Tulane University of Louisiana Top Questions

I'm having a very unique college experience academically compared to the rest of the Tulane community. As a Gender and Sexuality Studies and English major I have yet to be in a class bigger than 25 people. I'm a great example of how students can get a liberal arts education at Tulane. I feel like I have the best of both worlds. Small classes and great professors but I also have the ability as an undergraduate to do research since Tulane has many graduate studies programs. I'm getting a great education here but I think it's hard for people that are less focused and unsure of what they're passionate about. It's very easy to have all 100 person lectures freshman year if you aren't careful in choosing classes. I advise students to not try and complete all their requirements straight away (or choose a major), and instead take classes they are interested in with good professors.

Tulane's courses are unlike any I have ever seen. There is something for everyone's interests. Most of the class sizes are pretty small, with the largest usually being the chemistry and biology classes. Because of the smaller class sizes and the ability have in-depth conversations, you are able to build a relationship with your professors and classmates, which can be very beneficial in the future. Professors are always available via email or office hours. Because of the rigorous courses, students can be found studying every day of the week in the library or in the LBC, but that doesn't mean they don't let loose and have fun. It's not uncommon to hear students talking about class work or what they learned over Facebook or in person. I have noticed, though, that sometimes students don't talk a lot in class.

I really like the party culture at this school. The weather is pretty good when it isn't raining, and the classes are usually fine, but that's all to be expected. I presume it's mostly students reading this and you get plenty of that nonsense from the tour (I'm bitter. I lost out on being a tour guide due to my inability to walk backwards in sandals). There are two major party streets at Tulane. Broadway, and Maple. Broadway is the frat-row if you will, and as a Freshman you will likely spend much time there because hey, free booze! About four blocks down Broadway one will reach Maple. Maple holds about seven bars, four of which you will ever step foot in. These bars all are very college with loud, bad music, and cheap yet poorly made drinks. If you crave the college experience, it's hard to beat finding yourself in a trashy dive- bar at 2 AM singing along to Journey with your best friends. There's also the Boot...I'll let you figure that one out. The reason the party scene is so nice is that it's close, yet isolated. I constantly hear complaints from friends at other schools that on Friday Nights it can be impossible to study with all the music and partying going on around them. That doesn't happen at Tulane. Because the bars and parties are always so close, there's no need or want to have parties in the dorms. Sure, as a freshmen you will still have the occasional ****-show in the dorms, but rarely enough that it still stays fun. When you really need to study however, there are plenty of quiet safe havens where there will be no temptation to break focus. See, what I did there? I just justified the party scene in New Orleans. --- On the complaint scale there are a few. First, no one cares about anything here. A couple years ago a highly controversial speaker came to visit. He was a former leader of Isreal, and as a result a small Palestinian group took up protest outside the speaking hall. Here's the thing, it's not that people were surprised that they were protesting him, we were surprised that there were protesters at all. Coming from Berkley California, this change in opinion absolutely shocked me. If protest rallies, and Occupy movements sound fun to you, this probably isn't your school. Next, the sports are pretty bad. I write for the sports section of the Tulane newspaper, "The Hullabaloo" and it can be a bummer writing about our seventh football loss in a row. The football team is bad, and even worse, they play in the Super dome downtown. Sometimes under a thousand people show up to "fill" a 80,000 seat building. Even worse is when good schools come to crush us, their away fans show up in droves to party in New Orleans and out-fan us by 3 to 1 or worse. To be fair, the men's baseball team is competitive, and some of our women's programs like tennis, golf, and running are very competitive. Even as a bad D1 program, we are still D1. Lastly, the food situation is pretty bad. There's a dining hall called Bruff that you will come to know quite well. There's also a food court which has the basics - Panda, Quiznos, Bagels, ECT... That's a lot better but as a freshmen you will only be given 250 bucks for that food which runs out quick. I'll put it this way, as a Junior I changed my food package to have 750 food-court bucks...I'm out.

Some degrees and classes are great. Business, Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Public Health, Latin American Studies, and most sciences are generally very good, with departments that hold deserved great reputations. Many Liberal Arts degrees are disappointing and seemingly forgotten about by the school. Some departments are so bad that they are almost laughable, which is usually due to a lack of funding from the university. The university's administration is very cheap and refuses to give professors tenure, so you get a consistent cycle of adjunct professors in and out. The university seems to spend a ton of money on the degrees that give Tulane its 'prestigious' reputation, and it in general pays off. For being such a small university, there is an excellent diversity of course offerings, including some really random but interesting classes, and lots of Louisiana/Louisiana studies. Once again, depending largely on your department, you can end up with some amazing professors, but terrible ones are far too prevalent in lower-level classes. Some of my most difficult classes were the 101 intro classes because they were taught largely by grad students who didn't have a clue what they were doing. In truth, once you stick it out through quite a few large and sometimes very poorly taught lecture classes, there is usually an abundance of small 10-12 person courses in really interesting topics. As far as how challenging it is, I've been wholly unimpressed. I've found that in order to get above a B, all you really need to do is hand things in on time and show up to classes. I have only really been challenged academically in two or three classes, which are the ones I really enjoyed. So it depends on what you're looking for; if you want to have a good time, get decent grades, and just slide your way into a degree, this place is great. But if you're looking for more out of your time in college, it's all on you to work for it. I'm a double major in English & International Development, with minors in Spanish and Psychology. English department has been pretty good, but International Development is not at all worth studying here. It's a really cool subject, but Tulane's course is disorganized and just really bad. I really do regret my degree choices, because as I get closer to graduating, I realize how poorly Tulane has prepared me for the job market. I would recommend avoiding Liberal Arts degrees, especially languages, especially if you value having windows or simple technologies like a projector in your classroom.

Overall, the academics at Tulane are great. Disregarding the large lecture classes, which are generally intro level science classes, all the classes are small. This is definitely a plus because you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, especially since in most of the liberal arts classes, participation is strongly encouraged if not required. Another good thing about small classes is that professors know your name. You might think that they're reading off a sheet every time they call on you in class, but my Calc III professor from first semester freshman year still says hi to me by name when we walk past each other on the quad. Students are more than welcome to visit their professors during office hours , and a lot of the time, professors will set up more times to meet if the student needs extra help or cannot make the office hours. Most of the professors are very accessible, and some of them are willing to invite you and a few other students to their house for dinners or religious celebrations or just to watch the game. What I think I like the most about the academics at Tulane though, is that on any given day, you can walk through the quad or the cafeteria and hear students is deep discussion about one of their classes. I know I've had many conversations with friends about things I learn in class, and the best feeling is when you are able to start applying things from one class to another.

Overall, the academics at Tulane are great. Disregarding the large lecture classes, which are generally intro level science classes, all the classes are small. This is definitely a plus because you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, especially since in most of the liberal arts classes, participation is strongly encouraged if not required. Another good thing about small classes is that professors know your name. You might think that they're reading off a sheet every time they call on you in class, but my Calc III professor from first semester freshman year still says hi to me by name when we walk past each other on the quad. Students are more than welcome to visit their professors during office hours , and a lot of the time, professors will set up more times to meet if the student needs extra help or cannot make the office hours. Most of the professors are very accessible, and some of them are willing to invite you and a few other students to their house for dinners or religious celebrations or just to watch the game. What I think I like the most about the academics at Tulane though, is that on any given day, you can walk through the quad or the cafeteria and hear students is deep discussion about one of their classes. I know I've had many conversations with friends about things I learn in class, and the best feeling is when you are able to start applying things from one class to another.

Overall, the academics at Tulane are great. Disregarding the large lecture classes, which are generally intro level science classes, all the classes are small. This is definitely a plus because you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, especially since in most of the liberal arts classes, participation is strongly encouraged if not required. Another good thing about small classes is that professors know your name. You might think that they're reading off a sheet every time they call on you in class, but my Calc III professor from first semester freshman year still says hi to me by name when we walk past each other on the quad. Students are more than welcome to visit their professors during office hours , and a lot of the time, professors will set up more times to meet if the student needs extra help or cannot make the office hours. Most of the professors are very accessible, and some of them are willing to invite you and a few other students to their house for dinners or religious celebrations or just to watch the game. What I think I like the most about the academics at Tulane though, is that on any given day, you can walk through the quad or the cafeteria and hear students is deep discussion about one of their classes. I know I've had many conversations with friends about things I learn in class, and the best feeling is when you are able to start applying things from one class to another.

