<p>Regarding the personal app, is a mid-year school report required, or just HS transcript and GC recommendation?</p>
<p>ctymomteacher - When you have an 11% yield and have to take 450 from your wait list it is pretty obvious that what you are selling is not what your targeted market is lookng for. Dr Cowen's BuRP, the Bold Renewal Plan whatever its merits or demerits is not selling in the markets he has targeted. Like the New Coke it is a total flop in the marketplace. We either need to change the market we are targeting or change the message and the product. The Bold University Renewal Plan is a colossal failure.</p>
<p>Tulane is a great school with absolutely abyssmal leadership but if something isn't done soon about the leadership it will not remain a great school.</p>
<p>I think I finally see part of our parting of the perspective HL. I always had an essential disagreement with my colleagues who spoke of the student as consumer and the "marketplace" for education. Perhaps that's why I got along better at the uni than I ever did at the community college. And I never did see the uppermost levels of admin as all that relevant to the daily academic life of the student. Still don't, really. I'm sure your numbers are correct. I just don't see them--or numbers like rankings--as of the utmost importance.</p>
<p>Are the upper level of admin relevent to the daily academic life of the student if a decision is made to not offer a course because there are not enough fannies to fill the seats? What if the admin decides to drop a department because it isn't attracting enough students or simply is not "ranked" high enough to justify further investment? The later is essentially what happened to the Engineering School. </p>
<p>Academic departments and schools routinely compete for university resources and there are winners and losers in this zero sum game. Pay scales and staffing levels for departments and schools are set by senior administrators. When Dr Cowen BuRPs and decides to cut PhD programs and to reduce the language requirement for graduation from 3 semesters to 2 does that affect daly student life? </p>
<p>A university is a business like any other. If it cannot pay the electricity bill then the power company shuts the lights out. Tulane is in no imminent danger of having the lights turned off, but it is in a competition for students with the other 3,000 or so degree granting institutions in the country. Every drop in the rankings or in yield makes it that much harder to attract students willing and able to pay top dollar for a Tulane degree and professors decisions to stay or accept offers from Tulane.</p>
<p>Yes and yes, assuming ranking is paramount in both kinds of decisions. (Though you're oversimplifying in the first case.) All I can tell you is that it was not what brought my son to Tulane, and the losses you've discussed have not brought about the negative effects in his experience you've predicted. That's all I'm saying.</p>
<p>ctymomteacher, personal experience means little else besides memory after you have left college. how much people value your degree is what will follow you for life, or rather have an impact on the rest of your life- which is what ranking more or less translates into. after college, as after high school, most people only see their college classmates only a few times a year or less. although it is important to be happy at a certain college, so that you can get through four years of living there, i disagree with you in the long term value of your son's "experience." i think if someone is trying to decide between several colleges, deciding based on ranking verses cost is a more conrete way of deciding than trying to project what your "experience" will be like based on abstract speculation. most people will have whatever experience they are willing to have irregardless of the college, unless that person has grossly miscalculated what type of college they want.</p>
<p>I agree with your final point abut college experience being largely what one makes of it. However, rank means little, at least insofar as undergrad degrees are concerned, for most degrees from most institutions. (Yes, the person I've worked with recently who left academia to become a hedge fund guy most likely got the job more easily because his math degree came from MIT. Usually it doesn't matter so much.) And I'm not really speaking from memory. I've been attached to colleges and universities professionally all my working life, so I'm not really just speaking from a dim memory of the stone age--or basing my opinion on my son's experience, though I am very happy with that.</p>
<p>I am having a hard time understanding what you mean by your disagreement with estimation of the "value of [my] son's experience." I'm not talking about his social life. Having access to multiple majors (and the ability to do a BS AND BA in four years, in fact), research labs and professors who are willing to do graduate-level independent studies with an advanced third-year student will, I well know, help him get into the kinds of graduate programs he wants to get into. What's to disagree with in terms of value there? His social life is his own business and has little to do with what I'm talking about.</p>
