Tulane University

Tulane University is a private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. It opened in 1834 as the Medical College of Louisiana and took the Tulane name in 1884 after a gift from merchant Paul Tulane. The main campus lies on St. Charles Avenue uptown; health sciences are based downtown. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005 the university closed some divisions and rebuilt around arts and sciences, professional schools, and public health.

Academic divisions include the School of Liberal Arts, the School of Science and Engineering, the A. B. Freeman School of Business, the School of Architecture, the Law School, the School of Medicine, the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the School of Social Work, and the School of Professional Advancement. Public health and tropical medicine, architecture, and medicine most shape graduate research and clinical training, with downtown hospitals as teaching sites.

Enrollment is about 14,000, with roughly 8,500 undergraduates and about 5,500 graduate and professional students. International students make up around a tenth of the student body. Faculty number in the low thousands when the medical school is included. Notable alumni include writer John Kennedy Toole, journalist Cokie Roberts, and historian and politician Newt Gingrich.

Graduate degrees include the Ph.D., M.D., J.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., and M.Arch. Professional schools are coursework-heavy; research doctorates in arts and sciences follow a dissertation model. The calendar is semester-based. Assistantships and school fellowships support many research students. Graduate life splits between the uptown campus along the streetcar line and the downtown medical district.

In the Grad School Navigator directory, Tulane University lists 102 graduate programs across 29 subjects: 65 master's programs and 34 doctoral programs, with the widest choice in public health, biology and business & management. Tulane University holds rank 315 in the GSN Overall University Ranking.