE, kind of like Emory’s creative writing department, the dept itself is more of an intellectual community). Emory’s dept could be like this simply by virtue of the school being in Atlanta, but something like that may not matter that much to an undergraduate.

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So informative, dear CCers! Still no decision today
 Such fantastic schools
 Daughter said someone today said kids at Tulane will out think you then out drink you
 It gave me pause, but then I had to laugh. :wink:

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Looked at your original list again, OP. Take the “warmer” criteria off. Climates are very similar, but it rains more in NOLA , with some flooding issues, and there is risk (or fun) of a “hurrication”. NOLA is a definite foodie’s paradise, and we waited til after he was done with school to go to jazzfest, since it tends to hit at finals time! THe new shops opening on Freret, near Tulane, give more options to go to near campus, but IMO the overall safety factor is more comfortable in the areas around Emory (though there is less “walkable” stuff). Hope that helps.

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@gettingaclue

Well, I was a little sorry to see from the Emory forum that she decided to go there instead of Tulane, but not very sorry because we all just want what is best for the student. Sometimes, like in her case, it is indeed impossible to tell and they look for “signs”. I actually kind of get that. In her case that new course offering must have definitely seemed like too much of a coincidence to ignore.

The very best of luck to her and to your entire family.

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@fallenchemist :slight_smile: My daughter and I will always be ambassadors for Tulane - a great place for those lucky enough to attend. Thank you again for all you did to help us and for all you do to help kids and their families. Warmest regards!!