Tulane University
Responses from the Student Interview
From a student who identifies as Major: Finance
Minor: None
Student Self Identifies as: White Straight Male
Summary
I’m part of a fraternity and that’s about it.
Background
Gender Identity: Male
Race/Ethnicity: White
Sexual Orientation: Straight
First-Generation College Student: No
High School Experience: Public school in New Jersey with about 350 students per class. There was a culture of going to college.
Major: Finance
Minor: None
Extracurricular Activities: I’m part of a fraternity and that’s about it.
Academic Experience
Can you describe your weekly coursework for your major?
It’s a lot of problem sets online. For some classes, we have weekly online quizzes. It’s a lot of work online and what isn’t online we email to the teacher.
What are your major assignments for your major?
There are usually about 3 tests during the semester, some classes have finals.
Is there anything the Finance department does especially well or poorly?
I really like the professors. The finance professors are very into what they teach. I have friends in different majors who say that their professors are horrendous, so I’m placed to be in a department where the professors are really passionate about what they teach.
How would you describe the learning environment? Is it collaborative or competitive?
I would say it’s collaborative, but it gets competitive. There are a lot of group projects and you have peer grading at the end where you rate each person out of 10 and you only have a certain amount of points to give, so you can’t give 10’s to each person. I don’t like that they do that. The business school also has a maximum GPA so I’ve had classes where I’ve had an A curved down to a B+.
What has been your favorite class in your major?
Financial Management, both advanced and regular. It’s basically corporate finance. I loved those classes, I had a great teacher.
What has been your least favorite class in your major?
Business Statistics was an absolute nightmare. It’s a business school requirement.
Are you happy with your major choice?
Yeah, I’m really happy.
Reasons to Attend
1) Tulane is on the rise. Your degree is going to be worth so much more later. I would say it’s a great investment.
2) It’s a great time if you can handle the nightlife. I don’t know if I’d send my kid here [laughs].
3) Chances are, you’re never going to get to come back to New Orleans and live here. You may come for a bachelor party or something, but you won’t be able to spend that much time in a place like this.
Reasons Not to Attend
1) If you don’t like partying or drinking culture I would not suggest coming here.
2) If you get homesick easily don’t come. I struggled with that because I was so far away from home and wished I could drive to see my parents like my friends in the Northeast could.
Other than that, I can’t think of anything.
Around Campus
Where have you lived on campus?
Freshman: I had a random roommate in Monroe Hall. It was awesome and really made my freshman year. I recommend getting into Sharpe or Monroe, they’re the social dorms. Monroe is a really social dorm, like every night someone’s drinking and you get really close with your floor.
Sophomore: I got off campus my sophomore year. They made an exception for me because I can’t live in dorms. I got out of the dorms because it’s so awful. I lived in my fraternity house first semester and the moved off campus my second semester.
Junior/Senior: Off-campus in a house.
Can you describe the level of safety you’ve experienced on and around campus?
Being a guy is definitely different. I wouldn’t feel safe walking around if I was a girl at certain times of the night. I’ve never had an issue, though.
What is your favorite off-campus restaurant?
If you want a nice place, GW Fins. If you want a not expensive place, Crabby Jack’s has awesome po’ boys.
What is your favorite place to get away from campus?
The Fly. It’s a nice grassy stretch that looks over the Mississippi River. It’s nice to go hang out on Fridays.
Social Opportunities
What kind of weekend activities or nightlife do you like to participate in?
I don’t really go out just for the sake of going out if I don’t have a plan. I either go to a date party with my frat or at a sorority, otherwise I don’t just go out to go out.
What’s the impact of Greek life on nightlife?
It’s huge, especially now that The Palms is closed, which was one of the big bars people would go to. When that closed it’s had a bigger impact because it made it so The Boot [an on-campus bar] was always packed, so people don’t want to go as much. Fraternities have a huge impact on the social scene, like every night at least one, usually more, are having an event on the weekend.
What nights of the week do you regularly go out?
Freshman year I went out Wednesday through Saturday. Now, it’s Fridays and Saturdays.
Can you describe a typical night freshman year?
When we weren’t pledging, we were rushing all the fraternities and that was a very cool time because everyone wants to spoil you basically and give you a bunch of free stuff [to get you to want to join their fraternity]. You’d get invited to lots of different fraternity stuff and you always had stuff to do. It was detrimental to my grades though because I felt I had to go to that stuff. Plus, when you’re a freshman everything’s so new, so just being at The Boot was cool so we’d usually start there.
Do freshman boys have trouble getting into parties?
No, not at all. If you’re in a fraternity you hang out with them, and when you’re rushing everyone wants to give you a shot because everyone wants to fill out their pledge class. When you get to know older guys, they’ll let you know about events and give you wristbands for you and your friends.
How happy are you with the weekend options at Tulane? If you could change anything, what would you change?
I wish The Palms would come back. But, besides that, it’s pretty awesome. I have friends that go to schools in the Northeast and they are always amazed at an average night here.
Campus Culture
How did you meet your closest friends?
Living in Monroe or rushing and pledging
What is the impact of Greek life on social life?
You hang out with the guys in your fraternity, and you don’t stray much. Some fraternities get along with each other more than others, like I hang out with a bunch of guys from another fraternity. But, you usually stick with the guys you pledge with.
To what extent do you feel people of different races and sexual orientations mix socially?
I know that some fraternities on campus have guys of different sexual orientations. I don’t think there are any issues, I have a bunch of gay friends here. That’s also a nice part of being in New Orleans, people are pretty liberal here.
How would you describe the student body?
It’s a pretty fun-loving crowd. There are a lot of people here that value partying over academics, which is fine if you know how to balance it, but you have a lot of people that leave here after the first semester with drug problems or just because they can’t handle it. Being able to balance the work and nightlife is something that every person who graduates here has in common.
Careers
Has the alumni network helped you find internships or jobs?
Yeah, actually I just signed my internship offer two weeks ago. I reached out to one of my professors after having a bunch of interviews in New York City with big banks and a lot of super days and things like that and nothing worked out. I got so far in the interview process it felt like I had slipped through the cracks.
I reached out to this professor from this class called Burkenroads, which is this class that you have to apply for where you work alongside a small-cap company and do equity research for them and at the end of the year, you publish this report. It’s the most work I’ve ever done in a class. But I reached out to the professor thinking he would have some connections because he is one of the most revered professors at the school and he actually put me in contact with I think 14 different people in New Orleans. I had phone calls with 6 or 7 of them and one of the guys really hit it off with me, he was pledge brothers with my friend’s dad so we talked about that. He emailed a bunch of people and I got an email from somebody saying they were interested. I had three interviews and I signed with them two weeks ago.
How helpful has the career office been?
That’s something that Tulane is trying to change. The faculty advisors, all the people that help you with your major classes, are very good. But the career center is not very helpful at all. People don’t really reach out to a lot of places [through it], not a lot of places come to visit the campus to interview people here compared to my friends’ schools of similar size. That’s something they need to work on.