<p>Armcp, speaking as someone who graduated from college many years ago, and has been working in the employment industry for quite sometime, after your first job, where you went to college, as well as the value of that degree does not follow you, and does not define you. The "name school" may get your foot in the door on your first job, but after that, the experience is what you make of it, and your career will be based more on what you do for yourself, than on where you went to college. Rankings matter little in the real world (after that first job, when Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Georgetowon, etc. will get you noticed.) I know many very successful people (successful doctors, lawyers, CEOs) who went to very unimpressive schools. I also know several recent IVY League grads, who are still floundering. There are also many fine LACs whose Presidents have taken a stand against the USNWR rankings and will not submit information. We tell our S, that he will receive an education wherever he chooses to go - the experience will be what he makes of it, and the available options he chooses to take advantage of. As I said, I'm in the employment field, and I can honestly tell you that when potential employers read resumes, the experience and job history are key - rarely does anyone get as far as the last page to see where a candidate went to school. In addition, being out of school for more than 25 years, I have no idea where most of my current friends and colleagues went to college.</p>
<p>Tulane still requires 3 semesters of foreign languague or proficiency at the 203 level (3rd semester). If you show proficiency thru AP - Tulane still requires at least one more semester of foreign language at the college level. <a href="http://www.liberalarts.tulane.edu/CoreRequirements.cfm%5B/url%5D">http://www.liberalarts.tulane.edu/CoreRequirements.cfm</a></p>
<p>Higherlead, what is your data source for your statement on the 11% yield and 450 from the wait list?</p>
<p>And for which year? The class entering Fall 2006? Or 2007?</p>
<p>If you ran Tulane, what would you do differently, Higherlead?</p>
<p>And what would you consider to have been Tulane's competition pre-Katrina, and how has that changed post-Katrina? Can you name specific schools? Thanks.</p>
<p>ctymomteacher, if that's what you mean by your son's experience- that he is having all these opportunities to be engaged and grabbing them- then you're right there is a great amount of value in that. i really thought you were referring to things outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>ERPmom, i still disagree with you. as you admitted going to a prestigious college can at times get your foot in the door for a great job. this will then change the trajectory for your career. although as you said earlier where you went to college will not matter further down the road in your career because at that point proving yourself is much more important, the foundation of your career that is important as regards where you went to college will follow you for a life time. since perhaps that more prestigious job you got because of where you went to school will in the future get you an even better job- contingent on how you prove yourself. it's a building effect. the impact of where you went reverberates even after it actually doesn't matter anymore. there are exceptions though as you mentioned.</p>
<p>Armcp, yes, I said the name of a prestigious school, might get your foot in the door, but once you're in, you have to prove yourself. There are many fine companies that hire grads from a wide spectrum of schools - if you look at various websites, you'll see that many of the same companies that recruit at Wharton, Georgetown, and schools of that caliber, also recruit at state U's, and lower tier schools. Not all their employees are from top universities. Once they're in, the experience and trajectory that you speak of are what each individual makes of it, and as they start to climb the ladder, their alma mater matters less and less. Another school of thought, is that it has more to do with geography. I know of many students who have held summer internships at prestigious investment banking firms. As they all go back to school in September, the students who go to school in NY (and not NYU or Columbia - much less prestigious schools), are available to continue the internship during their senior year, and utlimately walk away with job offers. AFter many years of experience in the business world, I stand by my claim that the prestige of the name, as well as the rankings matter very little in the real world. The education you receive anda the experience you have at college are what you make of them.</p>
<p>CT2010Dad</p>
<p>Princeton Review cites the 11% yield rate.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Freshman Admission Statistics
Total applicants who are accepted: 38%
Total of accepted students who enroll: 11%
[/quote]
<p>I don't believe PR states what year the information is from.</p>
