TULANE ASW 2012 Forum

[littleredlaw]

Is anyone planning to attend the Tulane Admitted Students Weekends this spring? I am most likely heading there for the March 2-3 weekend, but was wondering who else might be going?

[mattviphky]

it would be presumptuous of me to commit this early, so ill wait until i get an acceptance

[sdphill]

I just want to preface this by saying that this is MY OPINION, which everyone is entitled to. If you have any questions, you can definitely post it in this forum and I will answer it HONESTLY from what I REMEMBER. If you're not comfortable with that, you can always shoot me a PM.

Also, I have not edited it for corrections yet. I just wanted to post it so everyone can know how it was. I will edit it for grammar and other mistakes later.

Friday, March 2, 2012

The first day of Tulane Admitted Student Weekend began with a welcome from Dean Mayer and Dean Krinsky. They both seemed very nice. I would tell you the substance of Dean Mayer’s speech, but I honestly zoned out during most of it. H

Afterwards, the prospective students were divided into three different Constitutional Law I classes. I took it with Professor Metzger and she was going over Clinton v. City of New York. She was interesting and very engaging. She did use the Socratic Method by cold calling on a few people, but most of the time there were several students who raised their hands before she had time to find someone. I think she did a fantastic job of pushing students to keep going and to really question themselves on why they are thinking the way they are. She never acted as if any student’s answer was wrong; she just wanted them to justify it by using past laws, precedent, and stare decisis. From what I remember, the class consisted of approximately 80 people, which is kind of big in my opinion. Furthermore, there were several students coming in late. I remember that one was having an OCI, which is understandable, but the other three just walked in about 15 minutes after class started.

Next, the admitted students could choose between three concurrent sessions: clinical programs, loans, budget and debt management, and journals, moot court, and SBA Organizations. I chose to attend the Clinical Programs. David Katner, the Director of the Juvenile Law Clinic, was the speaker for this session. He opened up by talking about how the clinic program was the greatest thing created since Harvard opened its Law School, then he started talking about the success of each clinic. The guy was entertaining and brutally honest. I say that he was brutally honest because one admitted student brought up the fact that she was deciding between Loyola and Tulane. He gave his opinion about the loan debt and told her that she needed to go to LSU if she was really worried about debt repayment. By telling us how we can positively affect the surrounding community by coming to Tulane and participating in the clinics, he also did a good job on selling New Orleans.

Following this session, we had lunch. They served red beans and rice (a meat option and a vegetarian option), a piece of bread, salad, drink, and some kind of chocolate pastries. While eating, we were able to talk to faculty. I sat the Maritime Law table with Professor Robert Force and a 2L student who is going to be the Editor-In-Chief of the Maritime Journal next year. Even though I wasn’t interested in Maritime Law at first, talking to them helped me to see that I could possibly be interested in it. Professor Force talked a lot about how he is able to help students find jobs because he has a lot of connections, especially in the Maritime Law arena. While talking, Dean Meyer walked around to each table and personally greeted each student, which I thought was a nice touch. The food was not the tastiest, but it definitely wasn’t terrible.

After lunch, we had another set of concurrent sessions to decide between. (The options were the same as the ones states above.) I decided to go to the Journals, Moot Court, and SBA Organizations one during this time. K. Cheeseman, the current Editor-in-Chief of the Tulane Law Review, spoke first and told us how to join one of the eight journals. For those who are interested, Tulane sends out invitation to the top 24-25 people of the 1L class, which is equivalent to the top 10% of the class, to join Tulane Law Review. If one does not get an invitation to join because they are not in the top 10%, they have a write-on contest for those who really want it. As for the other seven journals, Tulane has a write-on contest for them. After Cheesemen, C. Dahlgren talked about Moot Court and the famous “Race to the Marble” at Tulane, which I really did not understand fully. She also talked about how the Moot Court team flies all of the world to compete and that they were just coming back or were about to go to a competition in Vienna. C. Dubay followed by telling us about SBA and the annual things they do. At the end of all of their presentations on their various “organizations,” they opened up the floor to questions.

Later, we had a session with the Career Development Office (CDO). Ms. O’Leary has a very thick accent. I thought that they were giving realistic expectations about what kind of job you can get and where, but I did not like the fact that they basically said, in so many words, that “you’re going to have to do most of the work”. They kept stressing the fact that they want their students to network and keep their GPAs up. They did say that they have some type of consortium with other schools so they can like “tag-along” on their OCIs or something like this. It was kind of weird, but I thought it was cool. They also stressed that students have to work hard to get a job, which is understandable.

Next, we had a student panel. It was the usual: admitted students asking questions and current students answered them. There was nothing too special about this event. This is also the time they gave us the travel voucher and asked us to fill it out and mail it in.

At the end of the day, they served us snowballs and let us just talk to each other, which was a good way to end the day, especially going straight from 9 AM to 4 PM.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

There were only two sessions on Saturday. The first was a concurrent session: walking tour of campus and a session on academic program. I decided to go to the session on academic program since that was more important to me than getting to know the campus.

Professor Hancock, who was the presenter of this session, was amazing. She opened up by giving us a type of “schedule” and she worked through it with us. By the time we finished filling the “schedule” out, I knew all the classes I was going to take and during which semester, which was cool. She also allowed us to go around and introduce ourselves and ask her any questions.

After that, Tulane Law Admission Staff took us on a bus tour of Uptown New Orleans. My suggestion for people who haven’t been to the ASW is to be one of the first ones to get on the bus because Tulane did not order enough tour buses and people were standing up on the bus. They said the tour would be short, but it was 45 minutes. During the tour, they showed us the neighborhoods where most law students stay. I wasn’t very impressed, but hey, this is New Orleans.

Opinion on Other Things:

As far as my opinion on the facilities, Weinmann Hall is really nice and up-to-date. I also like the way that the faculty offices are mixed in with the classrooms.

Based on the Constitutional I class and the interaction I had with the faculty, I honestly feel as if the faculty and staff really care about the well being of the students in and out of the classroom.

I did not feel any time of connections with the students. I felt as if they were like robots--just trying to get us to come to Tulane without showing me the passion or the reason why I should pick Tulane Law over another school. I don’t know if I was the only one to notice this, but it seemed as if Tulane was trying to play down the importance of ranking and their ranking compared to other schools.

The worst thing about ASW was the parking situation. I could only find one parking garage for the whole campus and it was on the OPPOSITE side of where Weinmann Hall is located. If this is the parking situation I have to deal with everyday, then I would be very angry.

[Aberzombie1892]

Outstanding job. I can openly answer any questions anyone may have about anything in the above post, including the SEMW OCI Consortium that Tulane is a part of (in addition to Vanderbilt and WashU).

[dnyr2b]

Thanks for this, sdphil. Very helpful for those of us that couldn't make it.