<p>I know this is a really old thread, but I'm in a very similar predicament. Just got off the waitlist at Vanderbilt and would do their HOD major with either a double in Econ or a minor in Managerial Studies and perhaps a second minor in Spanish. At Tulane I'm a Paul Tulane Award recipient and am part of the Altman Program, so I'd be pursuing a dual degree: a BS in Business and a BA in IR, with majors in finance or management and economics, respectively. Both offer great financial aid, study abroad, internships, class sizes, etc. I intend to go to grad school so perhaps the undergraduate prestige isn't as much of a factor, but I've heard amazing things about the Vandy professors and heard a general hit-and-miss review of Tulane's. I guess the real question is, while trying to avoid coming off as pretentious, should I go for the "big fish in a small pond" approach or one of many bright minds? Are the opportunities equitable or greater at Vanderbilt than Tulane?</p>
<p>What do you want to do after you graduate? What do you want to study in grad school? If you want to go into business or finance, Vanderbilt will offer better opportunities. However, if you plan on going directly to grad school, that won’t matter as much. If you are thinking about working for a few years and then getting an MBA, the Vanderbilt name may be helpful in getting your first job. An undergraduate business degree from Tulane will pale in comparison to an economics degree from Vanderbilt (HOD is a completely different story, since it’s basically what you make of it). Overall, I think that Vandy will give you more options coming out of undergrad.</p>
<p>I do intend to go to graduate school, but I’m not sure what major I’d like to pursue. I’m surprised, actually, to hear that Vanderbilt will be that helpful for business or finance when Vanderbilt doesn’t have a undergraduate business program (just the pseudo-business HOD-Managerial Studies combo) and Tulane’s finance program, at least at the grad level, is ranked 4th in the nation. Just playing Devil’s advocated, merely because I’m surprised to hear that when I’ve generally heard to the contrary.</p>
<p>I was considering PeaceCorps, although I can only see that being tangentially helpful in getting into a good graduate school, or perhaps some sort of job placement if I experience college burn-out and want a “break” from the academia.</p>
<p>At HOD I was thinking of either the ILD, CLD, or LOE track, so edging away from the education aspect of Peabody. Will #1-in-education prestige of Peabody be helpful for someone like me who is technically in the program but not pursuing education? Or, conversely, could it possibly be harmful to have a title like “College of Education” on a resume for a job in the economics world? And, if I haven’t overloaded you with questions already, will Vandy still be more helpful for graduate admissions and/or employment, do you think, if I come out with the average 3.2 versus, say, a 3.7 with two degrees from Tulane?</p>
<p>Thanks for you help!</p>
<p>The undergraduate business degree is the most common degree in the country and is not particularly valuable unless you are coming from an elite business program. To my knowledge, Tulane’s program is not elite. They are not in the top 10 undergraduate business schools ([Best</a> Undergraduate Business Programs | Rankings | US News](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/business-overall/spp+50]Best”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/business-overall/spp+50)), and their graduate business school was recently caught lying to US News ([Tulane</a> Freeman School of Business Misreported Some Admissions Data - Morse Code: Inside the College Rankings (usnews.com)](<a href=“http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2012/12/20/tulane-freeman-school-of-business-misreported-some-admissions-data]Tulane”>http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2012/12/20/tulane-freeman-school-of-business-misreported-some-admissions-data)). I don’t know where you got that their finance program was 4th in the nation, as I don’t seem them in the top 10 there either ([Best</a> Finance Programs | Top Business Schools | US News Best Graduate Schools](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/finance-rankings]Best”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-business-schools/finance-rankings)).</p>
<p>Now let’s talk about Vanderbilt. If you want to go into finance, the economics major and the financial economics minor are probably the way to go. Vanderbilt is considered a semi-target for banking, meaning some banks send recruiters to Vanderbilt and some do not (Tulane is not a target). Banks that have recruited at Vanderbilt recently include BAML, Goldman, and UBS, among others (<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/career/media/pdf/Post-Grad-Report-2012_FINAL.pdf[/url]”>About Us | Career Center | Vanderbilt University). I think that there is no question that Vanderbilt will put you in a better position to enter finance than Tulane will. HOD is much broader than econ, and I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re trying to do finance. Most HOD majors end up doing something like marketing, consulting, or HR. While economics is a relatively difficult major, you can still achieve a 3.5 to 3.6 by putting in a normal amount of work. HOD is notoriously easy.</p>
