Tulane WashU CMC or Emory

College Search & Selection
1

Can I get some advice on what school to choose?

Tulane is my top choice but they didn’t offer me enough money. (I’d have to pay 16K out of pocket if I don’t take out any loans). Tulane has what I want to study (medicine) and is also a big enough school where I would have more options to change my major since I’m not completely sure what I want to study.

Wash U gave me more money. (I’d be paying 11K out of pocket). I really like the prestige of the school and I don’t know much more about the school but I’m going to visit in April. Oh But they also have the best dorms in the country and great food! What I really hate is the grade deflation. If I do premed I’m scared I won’t get into med school with my grade deflated gpa… Also i was accepted to WashU even tho my sat wasn’t even in the middle 50 so I know I’m already starting at the bottom of my class. Also, I’m scared of the could weather (I’m used to Texas heat)

Claremont McKenna offered me the most amount of money (paying 6K out of pocket) but they have racism and diversity issues. I also don’t want to go to a tiny school and I know Cmc is in a consortium but I’d still rather go to a larger school. College rankings say Cmc has the happiest students and their students love their college the most. Also a lot of people there are so nice. But I’m worried about the fratty and bro culture and the racism. Also, Cmc doesn’t invest much in their sciences and I want to study science. Cmc is the most financially ideal college and it’s also highly ranked. But also I sort of want to go to a school that’s prestigious and well known. Cmc is prestigious but if I say I go to Cmc, few ppl will say they know the school.

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At Tulane you can get a combined BS/MS in public health, but there is no undergraduate degree in Medicine.

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Tell Tulane that you will definitely enroll if they increase your merit money and ask them if there is a process to appeal an aid award. Perhaps some money has been freed up by others not accepting generous scholarships. You never know. Good luck!

4

Is Emory out of the running? If Wash U accepted you, they think you can do the work.

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If you are talking about the racially insensitive Halloween costumes - look, I’m African American, so I’m the last person to say that it doesn’t matter. It does. I’m not saying that it shouldn’t matter to you, either. What I am saying is that the incident might not actually be indicative of the atmosphere at CMC - particularly because racially insensitive Halloween costumes is a problem that’s persistent and a little bit ubiquitous at college campuses across the country. My Ivy grad school - Columbia - was never in the news for them, but I saw them every single year there. It’s simply that none of the students there chose to start a protest about it.

Nevertheless, here are the other issues:

-Tulane doesn’t have undergrad medicine. They do have undergrad public health, which is different. And it doesn’t matter what they have if you can’t afford it - can you? You said they didn’t offer you “enough,” so you should probably put it out of your mind.

-Not liking the size of CMC is a significant issue - there is the 5Co, of course, but you’ll still be a CMC student. It sounds like you prefer the size of Wash U (or Tulane).

-I would say for the average person, the name recognition of Wash U isn’t that much greater than the name recognition of CMC. If we are talking college-educated people, I would say Wash U has a slight edge…slight. And if we’re talking people who are familiar with elite colleges, then they’ll know both schools. Really, the only people whose opinion matters are recruiters and people who will hire you - and those in a position to do so recruit both places.

-Scripps, CMC and Pitzer have a shared science department. You can also take classes at Harvey Mudd, which is obviously strong in the sciences. Still, it might be true that if you knew you were interested in the sciences, Wash U could be a better choice for you…perhaps, and if you can afford it.

I have to say that CMC for $6,000 a year is an incredible deal. Wash U for $11,000 isn’t bad, either, and if your family can afford to pay that out of pocket then that might be the best choice for you - it sounds like you would far prefer that to CMC.

How would you cover that $11K or $6K? Can you post your financial aid packages for the three schools? Does the amount covered already included student loans?

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CMC does not have any fraternities - not sure what your concern is. And the 5 schools in the Claremont consortium are somewhat unusual - they are literally adjacent to one another, so it really is more like one mid-sized campus with 5000 students than separate schools. And as to science, Ptizer, Scripps and CMC share the Keck Science Department, so the science program has a lot of resources.

I’m not saying where you should go, but I think you have a few misconceptions about CMC.

In terms of prestige, I’d say that Wash U. and Emory (if that’s still in the mix), are more prestigious than Tulane and more well known than CMC.

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@nineteeth123, congratulations on havering three excellent choices. Keep in mind the big picture and realize that many people would love to be in your position just about now. At your stage in life, you must be careful to be true to yourself and avoid being defined externally (e.g., conceiving of yourself to be “at the bottom” of your class because of stats) and avoid making judgments based on rumor, imperfect information, and arbitrary filters (e.g., supposed racism [investigate for yourself], grade deflation [med schools are sophisticated enough to take it into account], a respected institution’s not having sufficient science to prepare you for med school [it no doubt does, and med schools like well rounded students anyway], rankings guides [their interest is to sell magazines, not to guide your life, and they change every year to keep the public interested], prestige [again, really vague, and following that criteria is most certainly a recipe for defining yourself going forward by something you can’t control].

