<p>Thingschange, in your case it COULD be that your stats are so high (especially the Got 800s in 3 SAT II’s!!) that Tulane may think they are just a safety for you. Total speculation, but if you keep showing interest, you clearly have the stats to get in.
If you submitted the subject test scores, could it be (asking others here like fallenchemis) that it would indicate you was casting a net for much higher ranked schools by taking the subject test since Tulane does not require them but most Ivy league schools do???</p>
<p>It is just impossible to know what goes into the decisions. One thing for sure, you WILL have a ton of options with your package and if you want Tulane, hopefully it will be one of the options.</p>
<p>You nailed it pretty well, hsgrad. Of course Tulane knows that students with stats that high are likely to be applying to Ivies, Duke, Stanford, etc. and therefore the subject tests are not a surprise. So I wouldn’t phrase it so much as it works against you, it just means you have to convince Tulane that should you be accepted there is a reasonable, as opposed to negligible, chance you would attend. But they would still need that convincing even if they didn’t see subject test scores, is my point.</p>
<p>For the student, it often comes down to finances. Tulane is savvy enough and experienced enough about all this to know that a student might get accepted to one of those other schools, and if the costs are similar Tulane probably won’t be chosen. But in many cases, it is a scenario where the other school(s) will cost many tens of thousands of $$ per year, and Tulane will be much less costly if they get one of the full tuition scholarships. And that’s fine to say plainly, it is a reality of attending college that it is a value proposition, not an absolute A vs. B, C D, E or F. Tulane, an excellent school for little cost and no loans, vs. a much more famous school with either big debt or emptying the bank accounts. Often Tulane wins in that case, but not always.</p>
<p>It did for us, but of course in our case there was possibly the added factor of my being an alum. Hard to believe, I know, but I truly put no pressure on my D to pick Tulane because of that and if you knew her, you would know she took that into account not at all. Perhaps she had to overcome that as a factor, lol. But she certainly loved her visit and the economics were impossible to argue with. My point being we were a case much like thingschange and a few others that got deferred with similar stats, except she wasn’t deferred. That is where my alum status might have convinced admissions there was a good chance she would pick Tulane over the HYPS type schools. You just have to convince them of that some other way, like by applying for the full tuition scholarships (and don’t forget the Stamps as well) and dropping them a note sometime in the next month or two.</p>
<p>I have been lurking as a parent on this site but thought it might be helpful if I posted. I am feeling bad for the high achieving student who was deferred…don’t really get it but think they must not have understood that Tulane is your #1 choice (as others have said).</p>
<p>My DD is from MA and was accepted a week after submitting her app in mid-November. When the official letter came, she was offered a spot in the honors college and a generous merit package. She was thrilled even though Tulane is probably her #3 choice. We knew of kids from her h.s. in past years who had high scores, grades, etc. who did not get accepted so she focussed on that in her Why Tulane and we made sure to go to the local info session.</p>
<p>ThingsChange – Tulane seems to be very savvy about sniffing out what applicants are more likely to actually enroll and also about where to throw scholarship dollars to increase the chances that certain applicants will enroll.</p>
<p>For stats and ranking purposes, Tulane gains nothing by accepting and throwing limited money at a lot of high stat applicants who attend elsewhere. That raises the acceptance percentage, uses up scholly offers that could have enticed other students, and does not contribute to the stats of the incoming class.</p>
<p>I’d surmise that the deferral is Tulane telling you that they really don’t think you will end up enrolling. If their guess is correct, move on. If their guess is wrong, the deferral leaves open the possibility of further discussion/consideration.</p>
<p>My son emailed his admission counselor last night after receiving the deferral since he has excellent stats-not quite as good as ThingsChange. My son did visit Tulane but the one thing he did not do was email his counselor when applying. He felt it would be bothering him. So the response from the counselor which came quickly was “that this was the sort of contact and demonstrated interest Tulane looks for.” He told my son to again finish strong and send another letter of his interest in Tulane for when they re-evaluate his application.</p>
<p>I can agree that Tulane is clearly basing some admissions decisions on the likelihood that the student will ultimately enroll, but I don’t know on what basis you can say that they’re being “savvy” about it. Obviously with OGTMGT’s son they were not very savvy about it, and might lose a kid who’d apparently be a good addition to the school.</p>
<p>My son is another "high stats’ kid (more or less) who is pretty interested in Tulane. It’s been on his college list from the beginning, and although it may not be his top choice it is certainly one of his top choices. And he certainly may not get into his other top choices, regardless of his stats. His Tulane application has been complete for well over a month. He checks Gibson frequently, and at this point is expecting a deferral (as, at least per this forum, lots of kids with lower stats who applied later than him are already in (with merit money)). As much as he understands the realities of all of these admissions shenanigans, he will read a deferral as a statement that they’re just not all that interested.</p>
<p>There’s all sorts of ‘gaming the system’ that goes on on both the applicants’ and the schools’ end, but that doesn’t mean that it’s done well or accurately. But I do think that decisions made by the schools on the basis of juicing up their numbers/stats, and not on the merits and qualities of the applicant, are a bit obnoxious.</p>
<p>I have been reading everyone’s posts. I guess I am not feeling too hopeful for my son as I think he will probably be denied or deferred. His application was complete at the end of October and we haven’t heard yet. He keeps checking the portal. He did email the admissions counselor a couple of weeks ago.