<p>Okay, I’ll merit that point; I’ve heard business is common and, kind of like law, harder to employ. Yeah, I haven’t heard much about their business school besides their own plugging, and can their indiscretion really impact its students? I suppose that makes sense, but… ouch. Here’s the #4 ranking from 2009, but I’m not sure how rapidly this kind of thing can change or how reliable of a source Entrepreneurship magazine is: <a href=“https://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_09222009.cfm[/url]”>https://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_09222009.cfm</a></p>
<p>Counter to what it seems, I’m not in particular interested in finance, although I might figure that out as I go through college. I was admitted to Peabody so I’d have to do HOD for at least a year before I could switch to CAS. Again, may or may not be interested in job recruitment there, but I suppose (and correct me if I’m wrong) internship recruitment works in a similar fashion. Is HOD useful if you’re interested in international affairs or management/development economics in the future? Glad to hear a 3.5/3.6 is feasible, and if I did end up sticking with HOD I’d have an “easy” GPA boost to counteract some perhaps less-than-stellar econ grades. Not to take the cheap route, but I know GPA is quite important in grad school apps so I’m trying to adapt.</p>
<p>HOD majors typically go on to a lot of different things. Since it’s a student-created major, it doesn’t really line up with an established career path. I think that HOD would probably be a decent fit for your interests, but you’ll probably want to supplement it with some macroeconomics and perhaps even some political science courses. In particular, courses like HOD2420 (International Organizations and Economic Development) seem like they would interest you. I don’t know if you’ll want to pursue the full Econ major, since that’s typically reserved for people who either want to work in finance or really love economics.</p>
<p>I’ll take those into consideration, thanks! Some broad econ classes would be good initially while I figure out what I want to do pursue later on, but HOD2420 definitely sounds interesting, if perhaps a little too qualitative to look especially attractive on a grad school app. I’ll look into that more.
Thanks for all of your help!</p>
<p>Have you visited both campuses? You should attend the school that you feel is the right fit for you. Vanderbilt is an amazing school with a very prestigious reputation.</p>
<p>Roxanne: Life is going to present you with many tough decisions, but this is not one of them. Go to Vanderbilt. Don’t be dissuaded by the lack of an undergraduate business school. With notable exceptions (Wharton) the country’s top colleges don’t offer degrees in business because they follow the traditional liberal arts model of education. But students who graduate from an ivy league or top-20 school like Vanderbilt are NOT at a disadvantage when applying for jobs in national companies or to the highest ranked graduate schools. In fact, they have the edge because recruiters know just how talented and diligent you have to be to graduate from one of these schools. In essence, they let Vanderbilt do the vetting for them and that absolutely gives you an edge when you’re applying for your first job or to a graduate program.</p>
<p>Tulane is a wonderful school in an amazing city. I know it well and think it’s terrific. You can have a fantastic career post-Tulane. But a degree from there is just not going to open doors for you the way one from Vanderbilt will. If career is your primary consideration in making this decision, I think you would end up regretting turning down Vanderbilt–unless Tulane is offering you a lot of money and family finances are an issue. Vanderbilt is a great school for many other reasons as well–and Nashville is pretty awesome to boot!</p>
<p>My D was admitted to HOD but realized before she even started that wasn’t what she wanted. So, during her first year, she took only one course that was technically in the HOD department (a freshman writing seminar) and took the rest in A and S. She thought she was interested in economics, so she took a couple of those courses (intermediate level because she already had AP credit in the intro courses), but boy they were tough and she got horrible grades in them. I wouldn’t recommend dipping your toe in econ at Vandy, unless you are really interested in it. Those courses killed my D’s GPA and she’s struggling to get it back up.</p>
<p>If you find that you are trying to persuade yourself into one school, then go with the other. In all honesty, the school that just feels more like a home to you should be the school you choose, because in the end, if you’re not happy, you likely won’t be passionate about what you do at that school and you won’t perform as well.</p>
