To be clear, any large city has dining options that are high quality, and the bigger the city the more diverse the options, usually. NOLA is a bit of an exception in that it has unusually diverse options for a metro area its size. Quite a bit of that is historical, of course, but also NOLA is one of the few cities with so much convention traffic and tourism relative to its size (not to mention Mardi Gras and the festivals), that you have to factor that population number by some significant amount. Especially since visitors eat virtually every meal out. I love the food in Atlanta for certain cuisines, just as you say. I know you can find anything in Atlanta you want, but you just have to hunt a little harder and maybe travel a bit farther for certain types of meals, at least the best ones. Atlanta remains one of my favorite cities as I remember it, and I am sure it still would be if I could get there more.
You are right, naturally, about Tulane dropping the thesis requirement to graduate with highest honors of summa cum laude and magna cum laude. They are GPA based now, starting about 2 years ago. There were just too many high achieving students in some areas, especially business, that felt that doing a thesis shouldn’t be required for recognizing their high performance in the classroom. I had very mixed feelings about it at the time, but since a lot of the students in other fields (and in business if they want it of course) want to graduate with departmental honors, they would still need to do a thesis, I believe. And there is the Tulane Scholars Program I mentioned, and Newcomb Scholars, which both involve completing a thesis as part of the program. This way those students that are more “traditionally academic”, for lack of a better term, can pursue that focus. I could easily argue both sides of this issue, but I think you make the essential point that it is great that both sides exist and students can choose or not choose to take that into account as a factor if the schools they are considering do it differently.
Anyway, thanks for weighing in on this forum as well. The OP’s D has an interesting choice to make, and should have as much info as possible. In fact, I am a little concerned we are giving her too much to look into with only a couple weeks left, but oh well. What can one do? Just shows how excellent her choices are.