Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana is a school with purpose in a city that loves a good party. Tulane is New Orleans, and New Orleans is Tulane. The two are intimately linked, and Tulane is deeply informed by the culture, community, arts, and excitement of New Orleans. On campus, around 8,500 undergraduate students pursue over 75 majors and minors. The flexible curriculum makes it easy to double or even triple-major, and students are encouraged to explore and discover throughout their tenure on campus.
Something really integral to Tulane is service, and any student considering submitting an application to Tulane needs to understand what we mean. Tulane is extremely service and community-oriented, and they care deeply about maintaining a community that is committed to giving back. This plays into their admissions process as they seek to admit not only top students, but top students who care deeply about helping those around them. The Community Action Council of Tulane University Students (CACTUS), founded in 1966, is “one of the oldest continually operating student-run volunteer groups in the nation.”
The combination of top-notch academics, community-focus, and New Orleans has resulted in Tulane having some of the happiest students in the country. It’s not surprising, then, that high school students are working hard for a spot in the student body. The acceptance rate for the class of 2028 was only 13%.
In this post, we’ll help you plan your summers with Tulane in mind. Read on to learn what you need to do to use your summers to stand out when you apply.
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What does Tulane want to see from your summer?
Tulane is a top college with a twist. Their emphasis on service and community is really important to keep in mind when planning your summers, so you’ll see below that a community-oriented perspective plays a role in nearly everything we recommend for your summer plans.
Emphasize Your Interests
Tulane wants to see you explore your passions beyond academics during the summer, and they especially like when that connects to contributing to your community in some way (and that doesn’t just include volunteering. An expectation of serving the community you live in is core to the identity of Tulane (all new students take the TIDES seminar to learn about living and learning in New Orleans), so they want to see that you share this belief when it comes to your own hometown. They also love the arts, and like to see students engage with arts and culture even if they don’t identify as artists.
So, how do you do all of this? There are three options we encourage students to consider when making their summer plans.
Summer Job: Find one, or make one. Start your own small business, like a landscaping service or sell a product you make at farmers markets or craft fairs, and you’ll align yourself with Tulane’s entrepreneurial streak. They say that “our focus on entrepreneurship and innovation is bringing new ideas and products to market.” Before you let your imagination completely run free, though, remember that it is better to do something small and see it through (hey, you could even create a local lemonade stand empire), than to come up with a big idea but not get it off the ground. They want to see real action, not simply hypothetical day-dreaming.
Volunteer Position: Tulane loves when students find a long-term volunteer position with a nonprofit aligned with one or more of their passions. All students at Tulane are required to participate in “community engagement,” what they call volunteering with a hyper-local focus. Ideally, they’d like to see you doing the same before you even get on campus. Volunteering locally, rather than traveling to somewhere else to volunteer, shows that you have the same community mindset and values as Tulane. It allows your role to be long-term, and to have clear impact on where you love and those around you. It’s important to note that doing something surface-level when it comes to volunteering is worse (for Tulane) than doing no volunteering at all, because if you do something that seems rote or performative, they’ll flag it as inauthentic.
Internship: Finding an internship is the happy-medium of this list. It isn’t a job, but it isn’t a volunteer position — it’s a bit of both! Working under someone in the profession you’re interested in pursuing, whether at an office, a lab, or in the field can make a huge difference for your application to Tulane.
But you don’t have to do all three — and most certainly not all in the same summer.
Augment Your Academics
In addition to emphasizing your interests, you need to spend time during the summer augmenting your academics through additional courses, research, or other academic pursuits that will show up on your transcript or resume.
Our top recommendation for this is to take a course or two for-credit in-person at a local university or community college, or to do a program like Concordia Language Villages if you are a high achiever in foreign languages. Parallel to this, though, is this not-so-little thing called the Tulane Pre-College Programs.
We are generally hesitant to suggest residential summer programs hosted by colleges because they are typically expensive (unless you get a scholarship) and they rarely make a significant difference for your chances of admission. However, if Tulane is your first choice you should seriously consider doing the Tulane Pre-College Program for one reason in particular: they take demonstrated interest into account when considering your application. There are few ways of demonstrating interest better than doing the summer program. In the Tulane summer program, you’ll spend a few weeks as a college student pursuing for-credit or non-credit courses, but we advise the for-credit ones as they show off your chops best. These courses span a wide range of fields, including architecture and design, biology and healthcare, and computer science, and only make sense if a course aligns closely with your area of academic interest.
Have Fun, But Not Too Much
The Tulane community knows how to have a good time, and they want to welcome in people who also enjoy celebration and who approach life with excitement. That said, you need to stay out of trouble. Getting into trouble is a quick way to throw ice water on your application — and there’s no need to do that.
If you’re considering making Tulane your top choice, remember that they are looking not just for students who are strong in the classroom, but who are strong leaders in their community, too. Finding ways during the summer to have fun while also giving back will help your application stand out.
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