Rice enrolls 106 Houston-area Tulane students in fall classes

 In support of a sister school stricken by Hurricane Katrina, Rice University has enrolled 106 Houston-area undergraduates from Tulane University for fall semester classes at Rice as emergency visiting students. 

 The students – freshmen to seniors – began their classes Monday, Sept. 12, the start of the fourth week of the 15-week semester.

 There is no incremental cost for those accepted as emergency “visiting students” under the program. Rice expects to receive tuition and financial aid information from Tulane before Oct. 14.  Rice then will waive tuition for those who have already paid Tulane, and apply all financial aid offered by that university.  For those who had not already paid, by Oct. 14 Rice will collect its own net tuition and fees, which are lower than Tulane’s, and remit them to the New Orleans university.

 In addition, Rice’s Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management has accepted 11 Tulane business students to classes on a similar basis, with any tuition collected will be remitted to Tulane.  On a department-by-department basis, Rice also will seek to accommodate Tulane graduate students and faculty from the affected region.

 Rice and Tulane are both members of the Association of American Universities, the 62 leading research universities in North America, and have significant overlap in undergraduate applications.  Thus, Rice accepted into the emergency program Houston-area undergraduates that Tulane had enrolled, on a space-available basis.  Because demand exceeded supply, "Houston-area" was defined as permanent residents of zip codes 77000 through 77599.

 At the end of the fall semester, Rice will give the students in the program transcripts for the courses they complete. 

 “Tulane has announced that it plans to resume operation for the spring semester,” said Rice President David W. Leebron.  “We will coordinate our efforts with Tulane President Scott Cowen and his administration to assure that we are helping with that goal and serving its Houston area students as well as we can. 

  "We offer our deepest sympathy to everyone touched by this catastrophe, as well as our best wishes for the speedy recovery of the universities and all the people and organizations of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast that have suffered.”