This whole admissions process is really sleazy. I understand why Tulane would not want to accept kids who blew off the application and came off as pretentious, what school would? However, there seems to be many high-achieving applicants who showed interest and still were deferred, yet some kids who were lazy in high school and wouldn’t be able to get into another elite school were accepted. I was seriously considering Tulane, but not anymore.
That’s very worrying. I’ll definitely contact the school if I don’t get anything tonight. Thanks @fallenchemist
After you login it says that decisions will be released no later than December 15th which is tomorrow. Should we contact admissions on Wednesday if we still haven’t received a decision or still contact them tomorrow? @fallenchemist
OOOPS. That’s what I meant. :"> I will fix my post above. THANKS!!
@TULover1352 FYI
@fallenchemist Thanks for keeping us all posted on what to do and so forth, I’m still holding out hope I’ll find out tonight.
@Oliea98, it is one thing to show “interest” and another thing to show concrete reasons for wanting to study at a particular school, in terms of specific programs, professors, opportunities for community service, study abroad, etc. While you are no doubt correct that many highly qualified students showed interest in Tulane, it might not have been enough interest to convince the admissions committee that they were likely to attend, given the choices they were likely to have. I don’t think it was about being pretentious and I doubt anyone “blew off the application.” All that being said, if a high achieving student is deferred, there is ample opportunity to show the admissions office that s/he is highly interested in Tulane and is a good fit and, most importantly, will attend if admitted in the regular admissions cycle. See the blog of Jeff Schiffman on the Tulane website. I will also say that you are correct to be frustrated by a highly imperfect process that involves an assessment, in most cases, on the basis of limited data about the true character of a person and the intangible value that s/he would bring to a school. There are so many highly qualified students applying to these highly selective schools that disappointment, frustration and perplexing decisions are inevitable. However, once you settle into whichever great school you wind up at, you will soon forget about the other schools you were considering and get on with the business of enjoying the moment and preparing for your future. All the best to you!
Accepted w/Presidential Scholarship
35 ACT, 2350 SAT, 3.7/4.5 unweighted/weighted GPA
5 on AP Euro, APUSH, Lang&Comp, and BC Calc
National Merit Semifinalist
Classes: AP Physics C, AP Psych, AP Lit, Calc 3 & Diff EQ, Band
Extracurriculars: Marching Band (Section Leader), Jazz Band, Cross Country (captain), Track (captain), Principal’s Leadership Team, Chess Team (Captain), NHS, Spanish Honor Society
Work: Umpire for youth baseball.
Geography: Chicago suburbs
Also applying to Rice, Colorado College, WashU, DePauw.
Are decisions posted for regular decision the same as EA? Will it be rolling and if so will those deferred hear at any particular time?
They are random (rolling has a different meaning in admissions), so you could hear any time from Jan 15 until April 1. Just no way to know.
@fallenchemist Got deferred today, don’t understand what Tulane wants as a fellow classmate with higher grades, higher ACT scores and lots of extracurricular activities including being a senate page also got deferred.
Accepted into Rice but not Tulane…This is a major issue. I’m glad I’m not the only one.
Yes, Tulane was my backup school to Rice. However, if I didn’t get into Rice, there would’ve been a 99% chance I would’ve attended Tulane. The fact that I was deferred…it would’ve been a hard week for me if I was deferred from Rice too.
I can understand a school, such as Tulane, deferring kids for not showing interest in the school. But I thought my Why Tulane essay was amazing- and it was all the truth. The fact that Tulane is deferring kids with perfect credentials is just offensive. If you don’t want kids to chose your school as a back-up, then why don’t you just become a better school? Don’t blame the students applying for your own mistakes.
This is the most absurd thing that’s ever happened to me. I didn’t work my tail off in highschool just to get deferred from a school that sounds like they have some serious self confidence issues. I guess it’s all for the best…I am going to Rice after all.
One aspect of the process that is kind of unfair is Tulane’s excessive marketing practices. They cajole students with the rankings, test scores, and awards for a Top 10 university and then defer them because they assume they will attend an Ivy and are trying to protect their yield rates. In that case, it is a little unethical to swamp everybody with free applications and effusive emails from the dean touting the school.
If they know that the best students likely won’t attend and are applying to Tulane as a back-up, why do they make such a point to specifically target them in their advertising campaign?
