Tulane plays hardball
 

A long front-page Wall Street Journal article today discusses this place's problems.

Although the school has a decent name (43rd in USNews rankings), recruiting students had become a hard job. They were spending $2,712 per incoming freshman on recruiting brochures and marketing. (Wonder how this compares?)

Tulane is still paying the faculty, refusing to release scholarship athletes, and forcing students to pay fall tuition although no classes are offered.

The administration fears many tuition checks are lost in the flooded mail room. Many students hope that's true.

I always wondered about the US News rankings. I applied to Tulane as a National Merit finalist with a decent-but-not-great GPA (3.6), and they definitely wanted me. They offered me a scholarship that would pay more than half my tuition right off the bat (like, before I applied for financial aid -- this offer came with my acceptance letter in December), more if I was in the honors program, and I probably would have gotten more for being National Merit as well. All in all, I probably would have had at least 2/3rds-3/4ths of my tuition covered by the time I got there, and Tulane is not cheap. It seems like they were probably having a hard time attracting higher-quality applicants if they were willing to spend that much money on me when my stats weren't even that wonderful.

That sucks that students are being forced to play their tuition even without classes being offered (although I understand their dilemma). I know that Wisconsin is waiving this semester's tuition for New Orleans students who ended up here after the hurricane, because of that very reason -- are any other schools doing that?

I know Rice University is offering free tuition to all Tulane students. University of Houston is offering instate tuition and reducing a lot of costs for all “Katrina Cougars.”

Like s&s said, Tulane pimps hard for good students. I didn't apply to Tulane, but if I had, I know I would have gotten at least a partial academic scholarship for 5 years of A-school. Several of my HS classmates went to Tulane on full rides.

I know that Brown is not charging NOLA students for the fall semester (if they choose to go for the spring, then they pay). NYU isn't doing anything, because they suck hard. Columbia is doing the same thing Brown is.

The US News rankings are a bit sketchy to me, but Tulane's a good school, as the others have said. I remember hearing good things when I was looking for undergrad (stats similar to S&S as far as national merit, GPA, etc.), and they have a good law school. I got a lot of info from them my junior year even though I never really considered leaving the Northeast for college.

From what I'd heard, if you're good they're going to come after you.

Resurrecting an ancient thread. Was on here looking for information for Tulane since KillarneyBud will be attending there in the fall. Am I reading correctly that Tulane didn't hold classes in the aftermath of Katrina but the students were expected to pay anyway???

The situation after Katrina was that Tulane students paid tuition and then Tulane paid the schools where they attended. The students technically got free (to them) tuition but Tulane University reimbursed those instutitutions. In addition, Tulane had a summer term in 2006 that was free to students who wished to take classes whether they needed to make up credits or wanted to just get ahead. It was very popular.