Trying to decide between Berkeley OOS full cost vs. full ride to Tulane. Not sure about my post-college goals but am leaning toward Med School or Grad School. I love the campus vibe, location, diversity, top faculty and student smarts at Berkeley but I am concerned about the large class size and competitiveness that may make a high GPA unachievable. I’m really looking for a balance of academics and social life. At Tulane, I like the campus. location and small class sizes but am concerned about lack of diversity (I’m from NY), the quality of the academics and its reputation as a party school. Any advice?
Unless you are saying that your family is wealthy to the point that saving $200,000+ is meaningless, this seems like an easy decision. BTW, I know Cal pretty well, and my niece is in her 3rd year there.
First of all, I would dispute that the students at Berkeley are any smarter than those at Tulane. The stats as reflected in the common data sets are pretty similar. You cannot go by GPA for 2 reasons. One is that the Cal schools don’t normalize to a 4.0 scale like they are supposed to, and the other is that all the Cal schools lop off a lot of classes and calculate the GPA they report based on a special “Cal GPA”. In any case, both schools have lots of intelligent students.
Second, you will be able to get to know and work with the faculty at Tulane much more easily than at Berkeley. Schools like UCB, UCLA, Michigan, Harvard, and many others are much more focused on graduate school students and research and getting grants. My D is now at Stanford for grad school after graduating from Tulane and she always shrugged when I told her this about the top research schools. Now she tells me at least once a month how right I was about the pecking order of grad school vs. undergrad. Tulane is truly almost unique in having a research level that qualifies it as a member (since 1958 I think) of the American Association of Universities, a group of only 60 universities that qualify based on their research activities. They recently voted Nebraska out and Syracuse resigned before they could be voted out. Which is just to say that Tulane does great research but is very undergraduate focused. Berkeley does great research but is not undergraduate focused. I probably don’t need to tell you about the budget issues, the cutbacks, and the numerous stories of students that have trouble finishing in 4 years because they cannot get the required courses they need. My niece is experiencing this. She really likes it at Berkeley for many of the same reasons you cite. But she says navigating your way through it all every year can be somewhat frustrating.
I can’t argue with you about diversity, Cal has that in plenty. My niece is a Jewish half Filipino. Not sure how many of those there are 
I can only say that if you immerse yourself in New Orleans, which so many Tulane students do on both a casual level and on a service level, there is plenty of diversity. Especially compared to your NYC experience. It is all a matter of what you put into it, how much you put yourself out there. That would be true at Berkeley as well, but to a lesser degree.
I don’t know if you are talking about the quality of the academics separately from the faculty issues above, but I am not sure where you got that from. The quality of the academics at Tulane is very high. I have never heard of a Tulane student that got into grad school at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Berkeley, etc. that found themselves less prepared than their HYPS type colleagues. I just don’t know what else to say about that one.
Finally the party school aspect. This has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum. If you don’t want to party “hard”, you just don’t. There are tons of students at Tulane that feel as you do. Just read through these threads. Plus I promise you the kids at Berkeley party plenty. It is just such a big place that you probably don’t notice it as much. But given the excellent results Tulane students achieve in med school, law school, grad school and jobs, they must be studying somewhere in all that. Bottom line, Tulane is no different in this aspect than most schools. It just happens to be in New Orleans, which does offer a lot of distractions. Of course so does San Fran.
I am curious. You say you have a full ride. Are you a Stamps winner? Or did you mean full tuition. Because obviously as a Stamps winner you get certain perqs that should make Tulane an easier choice. But even if you meant DHS or Paul Tulane winner, I would strongly consider becoming a Tulane Scholar and getting the extra attention that brings. It also puts you with 75 or so colleagues in your class, plus those in the class ahead of you, that are similarly focused on academic pursuits. You can read about the Tulane Scholars program here. http://honors.tulane.edu/web/default.asp?id=Scholars As a full tuition winner I cannot imagine you not being selected for the program if you apply.