The bitterness in this thread is unbelievable. If you truly wanted to attend Tulane wouldn’t you demonstrate more interest, talk to your admissions rep, or something? From what I’ve seen from past threads and from some people I know, choosing a school as a safety and then getting mad when you don’t get in or get deferred is ridiculous. A school with less than a 30% acceptance rate with a high number of applicants should not be considered a safety.
I get that this is frustrating but seriously, if you’re using it as a safety(as most CC users this translates to being a school you don’t want to really attend, a school you’re not excited for) why are you mad? Why are people so mad that their perfect test scores and gpa’s didn’t get them in? Tulane and other colleges look at so much more than that. Their Why Tulane? essay is essential and just because you felt like it was good doesn’t mean that it was viewed the same way by Tulane’s admissions office.
@wwh12210 You got in Rice. Congrats! That doesn’t mean you should automatically get into Tulane as well. Honestly you just proved Tulane’s “practice” to be right. If you had gotten into both Tulane and Rice, you probably would have still chosen Rice, correct? So why are you mad?
“If you don’t want kids to choose your school as a back-up school then why don’t you just become a better school?”
Who says Tulane isn’t great? College ranking does not determine what kind of education you receive. And please keep in mind that your back-ups are always someone else’s reaches. Don’t downplay a school just because you thought you would be an auto-admit.
So I still haven’t received a decision from Tulane and it is December 15th. I called and after talking to several people who didn’t really seem to have an answer, I was told that I would receive my decision by 5pm central time. When I just checked Gibson, it still says that my application is under review but it just changed from December 15th to April 1st as the last day I will hear back. Is this a deferral? I’m just confused because it still says under review and it just said I would know by today up until 10 minutes ago. Or is this a case of accidentally being put into the RD pile? @fallenchemist do you have any ideas?
Do you know what a good result of a direct marketing campaign is considered to be? 2% is often considered spectacular. It takes numbers for any school to get the results it desires. BTW, Tulane is hardly unique in this regard. WUSTL, U Chicago, and some other top schools send out the same kinds of materials and then reject their applications far more often than not. And people spent money to apply to those schools beyond SAT/ACT transmission fees. But the point is that Tulane ACCEPTS a lot of those students they targeted in those campaigns, and a lot do attend. So your premise is wrong. That is why they specifically target the group, in order to find the ones that seem like they will fit best. It’s somewhat crude, of course. They always are, no matter the school that does it. Refining it further on the front end is astronomically costly and impractical. You don’t have to understand how they make their determinations, and neither do I. They do, and it works for them. It costs money for every mailing that gets tossed in the trash, or they end up not accepting. In fact the latter are really costly because they processed and reviewed that student, only not to accept them. It is a failure in that sense for Tulane as well, but an unavoidable one if they are to reach their overall goals. They don’t do this to torture people or for fun.
I am not going to get into an argument with teenagers (or parents) that are freshly disappointed, have had their egos bruised, and remarkably actually confirm that Tulane, however they do it, more often discerned their true intentions than made a mistake. Certainly not accepting whiny self-absorbed students who don’t understand admissions and what Tulane is really trying to accomplish (hint: it isn’t all about stats) is the right thing to do. This happens every year like clockwork, and yet Tulane has steadily larger and more accomplished classes, academically and otherwise, every year. So let’s see. Should they listen to teenagers with zero experience in this area, or believe their own actual results which have been repeated year after year.
OK, that’s the extent of my rant this year. As I said, arguing about it is useless.
Define “better”. If you do it by saying stats would be higher, then you don’t get Tulane at all.
It sounds like it might be a deferral, but send an email directly to your admissions officer telling them exactly what Gibson is saying to you.
I got deferred
ACT: 28 in reading but overall a 22
GPA: 3.7/4.0 and a 4.5/5.2
I took college engineering classes at Tulane this summer and earned college credit on there campus and still got deferred.
I am the president of a non-profit and have volunteered over 1000+ hours
Also I am on the Student Board of Education and the President of the Gay straight alliance at my school.
My ACT is lower because I am extremely dyslexic but my grades show that I am a hard worker. And I wrote my essay about volunteering which I know is a big thing at Tulane.
I don’t get it. I am so upset. That was my dream school. But I want Togo to a school that wants me. Not just to keep there sats high with ACT scores above a 30. They need to look at the whole picture.
I haven’t heard of anyone from our school being declined from Tulane…does admissions just defer (or accept) applicants who apply Early Action?
That’s right. No denials at this stage. Someone told me Georgetown does the same thing? Have not confirmed that.