You are welcome to your opinion, of course. But by any reasonable definition of “highly competitive”, Tulane definitely is. The average SAT scores for the incoming freshmen are consistently in the top 35 of the country for national research universities, that is non-LAC’s. That’s top 35 out of about 2500 4 year schools. The same basic range is true for other academic measures and for acceptance rates. Is it in the same range as Harvard or Stanford, etc.? No, obviously not. Those 25 or so schools are labeled as “most competitive”. I realize with the recent phenomenon of 5-8% acceptance rates, mostly due to the common app and high levels of marketing, acceptance rates of 20-25% don’t seem as impressive or challenging any longer. But a very few years ago those numbers were, in fact, considered to be “most competitive”.
So you can be as dismissive as you want, but it doesn’t change the facts. Also, I don’t remotely understand your second sentence. What does the time it takes to complete the application have to do with anyone taking the acceptance decision of a denial personally? Especially since if they only spent 15 minutes on it (remember there are two short essays, one of which requires actually knowing something about Tulane if it is going to be anything other than cliche) I would think that would make them take a denial far less personally. It isn’t clear what you meant, at least to me. Sure, if a student spent hours on an application, agonizing over every word, then I could see them being more disappointed in being denied. I am not saying they won’t take it personally, I am just saying that by understanding the process, especially the numbers involved, that they shouldn’t take it personally. Easier said than done, I admit.