I
spent one year at Tulane before transferring out. To be
honest, after meeting a lot of other transfers at my
current school I realized that I didn't have as bad
of an experience as I originally thought, however I did
realize that I was definitely misisng out. Academics: My classes
were probably my favorite thing about Tulane. My classes were
overall fairly small and I found the Poli Sci professors
to be very accessible. In addition, there aren't a lot
of core requirements so you have a lot of room
to take different classes. I found my classes overall to
be fairly easy. I worked hard but was able to
get all A's whereas at my current schoool I have
to work even harder to get B's. My only complaint
about academics is that there weren't many options to get
involved in things outside of the classroom. Research opportunities were
far and few between and I felt like exploring academics
outside of the classroom wasn't really encouraged.
Social Life: Coming
to Tulane, the city of New Orleans was definitely a
huge draw and definitely lived up to its hype. The
city has a strong culture, vibrant nightlife and is unlike
anywhere else in the US. If my current school could
be placed in NOLA it would be the perfect place.
Unfortunately, while New Orleans offered a great social scene, Tulane
did not. While you will never be unable to find
a party to go to, the Tulane social scene pretty
much consists of drunken frat parties and hot,sweaty bars which
makes it pretty difficult to actually meet people. It seemed
like all the conversation always revolved around how drunk people
were the night before or how much they were planning
on drinking that night. While the party lifestyle is fun
for the first month or two it definitely gets old
fast.
The People: I met a lot of great
people at Tulane and still keep in touch with a
lot of them. However, these down to earth, intelligent, and
open-minded people can be hard to find as I often
felt overwhelmed by the jock frat stars and jappy sorority
girls who were more concerned about what they were wearing
for their upcoming mixer than about going to class. The
people were probably the most frustrating and disappointing part about
Tulane for me. I found few people actually cared about
their academics besides just figuring out how to work the
system to get an A and there was little social
activism on campus. Most students (though not all) were very
apathetic and unaware of the world around them which was
really hard to deal with. Additionally, I found a lot
of the kids to be unfriendly and very superficial which
also got tiresome.
OVERALL: New Orleans is an awesome city.
If you're pre-med or business Tulane might be for you
as it seems like a good place for pre-professionals. Also
if you can handle the greek life you might also
want to look into Tulane. Butif you want to go
to a school full of friendly, intellectually-curious students I would
suggest looking elsewhere.