To fans of the movie “22 Jump Street” or Fox’s “Scream Queens,” Tulane University‘s stately buildings and trees and well-manicured lawns might look familiar. Scenes from several popular shows and movies have been shot on the New Orleans campus.
The surrounding Uptown area offers plenty to do; students can walk or catch a streetcar to the restaurants and bars on Maple, Oak, Magazine and Barrett streets. Across from the Tulane entrance, Audubon Park offers a jogging trail, golf and tennis; a bit farther on, along the Mississippi River, the Audubon Zoo is both an attraction and a source of research internships.
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About 85 percent of Tulane’s 6,500-plus undergraduates are from out-of-state, but students say the school does a great job of helping them make New Orleans home. First, freshman take a one-credit seminar that connects them with a small group of peers while preparing them for the academic rigors of college and exploring life in the city.
Students can choose from more than 70 options, from songwriting to architecture. Will Dickson, a junior Latin major from Memphis who is in a special premed program giving him early acceptance into Tulane’s medical school, notes that his “favorite thing” about the course was that “you get to make a friend on campus who isn’t a student.” You “really, really get to know your professor.”
Second, Tulane requires two public service experiences to graduate, which often involve working with people in the city. One is a course that embeds service in the curriculum, and the second can be filled by any of more than 150 options from internships and service-focused study-abroad programs to faculty-sponsored research projects.
Someone in a sociology of education class could tutor students at a school in New Orleans, for example. Those studying abroad in India might help Tibetan refugees learn English.
“You feel way more involved and like a piece of you is in New Orleans,” says Richard Carthon, a 2016 graduate from Shreveport, Louisiana, who majored in legal studies in business and business management. To fulfill his second requirement, Carthon interned with a local nonprofit that feeds the homeless and provides cleaning services and transportation to middle-aged and elderly people with vision problems. He used his training to create a business plan for the organization and help secure funding.
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Students can select their major from more than 70 offerings in any of Tulane’s five undergraduate schools: architecture, business, liberal arts, public health and tropical medicine, or science and engineering. While many universities require separate admission to their business or architecture schools, say, that is not true here.
Traditions are a big part of the Tulane experience, especially the ones that bring the spirit of New Orleans onto campus. Each spring, 20,000 pounds of free crawfish, plus music, star at the student-run Crawfest festival. And after Mardi Gras, students add their colorful Mardi Gras beads to the huge oak tree behind the administration building for good luck.
Tulane has over 200 student-run clubs and organizations, which include performance groups, Greek organizations, academic and service groups as well as a variety of sports clubs and intramural offerings. The 16 Division 1 varsity teams include baseball, basketball and tennis.
This is “a work hard, play hard school,” says Lena Franklin, a 2016 grad from Boca Raton, Florida, who majored in music composition and business management. The “person you see at the bar is the same person that you see at the library.”
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This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2017” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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Deep South College Road Trip: Tulane University originally appeared on usnews.com
