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Undergraduate Admissions Uncensored

Tulane’s acceptance rate is 13%. Only 34% are male.

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Tulane’s Gibson Hall

Tulane University has offered admission to roughly 4,000 students for its Class of 2027. The New Orleans-based university expects roughly 1,850 students to begin as freshmen in August. All decisions have now been released. Among applications submitted, only 13% were admitted.

“To save room for more first-generation college students and students who do not feel comfortable making a binding commitment so early, we reduced our Early Decision offers of admission this year and increased Early Action and Regular Decision offers.” shared Shawn Abbott, Tulane’s Vice President for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admission.

While a 13% acceptance rate certainly sounds extreme, if one digs into the numbers, other stats are may be even more astonishing. For instance, of those accepted, roughly 34% reported their legal sex as male (actually up from 32% last year) and roughly 66% reported their legal sex as female. Nearly 5% identified as trans or non-binary.

Overall, fewer than 800 first-year applicants were offered admission via Early Decision and fewer than 400 via Early Decision II, while nearly 2,400 were offered admission via Early Action and over 400 via Regular Decision. This means Tulane extended roughly 400 additional non-binding offers of admission this year compared to the 2021-2022 admissions cycle.

Roughly 250 additional students were admitted for Spring 2024 with the opportunity to spend their first semester in Barcelona, London, Paris, or Rome.

As it relates to academic credentials, those students admitted on average had a 3.8 average GPA (up from 3.73 last year), a 1473 on the SAT, and/or nearly a 33 on the ACT.  Roughly 50% were admitted without test scores (up from 46% last year). At high schools that provided Tulane with class rank, more than 64% rank in the top 10% of their graduating class (up from 60%).

Tulane is also reporting that 41% of those accepted identify as students of color (up from 38% last year). An additional 11% are foreign nationals (up from 6% last year), not including U.S. citizens schooled abroad, 10% will be the first generation in their families to graduate from college (up from 7% last year), 11% are from Louisiana (up from 9% last year), and 7% are from New Orleans (up from 5%).

Roughly 4,000 students were offered a space on Tulane’s wait list, and Tulane expects that at least half of those 4,000 will see their interest in Tulane wane quickly and significantly as they rightfully get excited about alternate options. By May 1, Tulane predicts fewer than 2,000 students will be holding a space on its waitlist, and it is premature to predict how many will be admitted. In recent years, the number of students Tulane has been able to admit from its waitlist has ranged from zero to fifty.

Tulane Early Decision Applicants Notified of Decisions on December 1

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Exciting news just in from Tulane.

The Tulane admissions team is a bit ahead of schedule with reviewing applications and as a result Tulane Early Decision 1 notifications will go out tomorrow, December 1, at 4:00 p.m. Central (New Orleans) Time. Updates will be posted to students’ Green Wave Portal, and physical letters are also on their way.

There is also a bit of a change in what type of decisions students may receive: some ED applicants will be deferred and released from their ED Agreement. In recent years Tulane has focused on simply accepting or rejecting ED applicants. Deferred applicants will be read again in the regular round before getting a final decision in Spring 2023. Such students can also be considered for Tulane’s Spring Scholar cohort. There will be a form on the Green Wave Portal on which a deferred ED student can indicate an interest in the Spring Scholar program.

In past years, Tulane would admit the vast majority of its Spring Scholars at this time. This year, Tulane is admitting a smaller group for now and will reassess when it sees the pool of deferred ED and EA students in the spring. Deferred ED students cannot switch to Tulane’s ED 2 plan.

Meanwhile, Early Action applicants will hear back from Tulane no later than January 15, but Tulane is trying to notify these students of their decisions earlier than scheduled as well.

Tulane Early Action Admit Rate Plummets to 10%

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Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s former director of undergraduate admission, may be gone, but elements of his transparent approach live on as Tulane has recently shared some interesting data points relating to its Early Decision and Early Action admits for its undergraduate Class of 2026.

Decisions for Tulane Early Decision applicants were released on November 22 and decisions for Early Action applicants will be released on Monday, December 20 at 5:00 p.m. EST. According to Owen Knight, Tulane’s Director of Admission Engagement, the university expects between fifty-five and fifty-eight percent of next year’s freshman class to be comprised of Early Decision students. Due to the fact that Tulane over-enrolled last year and saw a twenty-five percent increase in the percentage of students accepting the offer of admission over the previous year, Tulane will be admitting a jaw-dropping 1,650 fewer Early Action (EA) applicants this year. This will speed up a trend of EA at Tulane becoming hyper-selective, especially relative to how the admissions plan used to be at Tulane prior to Tulane bringing back ED a few years ago.

