Save Tulane Engineering

[wckirby]

Went over to the admissions office and got some good news.

They've got 21,000 applications. Last year was a record at 18,166. They're actually still accepting a few applications, even though the deadline is passed. I believe most of the late apps are from students in Louisiana and Mississippi. A lot of the applications are incomplete (they have a little more than 15,000 completed), but the transcripts, etc. required to complete the applications are trickling in. Mail in New Orleans is horrible and they just need their stuff postmarked by certain dates.

Quality is still a question mark, but there's a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest it took a big hit. Dropping the essay requirement boosted the number of applications tremendously, but the essay has been a pretty big part of quality control process. Just by requiring an essay, you get rid of a lot of junk applications.

Another question mark is how many should they accept to ensure they reach their target freshman class size. Over the past 10 years, Tulane's standards have tightened and it's acceptance rate has dropped to 40% or so. They know that lingering fears about Katrina and the Renewal Plan will require them to accept more than they usually do, but nobody knows exactly how many. It's all a lot of guesswork. They were originally aiming for 1,400 students instead of 1,600 students. Accept too many students, and you don't have the facilities to deal with them. Accept to few, and Tulane will be starved for tuition money (especially with a lot of students transferring).

I have one personal observation about what I think will happen with the number. Cowen has said that even though Mechanical Engineering was in the black, other programs had higher margins, therefore handing those slots to say, philosophy (?) students helps the bottom line. BUT, Tulane is reducing the size of it's freshman class by about 200 students, the approximate size of the freshmen in the cut programs. How can you say you're reducing the size of your freshman class by that amount and claim Tulane will benefit from having students in areas with higher margins? Simple. Accept a lot of students, when tons show up, you declare your marketing a success and don't care what happens to the freshmen once they're here. Remember when they had a freshman class so large they had to convert the common rooms into housing? The Tuna-Can philosophy.

Next year's freshman class could make or break the entire university. Keep your fingers crossed, because Tulane is going to need it. That's no joke.
_________________
Clay Kirby
11th generation New Orleanian
4th generation Tulanian
Mechanical Engineering Class of '06

[perturbed1]

You won't know anything about margins based on enrollment unless you know what the discount rate turns out to be. I believe it was projected at 30% but there is anecdotal evidence out there based on boards I have been to that both the size and number of merit scholarships are up.

I think the crucial number that admissions will be aiming for is percentage above 700 on verbal or math SAT. I think they will work very hard at keeping that number the same even if the average score drops. My guess is there is almost no bottom either if you can pay full freight. I haven't heard of anyone being rejected or waitlisted. Will be interesting to see.

Those 6,000 incomplete applications are an interesting number too. I don't know that there is much policing on how schools report number of applications and suspect that when it comes to the CDS Tulane will report all 21,000.