<p>Hi fallenchemist,</p>
<p>I think I know the answer to this, but wanted to make sure. Per your advice, my daughter decided to not get discouraged by her deferral and go ahead and submit her application for the Paul Tulane Award. She spent a lot of time writing her two essays (which I think may be better then her application essays). </p>
<p>I assume just the act of applying after her deferral will communicate her interest. I am wondering will the admissions committee add her PTA application/essays to her overall application when they re-evaluate her in the spring with all of the RD applicants? Or are those essays used exclusively for the PTA?</p>
<p>Also, how are PTA applicants notified? Since the application deadline is passed, Tulane now has all the PTA applications. Will the lucky ones who were accepted in EA find out about their PTA in the next month? Or does everyone hear about it in the spring?</p>
<p>Thanks again for all of your advice!</p>
<p>It will be in her file that she applied for the PTA, and that is a positive. I don’t know that the content of the essays will be useful for admissions, although certainly well-written essays can’t help but make a good impression. But IF the main reason she was deferred was that Tulane needed to see she was more, or at least equally, interested in Tulane as some other schools, this will help. After all, why would she bother if her real thinking upon being deferred was “So, what, I really didn’t want Tulane that much anyway”. Having one’s ego bruised usually doesn’t motivate them, in and of itself, to spend hours crafting compelling essays. I would think you really have to be interested in attending, and I assume admissions sees it that way too.</p>
<p>Having said that, it remains important she communicate her continued interest in Tulane directly to her admissions officer via e-mail every few weeks, maybe once a month. The tone should always be positive, focused on why she wants to be there, never about disappointment at being deferred.</p>
<p>PTA Notification: I wouldn’t look for anything before early to mid-March. That’s what happened last year. They might do it differently this year, but I don’t expect that. The system where DHS winners get notified around Feb. 20 and PTA winners around March 10 seems to work well. But this is only the second year of the award, so they might still be tweaking how they do it. But I don’t think so.</p>
<p>I have to correct myself. In looking back there were some notifications for the PTA that went out the same time as the DHS and arrived to people home’s via UPS on February 20 and 21 (at least that does show they are coordinating so that a single student doesn’t win both) and the remainder went out a couple weeks later. Thanks to Justmehere for pointing that out.</p>