<p>32 ACT, 33 Superscore
3.67 GPA.</p>
<p>I'm interested in Tulane but I don't think the need-based aid may be enough. Hoping for some merit-based aid, but I can't seem to find any accurate info on how they dispense merit scholarships</p>
<p>Not everyone qualified gets merit scholarships. I think you could be qualified as long as you show interest, but another school you could be interested in that offers significant merit is the University of Alabama which has a very generous merit scholarship program</p>
<p>Based on what I’ve heard this year, you would probably get a large scholarship around 25-30k a year. But it varies year to year. </p>
<p>Thanks for the response(s)</p>
<p>I am aware of UA’s guaranteed scholarships, but I know some schools have guaranteed scholarships of certain amounts for certain stats. On USD’s website, they give the top 35% of their freshman scholarships between 10k-25k/year. Wondering if there was something similar at Tulane! </p>
<p>I was told that you can assume if you are going to receive some merit aid if you loook at the %tage of students that receive merit-based aid and see if your stats fall in that percentile for the school.</p>
<p><a href=“Systematic way to identify colleges most likely to be generous with merit aid? - #19 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums”>Systematic way to identify colleges most likely to be generous with merit aid? - #19 by BobWallace - Financial Aid and Scholarships - College Confidential Forums;
<p>@Ctesiphon - Is that GPA W or UW, How many AP courses so far and how many are you signed up for senior year?</p>
<p>That is my unweighted GPA. My weighted GPA is 3.75</p>
<p>I have taken 3 AP’s so far (Environmental Science, English Language & Composition, & Government + Comparative Politics)
I also have a pretty good upward trend, my best grades were Junior year despite the hardest course load so far.</p>
<p>Senior Year I am signed up for 5 APs (Biology, Physics B, European History, Human Geography, English Literature)
I’ll also likely be taking the AP French test, but school doesn’t offer AP French.</p>
<p>@BobWallace
Thanks for that informative post. I like to attach numbers and raw data to this kind of thing so I can make a good assumption as to what I’ll get.</p>
<p>@Ctesiphon - OK, you will very likely get a nice offer. I wouldn’t correlate the stats to a particular award too much though. It used to be very much that way, but about 2 years ago Tulane started awarding merit on a more holistic basis. It might well turn out to match the chart, it just is less predictable than it used to be. But I think you are likely to get a very nice offer. Upward trend in GPA is very good, ACT is great. Whether you get a good offer or a great offer probably depends on your overall profile and whether you apply EA/SCEA vs RD. If you apply SCEA especially I think that will improve your chances for a top merit scholarship. But again, it depends somewhat on EC’s and other factors and how they fit into the overall class Tulane is trying to attract. At least that apprears to be the way it has gone recently.</p>
<p>Great . I still have a few months until I am applying but Tulane really stood out to me when I first saw it, so I’ll have to decide if EA is a good idea. I would feel safer applying EA to a school than ED anyway, so that’s a plus. </p>
<p>@Ctesiphon - I think that is right. There seems to be very little downside to applying EA, as opposed to applying somewhere SCEA (which Tulane also has) or ED is clearly have more restrictions, especially the latter. I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with SCEA or ED if a student is that certain about where they want to be. In fact they are great tools to having that huge question settled before Christmas and being able to just relax and enjoy the end of high school. But most students don’t have that level of certainty.</p>
<p>Having said that, I do encourage you to jump on getting the Tulane application completely submitted at the earliest possible date. You will get an answer back that much sooner (nearly always), it is taken as a sign of interest in the school which only helps, and if Tulane says yes and you see the size of the merit award you have a firmer basis to make plans to visit, read up more, whatever makes sense for you. In other words, you are no longer having to assume (as you say in one of your posts) or speculate. It just changes the seriousness of the process once you know for sure.</p>
<p>You seem to know a lot about Tulane, haha. I may make plans to visit, since I’ve never been to New Orleans before. But of course I also want to visit California! </p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, why does Tulane have such a low acceptance rate? I noticed they have guaranteed admission for Louisiana residents who apply EA for having certain qualifications but at a first glance 26% seems like a startlingly low amount. </p>
<p>@Ctesiphon - Tulane is a highly selective school. Not Harvard or Stanford selective, but still up there. If you look at the average SAT scores at Tulane, they come in at somewhere around 30th for all universities. Low 30’s anyway. Hard to get exact numbers. And while that is true about guaranteed acceptance for Louisiana residents under certain conditions, those stats are not trivial. And even for the ones that meet those stats, there is the issue, potentially, of affordability, and finally the issue of if that student even wants to stay that close to home. BTW, when my D was looking at schools, we did the California trip and flew from there right into NOLA, and from there to St. Louis, and then Chicago…Now I am tired again just thinking about it. Anyway, Southwest flies to them all and with advanced planning you can do it relatively inexpensively. Just depends on your time frame and budget.</p>
