Tulane eliminated their application fee 10 plus years ago in the spirit of making the application economically accessible to all and to eliminate the work involved with the administration of the fee itself. From a Forbes article on the top schools with no app fee: “I checked in with some of the admissions officers at the schools that don’t charge application fees and asked why they set up their policies. At Tulane, admissions director Faye Tydlaska says her school dropped its $45 fee in 2008 because it was already granting so many admissions waivers, including to all Louisiana applicants, and to anyone who asked. It realized only about half of applicants were paying and the money raised from the fees was negligible. “It was such a hindrance to students,” she says.”
As for someone who applies to a school they are not interested in only because there is no fee…hopefully they get what they deserve, especially at a school where admission has become as competitive as it has at Tulane. It’s not as though Tulane doesn’t emphasize demonstrated interest as being critically important and essentially requiring their supplemental essay to be seriously considered. You can’t just press a “free” button in the common app in order to become a viable applicant…you have to do some extra work as well.
I guess the alternative would be to raise the fee and eliminate any waivers so that only the seriously interested with the means to pay the fee would apply. That way the couldn’t be “gaming the system” to lower the acceptance rate. I mean, why try to make the application more accessible to economically limited applicants when you are attempting to increase the socioeconomic diversity of your student body and moving to an emphasis on need-based aid over merit? They should instead make the application less accessible to the very students they are attempting to target and enroll…makes perfect sense. Insert eye roll emoji here: