@ctgirl16
There was this fairly recently: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/tulane-university/1875543-tulane-or-ucsb.html
I can’t tell you a lot about UCSB, I have been there a few times. Certainly it is a fine school, and the overall quality of your in-the-classroom education will be fairly similar. Tulane will indeed have smaller classes, and even the intro courses are taught by profs. At UCSB you are likely to have several TA’s teach the basic classes. But they can be very good sometimes, of course. They are less experienced, by definition.
It wasn’t clear to me if you are asking about partying at Tulane, UCSB, or both. But I suspect you would be hard pressed to tell the difference at these or most schools. Truly, it isn’t the school (with a few obvious exceptions) but the fact that you are taking thousands of 18-22 year old men and women, placing them to live together (away from home for more than a few weeks for the first time for most) within a limited area, providing them with relatively limited responsibilities and more unscheduled time than they have ever had, and most have at least some disposable income. The results are the same whether you are at Harvard, Miami, WUSTL, U Minnesota, Portland State, or UCSD/UCI/UCLA/UCSB. But at all these schools you can find a large group of people that prefer playing video games, or going to the theater, or doing sports/working out type activities, etc. And for most it is a mix of some partying and those things as opposed to one of them all the time. You will find your group of friends, nearly all do.
I think the mostly all Californians thing vs. the geographic diversity of Tulane does make a difference in the overall atmosphere of the campus and the experience. Since you are from CT I don’t think that would be a deal breaker for me, I think you will find a lot of interesting, different people at both schools. In some ways UCSB will be more different for you in terms of the student’s backgrounds that at Tulane, or at least I am guessing that would be so.
You are correct that Tulane is very connected to NOLA, and that the opportunity for service is in the DNA of the school. I don’t know for certain, but I doubt UCSB has the same kind of relationship to its area. However, that does not mean that there are not numerous and fulfilling opportunities offered from within the university to get involved, along with your classmates, to help the community. What I said above about video games or sports, etc? One of those “etc.'s” is people that get involved in community service. At Tulane there will just be more choices, it is integrated directly with your academic work so you are often applying what you are learning, and overall I imagine it is just run in a more sophisticated manner. That would be my guess.
Of course one question that has to be asked is if the cost of attendance is the same for both. Since you are OOS for UCSB, I assume you are paying full OOS charges. Since you didn’t bring it up perhaps it is not an issue for your family, which is great if true. But it should be at least asked about.