<p>Fallenchemist: I don’t know if you are referring to my post, but for the record I have kids at both schools. I love Tulane! It is an amazing place which, by virtue of its setting alone, offers students an experience other colleges cannot duplicate. But Vanderbilt is plenty awesome, too. Roxanne expressed an interest in finance. The reality right now is that she would be better positioned coming out of Vanderbilt than Tulane. Vanderbilt just has higher status and that matters in terms of her particular goals. Ten years ago, even just five years ago, the difference between the two maybe wouldn’t have been significant. But Vanderbilt has recently catapulted into a higher level of selectivity and prestige. This year’s acceptance rate is just 12%. At the same time, the scores of attending students (as opposed to “admitted”) have gone up dramatically. The top 25% of entering freshmen in 2012 scored better than 2330, which is insane! None of this means that Vanderbilt is a “better” school than Tulane for every applicant. And the difficulty of gaining admission to a college doesn’t necessarily correlate with the quality of the instruction or classroom experience. Both schools are plenty challenging academically. Certainly, there are incredibly bright, talented and engaging kids at Tulane–mine is one of them! (I also believe that Tulane has been judged unfairly by US News–but that’s another topic.) But for a student intent on business/finance for whom career launching is a deciding factor, I believe that right now, Vanderbilt’s increasingly high profile makes it the clear choice. That’s all.</p>