<p>Pizzagirl - I can tell you who Tulane considered its competition to be pre-katrina based on their published Strategic Planning documents that were drawn up in 1998 when Dr Cowen first took the reins.</p>
<p>To measure Tulane's performance, the University selected nine private universities similar to Tulane, each with comparable enrollments and medical schools. These institutions include:</p>
<p>Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Stanford, USC, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest, and WUSTL.</p>
<p>Tulane compared these institutions with the University in three key areas:
Undergraduate admissions and student quality
Research and graduate education
Financial position</p>
<p>This was the club Tulane wanted to run with and which in some cases it did run with and which it wanted to benchmark itself against. Most of those schools have put considerable distance between themselves and Tulane in the intervening decade but try to remember we were ranked 34 in 1998 and had a student body that could match the numbers of some of those schools.</p>
<p>The Strategic Planning document may still be on the website somewhere and makes interesting and detailed reading. I grabbed it some time back because I though it might disappear. You can try the following link. It might still be available.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tulane.edu/%7Estrplan/archives.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.tulane.edu/~strplan/archives.shtml</a> </p>
<p>Post-katrina I don't believe we can compete with any of the Benchmark schools without very very steep discounts. One of the things the school did after 1998 was decrease the number of full ride merit scholarshps and split them into smaller scholarships that didn't require special application process. This in effect reduced the tuition for kids, especially ones with high SATs and good but maybe not the kind of GPAs and extracurriculars that Vanderbilt or even Emory were lookng for. The result was average SAT scores shot up as did enrollment and total revenue from tuition. </p>
<p>We also took a page from WUSTL and floded the market with free applications. If it is free a lot of kids will fill it out even if they know they haven't much interest in going to school 1200 miles from home. Our yield stayed fairly steady but out acceptence rate plummeted making us appear more selective than we really were. Nothing wrong with that and we were hardly the only school playing the game.</p>
<p>I believe without discounts (merit scholarships) our competitors in the region are the big state schools in Florida, Georgia, and Texas as well as Houston and SMU. In the NE the private school competition are schools like American, Syracuse, Boston University, and probably still NYU. In the Mid-West Marquette, Case Western Reserve. Out on the west coast I'm not as sure. </p>
<p>Remember when I say competition I am not talking academic quality but rather which school a full pay student would choose if he had an admission letter in his hand from both schools.</p>
<p>As for things I would do differently the list is as long as my arm starting with not getting myself sued by the Newcomb alumnae. My message, the one thing I would want to come to mind post-katrina when Tulane was mentioned would be that Tulane has been around for 173 years and has survive wars, famine, plagues, cholera, floods, military occupation, depressions, panics, and Huey Long. A couple of feet of water on half the campus is just a minor annoyance. Instead we acted like Katrina was a biblical judgement sent to warn us of our wayward ways and Amy Semple McCowen began to preach Renewal and transformation.</p>
<p>Now don't get me wrong Katrina may have been a judgement from God on NOLA's wayward ways or FEMA's or W's or whoever is your favorite hobgoblin. But the last thing you want to do is feed the fear.</p>
<p>Some of the cuts, especially in the medical enterprise had to be made because the patients were gone. Other cuts could have been handled much differently. I would also have filled the next years class even if I had to admit Beavis and Butthead even if I had to flunk them out a year later. Instead we intentionally reduced our recruitment goals, and hence our revenue then came up 40% short on that.</p>
<p>CT2010Dad --> source is <a href="http://www.xap.com/gotocollege/campustour/undergraduate/5238/Tulane_University/Tulane_University2.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.xap.com/gotocollege/campustour/undergraduate/5238/Tulane_University/Tulane_University2.html</a></p>
<p>Very certain they are using the Common Data Set just like everyone else.</p>
<p>BTW I agree with ERPMom that the name on the undergraduate diploma may help with the first job, and with connections you may have for a lifetime but afte that you are on your own. I also believe are a very large number of schools in this country where you can get a first rate education and a lot of them few people have ever heard of.</p>
