<p>What are Tulane's academic strengths? Academics are important in one's college choice (or even professional school choice) So far, the only academic strength I can think of is public health... Tulane trained roughly half of the physicians holding MD/MPH dual degrees in the US for a reason. </p>
<p>I ask this because there are people here who would consider attending Tulane if Tulane had a strength in an area of interest.</p>
<p>I am going to take your post to mean undergrad. If you meant grad school, frankly that won’t be of much interest to most that come to this site, which is probably 99.5% undergrad oriented. Tulane is a classic liberal arts institution, using that term as it was originally intended, which means a broad strength in providing students with a well rounded education. Certainly certain departments have become more recognized than others. I don’t believe in ranking systems for undergraduate disciplines, it really is a futile and meaningless exercise.</p>
<p>I can, however, point out some of the departments that seem to have some renown, at least the ones I am aware of. For example, Latin American Studies has always been a strength, as is the French department. The business school is high quality overall, but finance, entrepreneurship, energy studies and accounting seem to get a lot of press. The philosophy and history departments have always been well regarded. You already mentioned PH/TM. Biomedical Engineering is extremely good.</p>
<p>That is not to say that other departments are not very good also. These are just the ones I see a lot of positive feedback about. But there is little question in my mind that one can receive a solid education in nearly every department at Tulane. Naturally some areas have a wider array of offerings than others, compared to various peer institutions. But students from virtually every department get into top grad schools and professional schools, and provide feedback that they were as well prepared by Tulane as any of their peers from other schools. I would put an overall Tulane undergrad education up against any other school.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, did you attend Tulane for undergrad or grad school?</p>
<p>Undergrad. I went to a top 5 or 6 grad school for chem, then got my MBA at a 3rd school. I was simply pointing out that this web site attracts mostly (and by mostly I mean almost exclusively) students that are looking to start or are in the early stages of their undergraduate experience and/or the parents of these students. Maybe a different web site devoted to students looking into graduate/professional schools, or a separate section of this site for the same would be useful. My instinct is that it wouldn’t be nearly as trafficked because the awareness and experience level of the potential users is so much higher. But I have been wrong before!</p>
<p>I just want to add that you have to look at Tulane credentials also. Tulane is a member of AAU and another Southwest Research Univ. group? sorry I forgot the name…this is huge since AAU has only about 50 members and Tulane has been an active member for a long time. It is not easy to join this AAU and it is not for every school.</p>
<p>So, research is huge thing at Tulane. For those of you who are reading this and have plans to attend Tulane, just remember Research is big.</p>
<p>Thank you. This has confirmed that Tulane is my primary inspiration source for a novel I just started writing.</p>
<p>Now you have us all curious, I am sure. What exactly does that mean?</p>
<p>What I can say for now is that the fictional university in which the novel is set, for the most part, is based on Tulane. However, that fictional university is somewhat different from the real Tulane in a couple of ways:</p>
<ul>
<li>Does not compromise academic standards in order to admit athletes (unless Tulane has a no-compromise policy as CU-Boulder does)</li>
<li>Beachfront campus (that fictional university is just a few miles north of the real campus, on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain)</li>
<li>Has a graduate medical physics program (the real Tulane does not)</li>
<li>Every graduate has to do mathematics up to multi-variable calculus, linear algebra and statistics (Tulane does not ask for that much math from their graduates)</li>
<li>Its women’s basketball team mostly comprise graduate students (MPH, teacher certification students for the most part, with one undergraduate on the team at the onset and the team sucked early in the book)</li>
</ul>
<p>I guess what I meant was what about Tulane are you using, especially now that you are saying there are some things you are not. As far as a no-compromise policy, I don’t know how much Tulane will relax its admission standards for athletes, although I know if they do at all it is not much. And once in school, they don’t have a “soft” major designed implicitly for the athletes. There has been some talk about creating sports or related majors that would appeal more to athletes, although I have no idea where that stands or if it is even still being considered. I know one of the things Coach Johnson (football) seems to stress in almost every interview is how much he values the educational environment at Tulane for his players. Of course there is extra help for the athletes, which is only fair since they have to commit so much time outside of class to practice and team meetings.</p>
<p>But a highly ranked PH/TM school is definitely used, though. The lead character’s first roommate (I haven’t decided who are the other roommates she will get to have yet) is an epidemiology MPH student who, for some reason, could only play two years of basketball as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Plus that fictional university does not encourage athletes to declare soft majors (I know the lead character, a women’s basketball player, who, in high school, had 3.89 UW/33, will declare a biochemistry major at some point, which is no soft major) so that’s one more resemblance to the real Tulane, on top of a liberal arts curriculum.</p>
<p>Yes, those things are true. If you want another example of that kind of scholarship in an athlete (of course there are lots), read the article I just posted about the injured football player. He was actually on an academic scholarship, at least when he started at Tulane, and is a Molecular Biology major with a strong GPA. I know before the injury he was not sure if he was going to try for med school or pharmacy. Hopefully he will get back on that track soon.</p>