<p>I understand where you’re coming from though, as I’m in a very similar situation- please feel free to comment on my thread:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vanderbilt-university/1502770-vanderbilt-v-notre-dame.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/vanderbilt-university/1502770-vanderbilt-v-notre-dame.html</a></p>
<p>Vanderbilt is to Tulane as Cornell is to Syracuse.</p>
<p>Interesting to compare this thread with the one at Talane’s CC page. I think there is one answer only: unless the choice is crazy (Harvard or Yale v. Tulane) so only one answer makes sense to a rational person, the right choice is wherever the prospective student feels most at home. For purposes of disclosure, my son will be attending Tulane, starting in August. I would hasten to add that I think Vanderbilt is a superb school.</p>
<p>Roxanne, I do not think it is ever a great idea to be in an honors program in a school that offers much less re peers unless the money is significantly to your advantage at Tulane. My sons attended Vandy and Duke where they were Average students…no smarter than anyone else, and well aware of the talents of each of their classmates. On the bell curve of giftedness, an interesting note is that highly gifted people do not resemble each other very much in the nuances of their talents. So schools like Vanderbilt are used 1600 different ways by each freshman class. My son graduated today and among the people we chatted with were a young woman who will soon audition for a European conservatory (my son is a middling musician), a young man with high honors in a science where my son took only four hours (check!), a young man who will finish accounting in grad school, someone accepted to five law schools, someone going to get a business degree post HOD, someone going to teach in Asia, someone hired by a business in Bejing, someone admitted to museum curator career degree…in other words, attending Vandy is all about running your own race and gaining a great deal of confidence by the amazing peers in your class from all over the world. Your peers are also your teachers at Vanderbilt.<br>
If Tulane is a significant savings to your family, than by all means go to Tulane and make it sing! There is no need to insult Tulane when it is you that is the magic ingredient that can make it work. But Vanderbilt has tremendous resources and superb students in its undergrad and graduate programs.<br>
I will add that my Duke son was an econ major and VandyRealist has explained things as they really are to you. Finance jobs go to those who take on rigorous quantitative coursework and to those who have proven skills in abstract thinking, and proven ability to stay ahead of the curve in this technology driven world. Business classes are valuable but recruiters study your quantitative reach.
congrats on your offer, and best wishes</p>
<p>
And yet you saw fit to anyway. How would you possibly “know” that Tulane offers “much less re peers”? Absurd. Do you honestly believe that Tulane students are not as varied in their talents as what you describe about Vanderbilt students? Some Vanderbilt people really are not representing themselves well here with their “nose in the air” attitude regarding Tulane.</p>
<p>Okay, I went and read the thread on the Tulane board. I don’t see the point in being upset with people affiliated with Vanderbilt for selling Tulane short, since most of us (myself included) don’t know very much about Tulane. The only thing we can do is provide information about Vanderbilt and answer Roxanne’s questions so that she can make an informed decision. We’re doing our best to tell her about the advantages of a Vanderbilt education, one of which is prestige (though it is only one among many). If there are advantages to Tulane which we are unaware of then by all means, tell us about them. Since Roxanne was admitted to both schools I think she’s intelligent enough to decide whether something like prestige is important to her and give it the appropriate weighting.</p>
<p>And I’m someone who always liked the idea of the Magnolia Conference.</p>
<p>VandyRealist -there is a big difference between promoting the features of your school and running down another one. A couple of comments on here have been clearly denigrating towards Tulane, and there is no reason for that and comes across as both snobby and petty. Certainly no one expects Vandy people to play up Tulane, but neither should they try to play up their school by making disparaging remarks about another school, either overtly or backhandedly. I’ll leave it at that.</p>