Overall, the academics at Tulane are great. Disregarding the large lecture classes, which are generally intro level science classes, all the classes are small. This is definitely a plus because you have the opportunity to make your voice heard, especially since in most of the liberal arts classes, participation is strongly encouraged if not required. Another good thing about small classes is that professors know your name. You might think that they're reading off a sheet every time they call on you in class, but my Calc III professor from first semester freshman year still says hi to me by name when we walk past each other on the quad. Students are more than welcome to visit their professors during office hours , and a lot of the time, professors will set up more times to meet if the student needs extra help or cannot make the office hours. Most of the professors are very accessible, and some of them are willing to invite you and a few other students to their house for dinners or religious celebrations or just to watch the game.

Some degrees and classes are great. Business, Pre-Law, Pre-Med, Public Health, Latin American Studies, and most sciences are generally very good, with departments that hold deserved great reputations. Many Liberal Arts degrees are disappointing and seemingly forgotten about by the school. Some departments are so bad that they are almost laughable, which is usually due to a lack of funding from the university. The university's administration is very cheap and refuses to give professors tenure, so you get a consistent cycle of adjunct professors in and out. The university seems to spend a ton of money on the degrees that give Tulane its 'prestigious' reputation, and it in general pays off. For being such a small university, there is an excellent diversity of course offerings, including some really random but interesting classes, and lots of Louisiana/Louisiana studies. Once again, depending largely on your department, you can end up with some amazing professors, but terrible ones are far too prevalent in lower-level classes. Some of my most difficult classes were the 101 intro classes because they were taught largely by grad students who didn't have a clue what they were doing. In truth, once you stick it out through quite a few large and sometimes very poorly taught lecture classes, there is usually an abundance of small 10-12 person courses in really interesting topics. As far as how challenging it is, I've been wholly unimpressed. I've found that in order to get above a B, all you really need to do is hand things in on time and show up to classes. I have only really been challenged academically in two or three classes, which are the ones I really enjoyed. So it depends on what you're looking for; if you want to have a good time, get decent grades, and just slide your way into a degree, this place is great. But if you're looking for more out of your time in college, it's all on you to work for it.

Classes usually meet every other day. Beginner language classes might meet 4 or 5 times a week while writing workshops in the English department meet for 3 hours once a week. I am enrolled in 6 classes (or 18 credits) and 5 of my 6 professors know my name. The one professor who doesn't lectures a psychology 101 course with about 100 students. In 3 years, this is the biggest class I've been in and the only time a professor hasn't known my name. Generally classes have between 15-25 pupils. However, smaller classes are available. Last year I took a course with only 6 other students. Every student is assigned an advisor and once the student chooses a major, he or she is assigned a new advisor in that specific department. Courses are both manageable and competitive. Most students come out of classes they are interested in with As or Bs. Discussion about class topics is very common outside the classroom but only by certain people. Upperclassmen have a greater interest in discussing the outside world because their entry into it is imminent. Politics and international issues in the news are popular topics (though local sports seems to take the cake) to discuss. This may also have to do with most upperclassmen living off campus and thus not being entirely consumed within the "Tulane Bubble." The best courses I've taken are within the Sociology, English, Psychology and Art departments. Sociology and English courses rely heavily on class participation while psychology is just fascinating to learn about. The art professors insist you call them by their first names and the environment is totally conducive to creative thought. The Pre-Requisites are relatively dull but after you knock them out, you have literally thousands of courses to choose from, one of which is glass-blowing. This is the class everyone should take before they graduate. Sometimes I like to sit in the studio during the winter and just watch firey balls of magma go in and out of the oven. One time I was there and a boy made me a glass rose right in front of my eyes! Needless to say, studios are always open and those who partake in the making of art and those who watch are always welcome. It should be noted, few students share my interest in the arts. Most students are enrolled in the "B School" or the business school. It's these courses which are taught with the focus on future employment while all other schools teach for the sake of learning. Professors offer office hours 1, 2 or 3 times a week depending on their schedule. Students are not only welcome but encouraged to go during these times to discuss their progress in the course, express any concerns, or just to have a casual talk about life. Every professor I've had has encouraged students to come see them outside class and when I've gone, I've never regretted it afterward.