Sorry about the length of the reply, but I just think you are selling Tulane short in several aspects. So much of college is what you make of it, not what they hand you. The resources are there, but it is up to you to take advantage of them. That is easier to do at Tulane than Berkeley as an undergrad, I think. And given the huge financial difference, I hope that at least makes you think about it in a more positive light, not that you would be “settling” for Tulane, which was kind of the tone of your post. I think you would see that is not the case at all.
Thanks for the detailed reply. It is very helpful. I have the DHS so full tuition. As you mention, I am concerned about navigating through Berkeley without much support. Sounds like I’ll get more access and attention at Tulane. I hope to decide tonight!
As a Michigan grad, I steered by daughter away from the giant universities like it, and Cal, for one reason, lack of interaction with professors. Even by the time you’re in your senior year, you’ll be in very large classes, with little to no meaningful interaction with professors. If you’re the type of person who is going to make the effort to stand out in a class of dozens and dozens of other students and really get to know the profs, than maybe this won’t matter, but for most students at the giant universities, you’re going to be a number, even when you are a Senior. When you’re getting together applications for grad school, you’ll have trouble getting the professors to remember you, particularly if you do as I did and waited for years to apply to grad school. I really think you’ll avoid this problem at a school of Tulane’s size, it is just so much easier to develop personal relationships.
If you have the Stamps at Tulane, this is a no-brainer. Even at one of the no tuition scholarships, this still seems like an easy choice.
For the most recently admitted class, here’s the 25th-75th percentile test scores for UCB and TU:
ACT. TU is 29-32. UCB is 28-33. FYI, more TU students do the ACT.
SAT. TU is 1230-1410. UCB is 1230-1470. FYI, more UCB students do the SAT.
That data suggests that the students at the two schools are pretty equal in terms of smartness.
So how could Tulane go from 73% acceptance rate to med school (Cowen personally mentioned that number back in 2010, he also said that 10% of Tulane graduates that year matriculated to med school) to 58% (2014)?
No idea. Where do the stats come from?
http://admission.tulane.edu/faq/allquestions.php (scroll to the pre-med question for the latest information)
That’s the most recent information found on Tulane’s website for its premedical record. However, 90% at 3.6+/32+ and better would be consistent with Tulane’s past track record (100% at 3.8+/31+ back in 2008)…
I would check Tulane’s rate against the overall national acceptance rate, as well as the trend in acceptance rates at similarly situated schools. (E.g., Emory, Vanderbilt, GWU, U of Miami, NYU, etc.), the reasoning being that an appreciable decline in the acceptance rate to medical school may be consistent with a national trend. I do know that med school applications have been going through the roof in recent years, while law school applications have nosedived. If the number of places in medical schools has held constant, then it is expected that there will be a decline in acceptance rates.
That certainly would explain it. I was going to speculate something much less likely. Your explanation is simpler and more probable to be the cause.
Tulane’s service requirement would be a start to build a medical school application - provided you make the right choices.
I would think so, @Catria. I know it certainly helped my D in her non-med school post-graduate career. Specifically it was a significant factor in separating her from the pack in her application to work at the Department of State. I see no reason that some good choices and real commitment to a med-related service learning opportunity wouldn’t similarly separate a Tulane student from statistically similarly qualified students in med school applications.
But are we seeing the same sort of bubble for med school as we did for law school a few years back?
Hard to make that comparison I think. While some aspects of the demand for medical services is dependent on the economy, such as elective surgeries, for the most part when you are sick you are sick. And the population continues to age and increase, insuring that there will be more demand on medical resources. Add to that the fact that more people have insurance than ever before, something that has no real counterpart in the legal industry, and it seems hard to imagine a scenario where the demand for doctors is not considerable.
I think a possible issue that people graduating from med school will have, as things get more and more regulated, is the ability to make money the way doctors used to. That will impact many things, including of course their ability to repay the huge loans so many of them will have.