He takes mostly AP and Honors
Here are his stats
SAT 1920
uw GPA-3.54
Has a great resume
I think this is probably a reach for him.
Congratulations to all of you who have been accepted. I will keep my fingers crossed.</p>
<p>AsleepAtTheWheel - Maybe savvy isn’t the exact word, but they do have extensive history of what types of applicants are likely to be serious about Tulane and which ones have much higher odds of getting accepted by and choosing other schools. Does that mean they get it wrong sometimes, even really wrong? Sure, and they know that. No one would deny that any system in this very inexact process, for any school, is imperfect. And to be fair, it isn’t Tulane that created the environment that brings pressure to have a low acceptance rate, or to have an artificial rating system that far too many applicants take seriously. It would be easy to say that they should take the higher road and ignore that stuff, but then pressure comes from alumni and others that can actually affect the bottom line of the school and therefore its ability to provide the best education possible.</p>
<p>Sigh. As you say it is a screwed up process in some respects. But what is also real, as I was telling someone else in a PM, is that they are trying to get a class of 1500-1600 people, optimally about 1550-1575 I think. So out of 35,000 or so applications, they have to decide who to extend offers to, how likely they are to accept, and to have those students be diverse in terms of majors, talents, backgrounds, etc. Guess wrong on the low side and there is a revenue shortfall. Guess wrong on the high side by more than a few percent and there isn’t space for everyone. All in an atmosphere where Tulane is getting increasingly popular, but how do you quantify that in a short span of time? I really don’t envy them that part of the job. But I think that is why one sees what seem like odd decisions.</p>
<p>In the future there will probably be more types of admission statuses. ED1, ED2, SCEA1, SCEA2, EA1, EA2, RD1, RD2, etc. schools will develop more rounds of admission that are binding. Also, schools will continue to increase the % of acceptances in the early rounds. Lastly, early merit offers will have to be accepted or rejected in a short period of time.</p>
<p>I’m not so sure, Bigdaddy. binding a student to a school without a financial aid package is pretty hard to do, especially as fewer families can afford to go binding because college costs and interest rates are so high compared to what they used to be. I agree that we’re in for some big changes in college education, but I don’t see what your suggesting happening by itself.</p>
<p>BigDaddy–I recall hearing at some admission sessions of schools filling 45+% of freshman class via ED round. I think it may have been both Richmond and Wake Forest.</p>
<p>I am also surprised that merit offers allow such a long decision window.</p>
<p>haha, thank you. thankfully i’ve found and applied to many more schools i’d love to attend, so if tulane (which was almost my top choice when i applied) doesn’t work out, i have that to soften the blow. i can wait :)</p>
<p>@Jkeil911- yeah I was a little disappointed as well. Apparently my GC called and the admission officer told her that even though they really liked me, they felt that Tulane wasn’t a top choice of mine and I didn’t show enough interest and thus wanted to wait until the early round of admissions was over to see if I was still interested… Whatever the reason, it absolutely sucks to have your first college decision as a deferral, when so many people in my grade have already gotten into colleges.</p>