The Tulane University of Louisiana

Date: Apr 25 2012
Major: Political Science (This Major's Salary over time)
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.