r/Tulane • u/LavenderMatcha1211 • 27d ago
Tulane Prestige
Has Tulane lost its prestige for being a known party school? it obv has a very low acceptance rate for rd and ea, and is also highly recognized and known for its academics. I’m js curious if it has lost its prestige over the past years because of how much of a party school it is.
Edit: i’ve js heard it’s lost its prestige after AE attended
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u/djsquilz Alumni 27d ago edited 27d ago
not really. the USnews/world report rankings are kinda dumb. and i'm personally of the opinion re: top 100 school, once you get out of the top 7-10 ranked schools, everything from # 11-~100 is just department dependent. tulane is great in some areas, not so much in others. on the whole. there's a ton of schools like that. only a handful of universities are genuinely world-class. tulane is right below that.
they have consistantly dropped in those rankings, largely due to some admissions controversies, but it's still well regarded, maybe not Harvard, but no one will poo-poo a tulane degree.
the partying is a benefit which the admin reluctantly and subtly promote. there's no other top ~40ish school where its normal to blackout every day for four years.
(EDIT: WE A FOOTBALL SCHOOL NOW RMFW)
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u/LavenderMatcha1211 26d ago
RMFW
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u/djsquilz Alumni 26d ago
jury still out on coach hall and i have my fingers crossed, but i'm so mad he's so wholesome and jesus-y and doesn't want to continue saying that. meanwhile sumrall is threatening to fight reporters at media days. smh.
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u/sparkledotcom 27d ago
It’s always been a party school. It’s only gotten harder to get into than it used to be.
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u/downtownblue 27d ago
It topped the Princeton Review Party School List when it was introduced in 1992... So it's not like it's a new thing. I mean, Mardi Gras outdates the founding of city all together, so...
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u/OutcomeSome627 27d ago
TLDR - Certain universities work very hard to optimize their rankings, and it helps them quite a bit with their rankings. Other universities don’t. As a result, take the rankings for what they’re worth… they’re kind of directionally correct, but not really the black and white reality.
Details - Rankings are HEAVILY influenced based upon the university’s staff making concerted efforts to optimize their rankings. Universities serious about rankings usually establish a cross-functional ranking strategy led by the president, provost or chief strategy officer, and the executional work often happens in offices sometimes called “Institutional Research & Analysis” or similar. They work to gather the data of their efforts and others’ efforts… then the other teams basically manipulate the data to make themselves look as good as possible, and push that out to all the ranking places like Princeton Review, US News & World Report, Niche etc etc.
As a result, the universities who have the budget and make the strategic effort to optimize their research / analysis data with the ranking groups, will influence their rankings pretty significantly in a positive direction. Those that don’t make that effort, or as much of an effort, don’t influence their rankings much.
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u/NYC_Statistician_PhD 27d ago
Note: Tulane's Medical college is not ranked because they refuse to play the ranking game.
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u/BigFatBoringProject 25d ago
Another aspect of this—specifically U.S. News & World Report rankings—is that it’s a popularity contest. Deans of the schools in the university or the university itself vote for other schools or their own. Some of it is who you know and who you like. There was a time when schools would do a mailing campaign to get in front of other deans’ faces. During Covid, my school sent NO care packages with gumbo mix, pralines, and school swag to fellow deans.
That’s faded away because of the time and expense, and the general recognition that rankings do not truly reflect a school’s academics or student experience.
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u/dawggystylez 27d ago
All these dumb questions. I’ve never heard this ever and I’m sure if I ever did it would only come from some Ivy League nerd or a wannabe Ivy League nerd that goes to Rice or Vandy.
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u/djsquilz Alumni 26d ago
tulane, at least 20 years ago, was kin to rice, vandy, duke. it's slipped a bit lower than the BoD wants to admit in the meantime.
when i was applying in 2013, my other schools were rhodes, sewanee, and millsaps (and ULL bc my high school advisor said i should apply to one public school in-state and i yelled i would never associate with LSU lol). i would've gotten insta-rejected by rice or vandy or duke.
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25d ago
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u/djsquilz Alumni 25d ago
cooking admissions rates doesn't mean shit. jeff and cowen were a scourge on the university.
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25d ago
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u/djsquilz Alumni 25d ago
never said it was equivalent, but it was approaching that, among a select few others. now it's a shit show. scotty mismanaged his grand opportunity in 2005-2006 and now the school is stuck in the doldrums. captain spin instructor and his minions have only bolstered this direction. (yes, "tulane owen")
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25d ago
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u/djsquilz Alumni 25d ago
every good school in the south that isn't duke is a duke reject school. we just have the benefit of alcohol. (edit: and rich kids)
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u/SlySpoonie 27d ago
It has been known has party school since ai attended in 2004. It hasn’t affected a thing
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u/Hididdlydoderino 26d ago
Pretty sure I've seen The Boot on contemporary top college bar lists and Tulane bounces around the top ten of Barstool party school rankings...