Bottom line: now is the time to get grounded, get true to yourself and follow your heart and pursue your dreams with reckless abandon. If you do this and still want Tulane, start using the savvy skills you will need in life to make that happen, despite a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. If, in the end, that doesn’t work out, your cannot go wrong with the other two fine institutions.

Be careful about being too affected by the premises and suppositions on this site: they are the first of many facile contexts which will tempt you to be uncentered throughout life. Hang tough and true to yourself, and be encouraged!

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Are the out of pocket costs your skin in the game, or the actual total family contribution?

What are the loans at each school?
What is the work study at each school?

Can you / will you bring outside scholarships?

Will you work during school / summer to help pay?

Have you factored in the additional travel costs for CMC and WashU?

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@ClarinetDad16
When I was calculating out of pocket, I was looking at the grants+workstudy subtracted from the tuition and room/board.
These are the packages:
Tulane (cost: $64854) - $45700 grant, $3000 work study, $10000 loans
WashU (cost: $66916) - $53100 grant, $2500 work study, $5500 loans
Claremont McKenna (cost: $66685) - $58206 grant, $2200 work study, no loans
For these three colleges, all of the grants, loans, and work study put together leaves the cost to be about 6K per school.
I’m still waiting on my package for Emory
The only scholarship I have received so far is a $500 scholarship
Im going to work during the school year (work study) and over the summer, but its difficult to find seasonal jobs that pay much
I havnt factored in any travel costs. I planned to use half of my work study for costs and then use the other half for personal expenses including travel.

@whenhen Emory is not out of the running. I just havnt received my package yet but I’m assuming the financial aid won’t be enough. Also, I applied to Emory out of a whim but I never fell in love with the school and dont know much besides its health program is good. I’m going to visit in later April so I guess I’ll find out then how it is

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@juillet The halloween costume is an issue among many colleges, yes, but the way that CMC administration handled it wasn’t that great. I heard the girl who posted the picture on fb and called the girls out on their racism speak about what happened. The students who dressed up in the racist fashion complained to the administration, and the admin went to the student who called out the girls’ their racism on fb and asked her to take it down. On a side note, she mentioned, when that girl (she is hispanic) had gone to the admin to ask for a few days off because her aunt had passed away, she got no reply. The point that she was making was that when the white girl felt attacked, the admin rushed to defend her, but when she, a hispanic, needed help dealing with a death, the admin did nothing for her. Also, it’s not just the halloween costumes. I spoke to minority students at CMC and they have experienced other racial issues. For example a black girl that I met said that a white guy said to her “I dont fck with ethnic pssy” and she had black friends that had been urinated on by white males.
Also, I know they have the Keck joint science program, but a student I spoke to said it was weak for CMC students. Its a govt/economics school mostly which is completely unrelated to science.
As for prestige, no one here where I live has ever heard of CMC. I know it really is prestigious and well-known among those who like liberal arts colleges, but everytime I said I liked CMC, the response was always “Whats CMC?”

@midatlmom I know they have no greek life, but the culture there is still what others describe to be “fratty”. The guys at the school are really bro-y and exclusive. It’s similar to fratty but without the actual fraternities

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@juillet The problems at Claremont McKenna went way beyond Halloween costumes – there was a long history of a lack of support for minorities. A particularly insensitive dean resigned after making a comment about a student that did not “fit the CMC mold.” My friend’s son who graduated a few years ago from CMC recounted numerous instances where people of color and students with learning differences were treated with great insensitivity. This article from Inside Higher Ed outlines the issues:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/13/claremont-mckenna-dean-resigns-amid-protests-over-race

CMC has since hired a diversity director, and is - hopefully - making strides to more forward. That said, the education there is top-notch and it has the advantage of being part of a consortium.

As for prestige, in my opinion, it tends to be a very regional thing. People on the east coast don’t know much about the Claremont colleges (although the Claremonts have become better known in recent years). People on the west coast don’t know much about Swarthmore or Williams.

@nineteeth123 Have you factored in other costs (e.g., transportation)? Have you visited the schools?

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OP update: I chose WashU!!

(Not for any of the academic/social/atmosphere/etc reasons, but because they offered me a new financial aid package that i could’t say no to)

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Congrats

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OP thanks for coming back to let us know. Congrats!