re male/female ratio: if tulane is wanting to be compared to more prestigious schools, comparing to the national average is not a good strategy. they should compare to their peers
re racial: from what i’ve seen shools that are over 70% white all have the homogeneous feel to them. The main differentiator would be percent of internationals. schools that have 10% or more internationals will seem much more diverse, even if their white count is high. Tulane is at ~3% which should improve if they want to compare well with their peers. It may be that they simply don’t have a strategy for pushing higher intl enrollment for some reason.
re socio: the % pell grants tells a lot here. in terms of who attends and also who the college is trying to attract. schools that are pushing 20% here are obviously seeking socioeconomic diversity (Miami, USC and Rice do well here, the others lag by comparison).
Here are numbers for a few of the schools FC mentioned:
school men/women% intl% pell%
Tulane 42/58 3.0% 10%
Miami 49/51 14.3% 18%
USC 50/50 12.6% 18%
Vanderbilt 50/50 5.9% 13%
Rice 51/49 12.2% 19%
WUSTL 49/51 8.3% 5%