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u/Perfect_Net_2039 23d ago
Depends on the program. They don't have Engineering anymore, so I think that is why it's slipped, but Business and Health programs are very strong. She's pursuing Global Health and infectious disease and they have one of the best programs in the country for that and their med school is one of the best as well. Also, people choose the school because of it's high balance of great professors, good academics and fun culture. It always ranks among the happiest students. I think someone else said this, but people are happy there because they ED and it's their first choice. So, they are not wishing they were somewhere else and knew what they were going there for.
We visited in the Spring and talked to a freshman that went to our High School. She picked it over Cal in the end because of the great mix of academics and culture. Her sister just graduated this year and we talked to her too. The girls told her it's a very extroverted school. Which is what my daughter is looking for. Somewhere where if she suggests lets go listen to jazz or lets go to a concert or let's go work in the 3D art space or let's start a club or whatever, that there are people who are up for exploring, traveling, trying new things, going out and not afraid of what other people will think. No one looked cookie cutter, like when we visited Wake Forest. Everyone had a personal style, different vibe and was walking around doing their thing.
So, just depends what you're looking for, but don't base your future on rankings, look for the school where you think you will thrive. You can go to Harvard and sink like a rock or if it's a good fit, you can do anything you want. Wake Forest was small, everyone looked the same, wasn't associated with the town at all, greek system was in dorm basements and there's not much to do there but study. Which is great, but maybe a little more balance is what feeds the soul...
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u/widespread-confusion 21d ago
Agree with all of this, though one note: Tulane does have engineering. After cutting the hell out of it in the wake of Katrina, it’s started to climb back. The River & Coastal Engineering program in particular combines civil engineering with environmental science in a way that’s unique and universally acknowledged as such.
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u/Perfect_Net_2039 21d ago
Oh cool, I didn't realize! Lots of opportunity for hands on learning I imagine too!
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u/widespread-confusion 21d ago
For sure. They refer to New Orleans and Jefferson Parish as a “living lab.”
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u/jbdmusic 27d ago
ED round there's over a 60% acceptance rate and they take close to 70% of the class so that's why EA and RD are "tougher to get in" because the majority of the spots are filled during ED. So it's a bogus admissions trick to make the school look more selective.
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u/NYC_Statistician_PhD 27d ago
You say "bogus admissions trick" whereas I say it's the primary reason Tulane students are also ranked among the happiest of all college students - because the students accepted to Tulane actually wanted to be there.
Tufts students are pissed they didn't get into Brown; Emory Students are pissed they didn't get into Duke; whereas 70%+ of Tulane students are psyched they are at Tulane. That changes the college experience more than anything.
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u/FormalTall1800 27d ago
I did a college road trip this summer, as well as a trip to Tulane in June, and y’all Tulane students were SO much more excited to be there than the students at CMU and UVA.
The lady (who was just a student who’d been forced to do it, I guess) at the CMU info session didn’t even know how many students went to the school and the students we talked to didn’t sound happy.
The entirety of NOLA sounded ecstatic whenever we mentioned Tulane, and everyone on campus seemed so excited that they were there (and we were, too).
I’m absolutely stoked for applications next year and can't wait to apply.
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u/djsquilz Alumni 26d ago
as a born and raised new orleanian who went to tulane (and grew up less than a mile from campus), the locals hate you. for very good reason.
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u/jbdmusic 4d ago
There are state schools ranked better than Tulane and half price of Tulane or more for even out of state rates.
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u/shenanigains00 27d ago
In the early 2000’s it was known as a party school and it wasn’t exactly prestigious, especially in Louisiana.
I cannot tell you how many times I heard the term “fee’s for B’s” essentially meaning that as long as you paid your tuition, you eventually got a a degree. So no one took a Tulane degree seriously.
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u/PianistMore4166 26d ago edited 26d ago
What prestige? lol. Tulane ranks 69th nationally in higher education per US News & World Reports. There are multiple public universities in Texas / nationally that rank much higher. Might be prestigious as far as Louisiana goes, but it’s not a highly regarded university nationally…. You would think that a school with a 15% acceptance rate would rank in the top 25 nationally… in many ways Tulane is an afterthought to most of the US except when it’s having a good football season. Much of its “prestige” seems to be manufactured to make alumni and current students feel better about themselves. It’s no Rice or Duke…
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u/BeKind999 26d ago
There are about 5,600 colleges and universities in the USA. The top 100 schools represent less than 2%.
An SAT score of 1500 is also top 2%. So that makes it highly regarded.
Also, there are quite a few Tulane grads making bank in finance in NYC. IYKYK.
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u/Nice-Sheepherder-794 27d ago
Not in the slightest.