<p>Fallenchemist: I don’t know if you are referring to my post, but for the record I have kids at both schools. I love Tulane! It is an amazing place which, by virtue of its setting alone, offers students an experience other colleges cannot duplicate. But Vanderbilt is plenty awesome, too. Roxanne expressed an interest in finance. The reality right now is that she would be better positioned coming out of Vanderbilt than Tulane. Vanderbilt just has higher status and that matters in terms of her particular goals. Ten years ago, even just five years ago, the difference between the two maybe wouldn’t have been significant. But Vanderbilt has recently catapulted into a higher level of selectivity and prestige. This year’s acceptance rate is just 12%. At the same time, the scores of attending students (as opposed to “admitted”) have gone up dramatically. The top 25% of entering freshmen in 2012 scored better than 2330, which is insane! None of this means that Vanderbilt is a “better” school than Tulane for every applicant. And the difficulty of gaining admission to a college doesn’t necessarily correlate with the quality of the instruction or classroom experience. Both schools are plenty challenging academically. Certainly, there are incredibly bright, talented and engaging kids at Tulane–mine is one of them! (I also believe that Tulane has been judged unfairly by US News–but that’s another topic.) But for a student intent on business/finance for whom career launching is a deciding factor, I believe that right now, Vanderbilt’s increasingly high profile makes it the clear choice. That’s all.</p>
<p>I am not going to continue the discussion about who said exactly what that I thought was less than classy, and I respect what you have to say in your posting above. It is surprising how many families have kids at both schools, I have personally “met” about a dozen over the last few years, so there must be many more.</p>
<p>I do rather disagree, though, that Vanderbilt’s “higher status” will help her more in finance than Tulane’s presumably lower status. What do you base that on? Tulane has an outstanding finance department and has programs like the Burkenroad Reports, the Energy Trading competitions, and now the Altman Program that are absolutely known nationally. Well, the AP probably isn’t yet but the experience a student will have in that program will lead to an outstanding resume. Also, reputations don’t change that much in five years as far as the general public goes, although I readily agree Vandy’s is outstanding anyway. But that is hardly the point. Because actually in her post #5 she said she really wasn’t that interested in Finance. So I am not sure why you focused on that.</p>
<p>What I am saying is that a student coming out of Tulane with a great GPA and excellent test scores will have opportunities for grad school that are just as good as someone graduating from Vanderbilt with the same stats. I see it all the time. And grad school seemed to be the goal she was more sure about, although obviously those are fluid for most entering freshmen, whether they know it going in or not, and she seems to readily acknowledge that hers are fluid. A university’s “status” is overrated as a factor, especially for grad schools, but elsewhere as well. Personal performance and accomplishments inside and outside the classroom, along with networking and similar factors, are what get attention.</p>
<p>What I won’t disagree with is that more students in the Vanderbilt entering classes are higher achievers academically than those entering the Tulane freshman class. That is obvious to anyone looking at the numbers. That doesn’t mean, as you say, that there are not a lot of very bright students at Tulane, many of whom have other outstanding attributes that are also important to the making of a great peer group and the future of our communities.</p>
<p>So that is all I am saying. Yes, Vanderbilt is awesome. But you know what? So is Tulane, and this shouldn’t be a debate that involves denigration. It should, instead, stay classy and focus on what are the best attributes of both schools, rather than trying to make it look like one school is the “poor step-child”. It is easy to tell a stranger to just go to one school over another, but what is more useful is to tell them why their school might fit them best, and that doesn’t have to involve casting irrelevant aspersions (not that you did) about the other school.</p>
<p>BTW goodenoughparent, I think you made an error in saying that 25% of the freshman class at Vandy this year scored over 2330 on the SAT. I see where you got that, I think. You took the 75th percentile of each section and added them up. It doesn’t work like that because the same student may not be in the 75th percentile on each section. Simple if extreme example: Student 1 gets CR=400, M=800, W=500 total=1700 Student 2 has CR=700, M=500, W=750 total=1950 So the 50th percentile for this very limited student body is CR=700 M=800 W=750. Add those up and you get 2250, but the actual 50th percentile for the total is 1950. Again, extreme numbers and the reality at Vandy or any school is not going to be that large, but it could easily be 100 points less. Or not. There is no way to tell from that data. Do you have another source that says the actual 75th percentile for the total scores is 2330? Because since it is virtually impossible that the same 25% of students scored in the 75th percentile on all three sections, it is similarly impossible that the 75th percentile for the total is equal to the sum of the individual tests.</p>