What I like about Tulane:
-Great dual degree opportunities. 4 year MD/MPH and a 5 year MD/MBA and if you apply early odds are you can get the MPH or MBA pretty much paid for by the school. The MPH program is probably the most prestigious thing in the entire school, and the Trop Med option is pretty unique.
-Lots of volunteer opportunities: Multiple free clinics, etc. This city needs a lot of help.
-Flexible 3rd and 4th year cirriculum: 7 months of electives gives you a lot more freedom than most schools, and an early start to clinicals (in May) means that you get get to do you first rotation with experienced interns rather than brand new ones just finishing 4th year. The coordinator will also let you do basically whatever you want with those electives. Students have spend their entire fourth years with fiances out of state, have spent huge chunks of it abroad, etc.
-Different paths for clinicals: Tulane has three programs for clinical rotations: Tulane New Orleans, LEAD, and TRIP. Tulane New Orleans is the classic model of medical education where you get to work in the hospital with interns, residents, and attendings. LEAD is a clinical program in Baton Rouge where you work one on one with an attending for all of your clinicals. TRIP is a rural immersion program where you do all of your rotations in rural Louisiana. If you do the traditional program you'll also have a lot of chances to do rural or Baton Rouge rotations for part or all of certain cores. If you prefer you can also stay in New Orleans for everything (other than Family Medicine, they'll make you travel for that)
-Fun place to live. I'm sure there are more interesting cities to live in if you're a doctor, but if you're a broke @ss medical student this is as good as it gets. There are a lot of festivals and they're all within your budget. Also getting off for Mardi Gras every year is awesome.
-Nice facilities: Good study space, nice lounges in both academic buildings, nice gym
-It's very, very hard to fail out. If you're the kind of person who thinks in terms of worst case scenarios this is a school that will work with you.
What I don't like about Tulane:
-The first two years are pretty disorganized and full of time wasting 'Team Based Learning'. The TBLs are truely the worst thing about this school and would, along with the school's cost, be one of my top two reasons not to go here.
-The school is no better organized than anything else in New Orleans. Generally Tulane's system for everything is 'a guy', and that guy is usually very hard to get a hold of. At one point during my time here all reimbursements for all students stopped completely for three months because the guy who did that was out sick.
-The downside of having a long, flexible clinical schedule is that you have a short, harried preclinical schedule. Be prepared to self teach a lot of micro and pharm when you get to the shelf.
-This is fifth most expensive school in the nation (down from the second a couple of years back).
-The city is not somewhere I would want to raise a family.
-Lots of random, low yield assignments. Mandatory volunteer hours, cultural competency lectures, online documentation of all of your clincial patients, and let us not forget 'inter disciplinary seminars' that you need to schedule throughout your clinical rotations. Some of these things are sort of fun when you're in a less stressful class but when you're on an IM rotation or getting ready for step one they'll make you want to pull your hair out.
My opinion: Go to Wake Forest if it's significantlly cheaper or if you have kids. Otherwise... well I don't know Wake really well but I'd say Tulane is an excellent choice, especially if you want an MD/MPH.
Other Advice: If you have any interest in the MD/MPH program apply right now so that you have a better chance of getting funding, and then start classes the summer before medical school starts so that you have the summer after first year off. You'll want that break much more at the end of first year than at the end of Undergrad.
