I understand the chart above, but again I caution in assuming the numbers reflect some sort of either A or B reality. As far as Pell, as I understand it when a school participates in the Posse Foundation they provide full tuition scholarships, which can eliminate the need for a Pell. From the Posse web site:
I am not sure but I think that in some cases of extreme need Tulane is paying for everything. And Tulane has two full contingents of Posse Scholars, Los Angeles and New Orleans. So I think it is more than fair to say that one would add those numbers, whatever they are, to the number of Pell recipients to get a truer number. And I am not sure that Tulane isn’t in another, similar program to attract this kind of student. I seem to remember reading about it but cannot remember the name. But forget that, say that is wrong. It is still a significant addition to the Pell numbers since Tulane is a relatively small school.
As far as international, I think it is pretty well established that many school are not need blind when it comes to international students. So while they might add one kind of diversity, they may not add another at all. And being on CC for a long time, it is a common observation that students from certain areas of the world tend to cluster at their new school and not interact so much. Naturally this has variable amounts of validity, and my point isn’t to generalize that having international students doesn’t add to diversity, but that citing numbers doesn’t always tell the whole story, or even most of it. Having said that, Tulane did not strive to enroll international students in a big way until just a few years ago. They more than doubled international enrollment this year, I want to say from something like 23 to 52. It is close enough that I am not going to dig up the CDS. Tulane has full tuition scholarships for about 10 international students, and does offer aid. So I am not sure how much they are using the increase in internationals to beef up income. I am sure that plays some role.
Finally, for the men/women. Fair enough to compare to those same schools. I can’t explain it with reasonable certainty, but I can hypothesize. First, Tulane does have a reputation for being very strong in the humanities, and they have continued to support these departments very strongly. I think it is still true that the School of Liberal Arts at Tulane is second to the business school in size, as opposed to the School of Science and Engineering, which I assume is third. It is also well established that despite gains in gender parity, the Liberal Arts still skew female. So that might explain part of it. The other reason could be the amount of control admissions has over this. Here is what I mean. Schools like Harvard, Stanford and Yale have such high yields that they can pretty easily control the gender balance of the incoming classes. As one moves down the list in yield, this control lessens. Tulane, because of the somewhat different way they do admissions and where they are in the preference order compared to these most highly selective schools, has much less control over this. If they tried to control it this way, they might put either the quality of the class at risk, or the final size of the class, or even both. So that might explain why the ratio reflects the national average.