Tulane or ivy league?

NashvilleThomas
Sun, 01 Feb 2009 19:36:02 +0000

I’m already at Tulane, but thought I would put my two cents in. The ivies are fairly different from each other. There really aren’t too many similarities between, say, Dartmouth and Columbia. I haven’t visited all of them, and I only have friends/family at Yale/Columbia/Brown. If I had to choose between Dartmouth and Tulane, I would probably pick Tulane. However, I would pick the rest over Tulane (especially Columbia/Brown).
Here’s what I like about being in ‘NOLA’:
There is a lot that needs to be done in New Orleans and Louisiana. I work as a political strategist for a PAC that promotes equal rights for a marginalized group of people. Though there is still work to be done in NY and RI, there are plenty of people addressing those issues there, so I feel like I have more of an impact here. Also, I’ve been working at a research institute that deals with inter-american policy–something that would be much more competitive to get at the ivies.

Another point on rankings:
You all have to remember that Tulane’s legacy is still strong. Tulane has traditionally been regarded as one of the top schools in the nation, at one point in time equal to stanford (though that was 50 years ago). A lot of these employers remember how Tulane was ranked/regarded when they were in school, and still consider it to be a top tier school. Emory is very much a newcommer to the Souther ‘Ivy’, and is still positioning itself as a comparable school to the older institutions. For instance, Tulane alumni (along with Georgetown, Stanford, Brown, Notre Dame, Colgate) can become members of the Cornell Club–we would not be a part of this if Tulane wasn’t highly regarded. Tulane’s administration is doing a good job as far as positioning Tulane back into the top ranks. In 1997 the goal was to be in the top 25 by 2007. Obviously this didn’t happen, partly due to Katrina–partly because we only came up with 730 million since then–while our competitors have raised twice that (at the low end). The fact that no fortune 500 companies are headquartered in New Orleans hurts us when it comes to grants & donations.