<p>My child is struggling between these two schools. He's interested in studying neuroscience and has been granted similar financial packages. </p>
<p>Any help BEYOND the obvious (like weather!) would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>You want to take away such a great feature like the nice weather??? LOL, ok. We won’t talk about how nice the weather is in NOLA during the school year. We will just talk about how horrible it is in Rochester. OK OK, no weather talk.</p>
<p>But I think it is fair to bring up how much more interesting a city New Orleans is than Rochester. I will admit Rochester has some underrated features, but still. Tulane and NOLA is just a so much more interesting place to live for 4 years as a student.</p>
<p>Academically, they are fairly comparable. Tulane has somewhat higher admission scores overall, but it is certainly not a huge difference. Tulane certainly has a strong neuroscience program and a research university + med school to pursue cutting edge projects. I imagine Rochester is similar. Tulane is about 400 students per entering class larger, maybe even 500. Rochester is far more local, with 50% of the students being from NY.</p>
<p>Did he have a chance to visit both? I would have hoped so, and that something would have resonated at one of the two. If not, it is really difficult to come up with a defining reason to pick one over the other, since we have so little information about your son. It looks like you are from Illinois, so one thing I can say is the NOLA would be a real change of environment for him, while Rochester is very midwestern in feel, even if technically it is in the Northeast. But in the end the only way to make a choice between these two schools in his case is the feel he gets at both. Wish I could help more.</p>