<p>Where do you live? It is likely Tulane will have an event in your area in the early fall. If you cannot make it to NOLA, which is of course the best option, then attending this event is very important.</p>
<p>Back to the acceptance rate, Tulane also was featured in various publications, e.g. Newsweek, as a “hot” school. Between that and strong marketing efforts by Tulane after Katrina, applications went up significantly. So naturally that also depresses the acceptance rate. Most schools cannot just accept more students from one year to the next. Or more accurately they cannot significantly increase the size of the incoming class, but clearly those two things are related. There are only so many dorm rooms and other issues related to the size of an incoming class.</p>
<p>I do know Tulane well. I am an alum and my daughter just graduated this last term. I also follow the school closely, keeping up with what is going on there as best I can.</p>
<p>So obviously you are thinking of some California schools. USC? Berkeley? Where else are you considering?</p>
<p>In california, I’m only really interested in USC. But I’m afraid I probably will not get accepted to Viterbi, let alone Dornsife. but even then, I’m not even sure if USC would give us enough aid. Although I have friends there and I would likely be living off-campus, so that may make it doable.</p>
<p>I’m from St. Louis MO. So Naturally I’m also considering WashU - but then again, that’s a pretty high reach for me. </p>
<p>That makes sense on the acceptance rate. I had some some other research and I think their admissions office claimed they were the private school that received the most applications. Odd, considering they don’t take common app for some reason.</p>
<p>cool to know that you’re an alum. How long ago did you go to Tulane?</p>
<p>@Ctesiphon - When Tulane got the most applications was about 4 years ago. They got something like 49,000 applications. Or maybe it was 43,000. Something like that. At that time they did take the common app. They have since switched to the Universal app. A year or two later they added a couple of short essay questions and the number of apps dropped into the mid-30’s, so I don’t think they still hold the title for private school that gets the most apps. That note might be a little out of date, but I can’t be sure. In any case it is a lot of applications.</p>
<p>I went to Tulane from 1973-1977. My D attended from 2009-2014. She attended an extra semester because she spent her entire 3rd year in Beijing and then still had 4 semesters left on her scholarship, which covered full tuition. She decided to stay for 3 of those semesters, so in total she was at Tulane 3.5 years and in college 4.5 years.</p>
<p>Personally I think you have a pretty good shot at USC, at least based on stats and course rigor. As far as individual schools that I don’t know anything about. But I will say, in case you don’t already know this, that at Tulane there are no restrictions on what school within the university you decide to plant your flag with. You get accepted to Newcomb-Tulane College, which is the umbrella for all 5 undergrad schools: Architecture, Business, Science and Engineering, Public Health and Tropical Medicine, and the School of Liberal Arts. It makes changing majors and double majoring much easier as well. It is one of the features of Tulane I really like better than many other universities. Just FYI.</p>
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<p>The same reason any college has a low acceptance rate: They get a high ratio of applicants compared to the seats available in the freshman class. Acceptance rate is not a knob a college can turn arbitrarily. It is essentially a measure of popularity.</p>
<p>If you are looking for merit money, check out the Kiplinger Best Private College Values database. It is the tool I used a few years ago to shop for schools where my kid (now at Tulane) might score some merit money.</p>
<p>Kiplinger says USC gives merit money to 25% of its students; average merit award is $17,500; middle 50% ACT score is 29-34. Rule of thumb is that merit money generally goes to kids who are above average applicants and higher. </p>
<p>Tulane gives merit money to 39% of its students. Average merit award is $21,000. Middle ACT range is 29-32. </p>
<p>So the guess would be that you’d get into both USC and Tulane. Below average or no merit money at USC. Above average merit money at Tulane.</p>
<p>Can someone explain what SCEA is?</p>
<p>Single Choice Early Action- SCEA is non-binding like EA (you must let Tulane know by May 1) but you cannot apply to any other school EA or ED. You can apply to other rolling and regular decision schools. This is for students who want to stand out from the EA pool and show that Tulane is their first choice. I believe the SCEA decisions are issued by Dec 15 but they are usually decided on a rolling basis and students hear much earlier. This year the first SCEA decisions were out the beginning of in October!</p>
<p>@DebmomNY has it exactly right. I will just add that other schools that do SCEA instead of ED are Stanford, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. That isn’t an exhaustive list by any means, just some other examples.</p>
<p>The reason given by most schools that changed from ED to SCEA (and in the case of Harvard and Princeton, at least, I believe there were a few years between dropping ED and adopting SCEA) is that ED favors wealthier familes on several fronts. I won’t get into it all here, but essentially it is hard to apply ED and commit to the promise entailed therein if you aren’t sure you can afford the school. With SCEA, since you are not making that same binding commitment, you are free to wait and see what the FA package looks like.</p>
<p>although i applied almost 10 years ago, i remember applying either SCEA or EA and getting an acceptance by mid-October! the quick turn around was great and it was nice knowing where i was going early on.</p>