I’m suspicious of the 3725 early action admits figure from the admissions.blog website post . Tulane offers guaranteed admission for in-state residents who apply ED (no guaranteed admission for EA applicants) and meet a basic stats threshold. When you have the guaranteed admit kids + higher concentration of hook kids + stronger admission preference (Tulane seems to be taking steps to improve yield in recent classes), then I expect the ED admit rate to be far higher than the EA admit rate. Yet with 3725 students admitted EA, instead it suggests relatively little difference between ED and EA, and a huge difference between EA and RD. That does not make sense to me.
I am also suspicious because the 3725 EA admits figure was not quoted like other commends in the blog post, and a source was not referenced. A source also does not come up in a Google search. I think the most likely explanation is the 3725 EA admits figure is incorrect, and the actual number of EA admits is far lower, making the RD rate far higher than 4.1%
However, if we instead assume the 3725 figure is accurate, then it would be unusual. Selective private colleges that offer both ED and EA should have a larger difference in admit rates between the two, and should have a smaller difference in admit rate between EA and RD.
For example, Georgetown’s newspaper mentions the following admit rate for the class of 2023. The RD and EA admit rates are far closer than occurs at Tulane, if the 3725 figure is assumed to be accurate.
If you look at lower ranked colleges, then they don’t tend to have 11% overall admit rates like Tulane, so the difference in RD admit rate are event larger.
gablesdad asked how the RD admit rate at Tulane compared to the RD admit rate in at bottom half of T50 colleges. Immediately before your quote, I listed Georgetown as an example, which is #24 on USNWR – not bottom half of USNWR T50. “Lower ranked” means comparing Tulane’s RD admit rate to the RD admit rate at colleges “lower ranked” than Georgetown and in the listed range.
If you mean USNWR ranking, #40 is not a low rank. However, you can rank colleges by whatever criteria is important to you, which is likely to completely different from the USNWR weightings.
For example, many HS students are interested in the New Orleans area. Tulane would be near the top of any ranking involving connection to the New Orleans area. Students as whole are engaged in the NOLA community, including activities related to their public service graduation requirement and the annual Outreach Tulane, which often has 1000+ participating students . Students also regularly participate in NOLA events including closing for Mardi Gras, which probably contributes to Tulane’s reputation for partying and content students. Tulane offers various classes in which students can learn about NOLA and its unique history… Tulane has recruiters from local companies at job fairs, is well known among area employers, and has a strong alumni network in the area. .
What are you looking for in a college? Why are you interested in Tulane?
My college guidance counselor made Tulane sound like a prestigious school and said it was a peer school of Vandy, Emory, and Rice. My ex-bf also goes to Tulane (he chose it over Berkeley and Cornell) and his IG stories make it look like a lot of fun. But yeahh haha.
Generally Tulane admissions staffers are transparent in answering questions, including those regarding admissions stats, so I encourage potential applicants to reach out and ask.
Also, Jeff Schiffman’s blog posts are very helpful and must reads for applicants.
Comparing Tulane EA to Georgetown EA does not make sense, as Georgetown EA is restrictive, where Tulane’s isn’t. The fact that Tulane’s app is also free further skews this comparison. Overall, successful Georgetown applicants are stronger than Tulane’s average student.
Tulane is not an academic peer to Vandy, Emory, or Rice. You can see this based on average HS GPA (As noted above Tulane’s recent incoming class HS GPA was 3.5. Tulane does recalculate uwGPA on a 4 pt scale, core courses only.)
Not sure how the other 3 schools calc/recalculate GPAs, but in general successful applicants to those schools have higher than a 3.5 uwGPAs. It’s very clear in 6 years of naviance data from my kids’ HS as well.
A quote from Georgetown’s website is below. Georgetown EA is not restrictive in the standard meaning of the word. Students can simultaneously apply to Georgetown, Tulane, and various other EA colleges at the same early round. It is not a single choice early action.
It is restrictive in that one can’t apply anywhere ED (same as many, maybe all, SCEA schools). My point is Georgetown EA is not a comparable application round to Tulane’s EA.
From the college’s perspective and influence on EA acceptance rate, it’s completely different from SCEA. For example , if you apply to Harvard or Stanford SCEA, that is supposed to be your only application to a private college during the early round. You cannot apply college for which they may have a significant cross admit loss. As such, applying SCEA usually indicates that it’s the applicant’s first choice, and the applicant is extremely likely to attend if admitted. This was observed in the Harvard lawsuit analysis – SCEA admits had a 95% yield, and RD admits had a 68% yield – a huge difference. If Harvard wants to boost yield, an easy way to do it is admitting a larger portion of the class during the SCEA round. The regression analysis found that this appeared to occur – Harvard appeared to give a significant preference to SCEA applicants, and having a far higher expected yield for SCEA applicants than RD applicants probably contributes to that preference.
