<p>Southland, you are correct that Tulane started to decline in US news rankings prior to Katrina. However, FC is implicitly saying that given the current average SAT scores, Tulane should be higher in the rankings yet Katrina has prevented that from happening. Also, i have a hard time agreeing with you when you say Tulane is out of the top 100 when you include LACs. I see some of the schools from the LAC rankings and don’t believe some of those schools ranked 40-50 are BETTER than Tulane… The two are totally different rankings anyway, which is why they separate them in the first place.</p>
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<p>SAT scores are hardly the only factor in college rankings. But I definitely agree with you that to say Tulane is outside the Top 100 American Colleges is speculative. (I just don’t want it to fall any further!) Many of the lesser LACs in the LAC 50 list are similar to or weaker than Tulane. But then I also mentioned the SAs (Service Academies) and there are specialty schools (Julliard, Webb, Cooper) which should be considered if we really wanted to be comprehensive.</p>
<p>The point is that this material is <em>not</em> all positive, and pretending otherwise won’t really help. But the main point of the thread was to come up with suggestions for improvements, and until FC chimed in we were actually making real progress.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, FC seems to have enormous difficulty saying what he means. He’ll say one thing and then a couple posts later insist that he said something entirely different. Makes it all a bit slippery. Since the very first post in this thread we have been talking about Tulane’s USNews rankings from 1995 through today. No one else was “confused” about that. I daresay no one really is.</p>
<p>I was pretty clear to everyone else, apparently. I specifically talked about the effects of Katrina. I didn’t think I needed to point out this didn’t involve the earlier years. I say exactly what I mean. No one else seems to have trouble understanding me. Sorry you do. I certainly have a very tough time understanding most of what you say.</p>
<p>If you want to address the 1990’s by all means go ahead. Why do you think it dropped then? I have no idea, and probably few do at this point. OK, that is not entirely true, I seem to remember something about USNWR changing their formula fairly drastically and that caused the slide. I don’t remember the specifics, though. I don’t see dwelling on that as productive at this point in time anyway. It also gives far more credence to the rankings than they deserve.</p>
<p>I had one son recently attend a top 10 school and have another at Tulane. From my vantage point the education at Tulane is top notch. The course work is demanding, interesting, fun, and S2 loves it there. Both he and I are very happy he chose Tulane over higher ranked schools. Tulane, from our point of view, is a rising star of opportunity.</p>
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<p>I know it doesn’t, I never said it did. I would appreciate it if people would stop putting words into my mouth. I did phrase it dramatically, but the facts remain that I thought I was in at Tulane b/c my stats were above the 75% percentile and I had EC’s to back it up. It is a little irritating to get inundated by mail/emails from a college, do thorough research and find that you should have a very good shot at it and become attached to the school only to get waitlisted by an email… After that I didn’t really want to go there, for a variety of reasons (mostly money to be honest) which is why I did not accept a spot on the waitlist.</p>
<p>Fair enough. I can certainly see how you expected an “automatic” admission (more or less) and it had to be a bit shocking to not have it happen. Any other year before now it no doubt would have happened for you. Doesn’t help, I know.</p>
<p>Southland, I’m sorry if you/your son/your daughter was rejected from Tulane, but you are being far too transparent in your hatred for Tulane. This school has nowhere to go but up, you are just going to have to accept that.</p>