Questions re Honors Weekend, Public Transportation, Safety

fallenchemist
Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:27:56 +0000

My school offers few APs, so I’ll probably only place out of French, Lit, Calc BC, Psych, USHist, and Stat.

Only?? LOL, now it is my turn to smile. That is 19-20 hours you would get credit for, over a semester already under your belt before you even move a pillowcase into your dorm room. I know some people on CC have so many AP courses it feels like they are done with college before they start, but they are few and far between. You are well ahead of 99% of freshmen. In any case, Tulane is considered very strong in foreign languages and econ, and while I haven’t kept up with the math dept. as much as I probably should have, the math and physics majors (since physics majors typically take a boatload of advanced math) have had good things to say in general. The one exception was some of the math profs having heavy accents, but I hear that complaint at most high level universities.

French and Spanish have long been strong language areas for Tulane. My D was also a French student in high school, and has continued with it at Tulane as a minor, while majoring in China Studies (and taking her fourth year of Mandarin now after spending two semesters in Beijing last year) and English/Creative Writing. The China Studies area is undergoing a fairly major upgrade as well, with Tulane opening a Confucius Institute this semester and hosting a year long series of lectures regarding issues involving China. I believe the plan is to add even more faculty in this area and create a full major for it. Right now it is considered a coordinate major, where you actually major in History or Sociology or some other more established area and emphasize course work in China, for example, and learn the language.



Do you know whether Tulane has a comprehensive course catalog that lists all of the course descriptions in one place? Also, can one take courses from the business school without being a business major, per se?

That also made me smile with nostalgia. Back when those of us that rode dinosaurs to class were in college, the course catalog was something we anticipated and devoured. It was so convenient to have all the courses in a book like that. Sadly, I think they have eliminated this due to costs, as have many colleges. Maybe I am wrong about this and someone will correct me, but I think that is the case. Of course online does have advantages in terms of searching and sorting, but you lose a lot too. Anyway, if you go here [Course Descriptions - Tulane University - Acalog ACMS?](http://catalog.tulane.edu/content.php?catoid=40&navoid=1521) I think this is as close as it gets to the old paper course catalogs. I assume you already found the Class Schedule portion of the web site. [Tulane University - Class Schedule](Tulane University Schedule of Classes)

Re: Business courses and graduate level courses. The answer is an emphatic yes. This is a really strong feature of the way Tulane is structured. There is no additional acceptance to any individual School or major within Newcomb-Tulane College except for architecture, and even with that you can take any intro course you want without being a major. I took several graduate level courses when I was at Tulane, and nothing has changed with respect to that openness as far as I know.



Is the freshman seminar taught jointly by all three of those professors, or just one professor per section? Also, do you know whether the seminar is a lot of work - looks very interesting, but may entail a lot of reading?

I am pretty sure each section is taught just by that professor, as opposed to team teaching. It does entail a lot of reading, that is true. But the reading list is readily available because it has been taught for a few years now (my D took it her freshman year, and I think that was at least the second year it had been taught) so you could easily get a jump on it and read a bit over the summer. She thought the effort was extremely worthwhile because the material is pretty fundamental to Western thought.

Hope that helps, just hit us up with any other questions you have, and be sure to let us know how the trip goes.