Rather depressing review of Tulane, clarify?

fallenchemist
Sun, 28 Nov 2010 11:46:51 +0000

I might have been a bit hard on you as well. After all, this will be a major decision for you and naturally you want everything to be perfect. I think I was really just peeved at the review itself. There are a few like this every year where people exaggerate things about Tulane for no discernible reason. Take the partying for instance. Every school has a lot of drinking and sex. It is college. Every school also has a lot of people that choose not to drink or drink very little, and to be much more selective in their sexual activity. Both groups of people have wonderful opportunities and report being very happy at Tulane. Some even report that a smaller percentage of Tulane students drink heavily because there is so much else to do in New Orleans as compared to a rural college. I don’t know if that is a fact, but it makes a lot of sense. The thing about STD’s is another idiotic absurdity.

Probably the absolute stupidest thing said on that review are the statements about apathy, lack of involvement, etc. Tulane is considered one of the most involved student bodies in the country. There has been a ton of publicity about this. Calling Tulane people anti-social is like saying that the Pope is not very religious. It is the exact opposite of their reputation.

The geographic diversity statement is also silly. Tulane lumps all of New England and the mid-Atlantic, including Pennsylvania and NJ, into one region (Northeast) so it looks like there are a lot of students from there. But NJ is not a lot like Mass or NH, in general. So if you assume New England is about half the Northeast and the mid-Atlantic is the other half and then look at the overall breakdown, it is:

Florida - 4.5%
Louisiana - 16%
Midsouth - 3%
Midwest - 15.5%
New England - 16.5%
Mid-Atlantic - 16.5%
Southeast - 9.7%
Texas - 7%
West - 11%

Looks reasonably diverse to me.

To say that people don’t take advantage of New Orleans is another laughable statement. I mean it is nuts. Sure, one could argue there is always more to get out of a city, but that would be true anywhere. People have a lot to do between school, clubs, sports, whatever. But New Orleans is not huge like NYC. It is accessible, and besides the obvious areas like the French Quarter and immediately surrounding area, students take advantage of Magazine Street, and of course the Uptown area where Tulane is located. In addition, Tulane students are involved in many areas of the city that would normally not be places they would go. Tulane requires two semesters of “service learning” courses, and many students volunteer beyond that.

The ranting about there being few professors, few course offerings, and the professors not staying is easily refuted by looking at the faculty list, the course offerings, and the professors’ bios. It is true that some faculty did not come back after Katrina, but it was hardly the disaster painted by this person. It is rather inconsistent that the person claims Tulane has no money for programs but is so generous with financial aid. In fact, while for the weeks immediately following Katrina there was a lot of doubt as to how things would go or if Tulane would even survive, once the situation became clearer and Tulane started up again that January, people realized Tulane would in fact bounce back. It took some hard decisions and sacrifice, but Tulane’s endowment still hit $1 billion shortly thereafter (like all schools, it went down with the market a year or so later, but it is still very strong) and the school was stable financially. In short, Tulane has actually thrived since Katrina.

Clearly that review is at least a couple years old, since Katrina was 5 years ago and it sound like it was written about 3 years after. It is impossible to know the motives of the poster, but as I hope I have shown it is riddled with factual errors and posits opinions contrary to those held by almost everyone else. Again, this is not to say that Tulane is perfect. It isn’t, and besides what is great for one person may not be at all to the liking of another. I hope that if Tulane is on your radar screen at all (which I assume it is or you wouldn’t have bothered with any of this), that you will visit and see for yourself.