<p>For the schools fighting for good students willing to pay or borrow $40 or $50 grand a year to attend the rankings are very important. A small drop in the rankings means you start losing kids to your near competition unless you want to compete on price and then, if you are tuition dependent you start a vicious cycle. It may be unfai and stupd but it is what it is. People read those rankings like they read Consumer Reports.</p>
<p>altmom - go read the Renewal plan. The foreign language requirement is 8 hours. They are lab courses so that is two semesters. Something had to be cut from the core curriculum to make room for the new public service requirement and the now required freshman Tides course.</p>
<p>higherlead, appreciate your thoughtful and obviously informed analysis. You've got some genuinely helpful insight to this scenario and its political and marketing circumstances. Most intersting. I'm pretty suspiscious that the early comparisons somewhat astray with most observers of higher ed, i.e. that TU was never in the same reputational league with Duke, Stanford, Vandy, WUSTL, Emory (maybe here at one time, no more), WFU ... that would be, imo, wishful thinking and function of organization as you noted. And survival is a sign of little or nothing. Virtually every college and university on the planet could offer its own litany of disasters. As one marketing prof noted, "If survival is the measure of 'success' in business, colleges and churches have it all over any other type of business. They're masters of survival." So scratch your well made point as being any reason for staying their earlier course. </p>
<p>Most U's stay in their ruts for 2 reasons ... they're deep and they're afraid, i.e. your classic argument for doing tomorrow what we did yesterday is pervasive especially among hide-bound, risk averse faculty (and of course their tenure issues and AAU guidelines which essentially disable U's from doing anything aside from tweaking things ... changing the name of the same course, or having it taught in the management dept instead of the philosophy dept. </p>
<p>So I'm not willing to pooh pooh Katrina as just a few feet of water. That's silly and diminishes many of your good points and observations.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing your good thoughts of this situation. Bottom line it though for us, would you ... and we realize not you, not me, essentially not anyone can answer my forthcoming question very objectively. But I welcome your informed subjectivity ...</p>
<p>What do you think are the academic strengths, weaknesses, of TU and a student's potential for a superior learning experience? Why? Why not?</p>
<p>The biggest weakness right know is a disgruntled faculty which is part of the reason for that low peer assesment. There has been a lot of turnover in faculty and among the deans and department heads. The folks who leave voluntarily are almost inevitably the ones who don't have a problem going elsewhere because they have reputations. Part of the disgruntlement is of course related to weariness that sets in after any natural disaster but there is also the fear of getting marked as a trouble maker.</p>
<p>The administraton has centralized decision making and essentially broken any institutional centers of resistence. In fact some things that have been done seem to merely be exercises in willfulness to prove that the administration can do whatever it wants and what it wants is to run the university way Andrew carneigie ran big steel.</p>
<p>That said though there are still a number of strong schols and departments at Tulane with faculty who know their stuff. There are also relatively small classes, a broad array of offerings, a decent library and pleasant surroundings. The average student is smart and ambitious even if not particularly intellectual. The bottom line is you will get out of it what you put in. I wouldn't pay sticker price for a Tulane education but if it is goiing to run you the same as say the out of state price for University of Virginia or the the University of Michigan or Texas I would take Tulane in a heartbeat.</p>
<p>"I can tell you who Tulane considered its competition to be pre-katrina based on their published Strategic Planning documents that were drawn up in 1998 when Dr Cowen first took the reins. To measure Tulane's performance, the University selected nine private universities similar to Tulane, each with comparable enrollments and medical schools. These institutions include:</p>
<p>Duke, Emory, Georgetown, Northwestern, Stanford, USC, Vanderbilt, and Wake Forest, and WUSTL.</p>
<p>Tulane compared these institutions with the University in three key areas:
Undergraduate admissions and student quality
Research and graduate education
Financial position</p>
<p>This was the club Tulane wanted to run with and which in some cases it did run with and which it wanted to benchmark itself against."</p>
<p>This is the club Tulane WANTED to run with pre-Katrina. Practically speaking, do you think they actually DID run with this club pre-Katrina? Possibly Emory, Wake Forest and Vandy due to geography, but did anyone seriously consider Tulane on par with Northwestern, Stanford, USC and Georgetown in pre-Katrina days? Who do you think they actually did run with back then?</p>