Academically, which school has a better reputation, Tulane or OSU? What about Tulane vs OSU Honors?
Tulane has an honors program, too. Assuming OSU means Ohio State: for overall reputation, tulane’s is better. in specific areas, OSU does better than Tulane.
Frankly, they’re both fine schools and the differences in their general reputations should not be a deciding criterion, in my opinion.
^ I think the thought Tulane is better than OSU may be regional. The usual college ranking formula has them tied. II agree there is no losing position here.
@lgrama04
I agree that the regional factors here are quite large. Throughout the south (Texas to Virginia, essentially) Tulane will carry a stronger name recognition except for football (again, that’s assuming we are talking about Ohio State and not Oregon State). I would say the same is true for any region outside the Midwest. That’s the way it usually is for private research universities versus big state schools, with a few exceptions like Michigan, UCLA, Berkeley, etc that are world famous for academics. But in Ohio especially, and spilling over somewhat into the surrounding states, the OSU network will be quite dominant.
In a more statistical look, Tulane’s average SAT for incoming freshmen is significantly higher than OSU’s, especially for the CR and W portions of the test. The M is about equal. Same for the ACT, the Tulane 25-75 range is a step higher than the general OSU range. I would assume, although there are no stats I can find, that the numbers for the OSU Honors program are much more similar to Tulane’s in general, although probably not as high as Tulane Honors, which are close to Ivy level averages.
But in selecting which to attend, I think the factors you should be looking at with the most weight should be the starkest differences between these two schools. Size of incoming class: Tulane ~1550, OSU ~7,000. Location: Tulane - New Orleans, OSU - Columbus Ohio. Sports: Tulane D1 (or whatever they call it these days) but I think it will be a long time before Tulane is possibly playing for a national title in any sport other than possibly baseball, although the women’s golf team has been pretty awesome. OSU: just look at the TV listings for the game tonight against Oregon. And so on and so forth. My point being that you can get a fine education at either school. The atmosphere for that education is like night and day, though. At Tulane the classes will be much smaller, even if you are in the honors program at OSU. Only a class per semester, on average, will be in that program. More in your freshman year, probably. It is much easier to get to know the profs at Tulane. I could go on, but it isn’t fair because I know Tulane so much better and so can speak to the features that I think are positives to most students more easily. But these might not be the most important things to you. That is what you have to decide.
Now that all assumes that cost is not a factor for you. Tulane is far more expensive if you are an Ohio resident. No school is worth going into large amounts of debt for. So all of this is moot if Tulane would be prohibitive for your family. But maybe that is not an issue for you, in which case ignore this paragraph.
wow @fallenchemist thank you so much for taking the time to write all that. That really helped a lot, thanks!