Tulane Honors or UCLA? Please give advice!

shermani
Fri, 06 Apr 2012 18:56:32 +0000

Oh, fallenchemist, I miss your fanboy candor. I actually remember having a conversation with you this time last year, except then as a nervous, unassuming senior in high school.

I don’t want to come off as dismissive or overly pejorative to Tulane, though. Certainly I regret my choice of Tulane over other institutions, but I am not “so unhappy,” nor do I believe that all other students are idiots, as you mistakenly presumed from my comment. In fact, I am applying to transfer, but I have no doubt that I will enjoy Tulane for the next 3 years if it doesn’t pan out. I indeed believe a good portion of the students here are less than qualified, as I know that preprofessionally there are institutions that better serve my fields of interest, as I know that, despite the impressive distribution of kids here, the already established cliques of Westchester County students detract from other students’ enjoyment. However, Tulane likewise has had its moments where I’ve dismissed the motion of transferring altogether.

Nevertheless, I stick with my comments on the honors program. The perks you mentioned exist, but they are sort of diminutive in the scope of what an honors program should provide for its students. (I would prefer not to debate the merits of each facet of the program, if that’s okay, as that is not pertinent to the main points I am trying to make.) I view the honors program by and large to be a litmus test for the competency of the typical Tulane Undergraduate–barring engineering, of course; outside of it, most students are fairly intelligent, but pretty unengaged, lazy, and marketing majors (had to).

But in all seriousness, I mean it when I say that collectively my great and horrendous experiences here have made the experience mediocre overall. Students in the Creative PreMed, Poly Econ, and Latin American Studies programs will likely have a different opinion on the utility of a Tulane degree, but I can only speak to my concerns.