<p>And, how good are chemistry, molecular biology or biological chemistry departments at Tulane?</p>
<p>Good is a relative term, and I mean that in the least cliched sense of that phrase. First, you have to separate undergrad and grad schools because the needs and objectives of the students are mostly different. For undergrad Tulane students can get as good an education in those subjects as any other highly selective university or college, which is to say very good.</p>
<p>For grad school, it really depends on what specific area the student is wanting to research. There is no question there are schools that have more and more famous faculty, as well as more extensive resources than Tulane. But certainly the profs at Tulane in these departments are extremely capable and do fine research in many cases. If their interests match yours, then you can do some very good work there.</p>
<p>But certainly schools like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Harvard, Wisconsin, Illinois and other top programs will give a student more choice in research areas and courses to take. They also provide more fellow grad students to interact with, and these students are going to be overall of a higher caliber, since they are top-rated programs and therefore are more selective.</p>
<p>FC: Beware of Illinois. When my son and I toured there a year ago (it now seems like ancient history), our tour guide told us the average class size is 140! And, she said you’ll rarely get to know your professors. Appalling.</p>
<p>Just like most state schools, NTD. I was strictly referring to their grad program in chemistry, which is considered to be very good. I should have made that clearer by saying “But certainly schools like Cal Tech, Berkeley, Harvard, Wisconsin, Illinois and other top grad programs…”</p>
<p>If Tulane didn’t relax admissions standards much in order to admit athletes, I would then expect many football players to have 3.50/28 or 3.50/1870 or better… especially since many of the new players for the 2013-2014 season are Louisiana kids.</p>
<p>I know that, while Devon Walker may have had merit money, I do not expect the team to be filled with Devon Walkers…</p>
<p>That is true to some extent of course. The question is how far a school will drop their standards to take a player. That is a major factor as to why the state schools tend to dominate college football. There are exceptions like Notre Dame and Stanford, but these schools, and even the Ivies, often wink a player into the school that would never get in otherwise. They then provide softer majors to help keep up their graduation rates, and of course provide personal tutors. Even with all that, you get the occasional academic cheating scandal.</p>
<p>Tulane has tried very hard to not relax standards too much. Coach Johnson has repeatedly said that while it does limit his recruiting somewhat, it is also a positive sell to the kids that can hack it academically. Having said that, Tulane is adding sports management and I think another major that will appeal more to athletes. It is just the reality to stay competitive in the current climate of college sports, football especially. That is why I continue to believe that there need to be radical changes to divorce big money sports from the academic side of the universities, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. So Tulane has taken steps to be more competitive with both new facilities and the investment in staff/recruiting. Since that is the reality, I am hoping very much that it is a successful strategy.</p>
<p>For as much as I’m willing to acknowledge that I am perhaps a very eccentric Green Wave fan, I root for the Green Wave knowing that, while they may relax standards somewhat, they will only relax enough so that the player’s ability to benefit fron a Tulane education will not be compromised. </p>
<p>I understand the limitations the hard line imposes on Johnson (from the looks of it, Tulane holds a comparatively hard line in athletics compared to other highly selective institutions, like Stanford, Duke, Vanderbilt, Rice or Notre Dame) and his team, though.</p>
<p>Hi Catria - I think “Tulane: The Emergence of a Modern University, 1945-1980” will serve as a valuable resource for your writings. There is a section that goes over the debate to lower admissions standards for athletes at Tulane. This was rejected and shortly after Tulane withdrew from the SEC as they believed they needed to focus on academics over sports.</p>
<p>And, perhaps not surprisingly, my main character contained elements that would likely scream to a CCer that the main character could have been a CCer if she were an actual basketball player good enough to play for Tulane as a freshman. </p>
<p>She no longer sports 3.89 UW/33 for high school academic credentials, but 4.0 UW/33, contrary to the first draft. And 800s on the Chemistry and Math 2 SAT2 tests. On top of that, and her four-year basketball commitment, she took part in AIME (and, as a prerequisite, AMC12), USNCO Local (a.k.a. Chemistry Olympiad) for three years apiece, spent 240 hours volunteering at the church, and, finally, captained her Bols et Bolles (some sort of Quiz Bowl league) team for the same three-year span, for a total of five ECs. </p>
<p>To demonstrate every new player on that basketball team that the fictional school was serious about not compromising academic standards (much?) for athletes, I even wrote a passage where everyone then on the roster listed their academic credentials (if they were graduate students, that meant MCAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT scores, on top of their undergraduate GPA, but the main character was the only undergraduate player in the first tome)… since I had one med school student, two law school students, five people pursuing a degree in PH or in TM (one of which is in a MPH/PhD joint degree program), one pursuing a MBA, one pursuing a MEd in special education, and one in an economics MA, with only one undergraduate, which is probably the most unrealistic basketball roster a D1 team could ever assemble.</p>