As a result, Tulane anticipates marginally more offers of admission for deferred students and Regular Decision applicants than in the past. The overall admission rate for Early Action applicants is just ten percent, which is half the EA admission rate in 2017.

Overall, Tulane is planning for its Class of 2026 freshman class to be roughly 1,750 students.

Forty-six percent of Tulane’s Early Action admitted students for the Class of 2026 identify as BIPOC, which is a 70% increase, over twenty-seven percent of students who identified as such in 2017.

Knight also notes that Early Decision II is currently available through January 12 for students who are starting a new application for admission or for students who have already applied Early Action. Students who have already applied may switch to EDII via their Green Wave portals.

 

 

 

Tulane Shares Class of 2024 Early Decision and Early Action Stats

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Tulane University has shared news about its Class of 2024 applicants who applied Early Decision and Early Action.

Tulane received 27% more Early Decision applicants this cycle compared to last cycle, according to Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s Director of Admission.

“For an estimated freshman class of around 1,875 students, we admitted 631 students under our Early Decision I plan, for slightly over one-third of the incoming class.  Of our ED group 30% were students of color or international.” added Schiffman. That latter statistic is a thirty percent increase since 2016.

Meanwhile, Tulane also admitted 3,725 students under its non-binding Early Action round of admission.

To put the most recent numbers in greater context, Schiffman shared that in, “2017, the percentage of students who accepted Tulane’s offer of admission (the yield rate) was 25.4%. Because this percentage increased to 34.0% by 2019, we have not been able to offer admission to as many students as we have in the past. Over these same years, the admission rate decreased from 21.2% to 12.87%. The average number of enrolled students in the freshman class over the past five years was 1,875, and we are planning for a class of a similar size this year.”

When sharing information about Tulane’s Early Decision stats for the latest admissions cycle Schiffman did not differentiate between Tulane’s Early Decision I (EDI) and Early Decision II (EDII) numbers. While Tulane has offered EDII of late, it doesn’t regularly publicize EDII as an application option until late in any given calendar year.

If you got into Tulane, well done! Have you bought some Tulane swag yet?

In no rush, Case Western and Tulane keep some Early applicants in suspense

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Slow and steady wins the race?

Once upon a time, refined Early Decision and Early Action etiquette dictated that by December 15 colleges would inform such applicants of their admission, deferral, or rejection. My how times have changed!

While the likes of Penn, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Wash U., and Yale got on with it last week, some big names are keeping their powder dry to seemingly the last moment. University of Michigan and Boston College are notorious in recent years for December 18 or later admissions notifications to their Early Action applicants; yet, this year, two more colleges seem to believe the maxim that they should, “save the best for last.”

The two notable stragglers this December are Case Western Reserve University and Tulane University.

In Case’s case, Robert R. McCullough, the university’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, announced Monday, “We expect to send applicants an email providing a link to the secure webpage with their admission status on Wednesday, Dec. 19. We will begin sending these email notifications around 8 p.m. EST. Students who have applied for financial aid will also be able to see their financial aid package online at that time.” Just two years ago Case’s Early Action notifications came out a whole week earlier in December. That was before Case Western introduced Early Decision I and II into the mix and with it gone are the days of earlier Early notifications.

UPDATE 12/19/18 @ 7:20 EST: McCullough needs more time! On December 19 in the evening he announced, “Unfortunately, we find that we need a little more time to be absolutely sure applicants’ decisions, scholarships and financial aid packages are correct. We are therefore rescheduling decision release for Early Action and Early Decision admission until 8 p.m. Eastern Thursday, December 20.” He also expressed “regret” for holding students in suspense for another day but wanted to ensure the decisions they receive are accurate.”

Tulane will let Early Action applicants to the New Orleans university know of their admissions decisions on Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s Director of Admission shared, “I think it is also worth mentioning that Tulane saw a 14% increase in applications this year. Bottom line, we could fill up multiple freshman classes with students who are academically qualified to attend Tulane. We could fill up multiple freshman classes just with students who would be great fits here and genuinely want to be at Tulane. The problem is we can’t admit all of them.”

To Shiffman’s credit – and Tulane’s – the university notified its Early Decision applicants regarding their admissions decisions refreshingly fast. Tulane’s ED admission letters left Tulane’s Office of Admission on November 16 and were made available online at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 19. Talk about a nice Thanksgiving present! More universities should try to turn around admissions decisions in fewer than three weeks (Tulane’s Early Decision application deadline was November 1)!

Tulane, back in the day, released its Early Action notifications in November, but that was before they got into the ED I and ED II business recently.

So, seniors dreaming of a Case Western or Tulane acceptance letter this Christmas, hold on just a bit longer.