However, applying EA to Tulane or Georgetown EA does not indicate that it is your first choice since they permit applying to other peer colleges. As such there is not expected to be as extreme a gap between EA and RD yield, and the college is not expected to give as large of a preference to EA applicants as would occur for SCEA.
Yes, there are differences between Georgetown and Tulane’s EA polices and application options, including the ED policy you mentioned. Another key one is that Tulane also offers ED, while Georgetown does not offer ED. So choosing to apply EA to Tulane instead of choosing ED generally indicates that Tulane is not your first choice – almost the opposite of applying SCEA. A low yield is expected on Tulane EA applicants. Yield may be similar to RD.
The point was not to show that Georgetown EA/RD is comparable to Tulane ED/EA/RD. It was to show that the apparent large gap between RD and EA admit rate at Tulane uncommon. If applying EA to Georgetown implies a stronger degree of preference than applying EA to Tulane, then one would expect the EA/RD admit rate gap to be larger at Georgetown. Similarly if Tulane filters first choice kids and hooks into ED instead RD, and Georgetown does not offer ED; then it also suggest a larger expected EA vs RD admit rate gap at Georgetown. However, this does not occur. Instead, even with these reasons that Georgetown might apply some small degree of preference for EA over RD, Georgetown has a similar admit rate in both rounds.
I think you’d be hardpressed to find any highly selective EA (not including SCEA) college that has as large a difference in admit rate as Tulane with the 3725 early action admits assumption, which is one of several factors that makes me suspect that the source is unreliable, and there were actually far fewer than 3725 early action admits.
I knew there was something funky and deliberate going on. See Jeff Selingo’s new book and his findings on Tulane’s ED2 conversion tactics to secure improvements in yield. Tufts syndrome seemingly got to be renamed… wonderful book, must read!!!
I think many schools are going to rely even more heavily on their ED rounds in the next couple years because of financial stresses. I don’t think Tulane is alone in manipulating their yield through ED and EA. When we visited BC with D19 they were very up front about manipulating the number of applications…one year they added an extra essay and applications dropped about 30% that year. As previously mentioned if you significantly increase the denominator (application numbers) then your acceptance rate will decrease, but that reduction says nothing about the caliber of students applying.
RD is always a bit of a risk at selective schools because if you wait until the RD round there will definitely be less spots available AND there could be a perception that the student is using it as a safety, particularly if they’re a strong applicant.
@gablesdad I don’t remember daily emails but yes, Tulane sent AT LEAST one email even before EA decisions came out letting students know that they could still switch their application to ED1 or 2 (which makes no sense b/c that’s in January but ok.) I ended up getting in EA either way, so that was super baffling to me and my family.
But almost every selective school with ED uses it on-purpose for enrollment management: there’s a reason why most T20s w/ED fill up ~1/2 their class early: it lets them decrease their acceptance rates to improve their “selectivity” in the public eye.
How exactly can Tulane “pressure” any kid to convert to ED2 by email? I’m curious.
To change the topic, it seems that some people really like hating on Tulane. The terminology sounds a lot like that used by the people hating on U Chicago.
Many of these posts have undertones almost as though people are bothered that these colleges dare to emulate their “betters”. For Chicago, their “betters” are the Ivies, while for Tulane, I guess that it is the “elites” in general.
I don’t understand what the problem is?
If a person thinks that Tulane is overrated, they shouldn’t send their kids there or recommend it to their friends, but I am entirely confused as to why they would take the time to dedicate an entire thread to trashing Tulane for it’s admissions practices.
@MWolf Tulane’s an amazing school. Though not the OP, I think the purpose of this thread was to draw attention to the vast discrepancy between early vs. regular acceptance rates, and b/c Tulane’s just a well-known example of demonstrated interest i.e. applying EA/ED (though there are other forms of interest considered like interviews etc.) playing a huge role in enrollment management. Honestly though, every selective school in the nation does this to increase their selectivity in the public’s perception, so no one’s trying to call out Tulane specifically but more-so critique why the current selective admissions system as a WHOLE pressures students to apply early action or decision somewhere in-order to maximize their chances of getting into a “prestigious school:” something me and my peers definitely felt while applying to college.
Thanks @PikachuRocks15. Increasing yield by sending targeted emails to EA applicants suggesting they should convert to ED2 on December 22 is not cool, regardless of who does it. @MWolf Tulane can do and say whatever it wants, and so can I. I have no agenda against Tulane, only interest. After having let the question lie, I thought it was an interesting coincidence that best researched and written book I have come across on colllege admissions just came out and featured Tulane’s early practices which had seemed so unusual on the face of the data to me. Tulane is an identifier outlier on the data and it deservedly draws to itself special attention.
@gablesdad
daughter applied last year EA received 1 email asking if wanted to switch to ED2, just one email not “daily”. It was after all the WashU , etc ED’s decisions came out. D got accepted with nice merit package, EA.
