Tulane University Freeman School BLOG

4. New Orleans Is A Great Place to Get An MBA

But before I jump into how great NOLA is, I received an update from Edmund Hughes who runs the Career Management Center at the Freeman School. He mentioned that Tulane does provide email for life (you@tulanealumni.net), which is nice, but it would be much nicer if we were allowed to keep our existing @tulane.edu addresses, like Tuck, Harvard, UMich, etc. Tulane’s solution is good enough for the majority of its graduates, but not sufficient for the MBA’s. It really isn’t that hard to (warning: geek speak ahead) take an Active Directory account and replace the Exchange account with an SMTP forward. Keep pushing, Edmund. I want my @alum.freeman.edu account! Ok enough of that.

One of the reasons I started this blog was because my impression of New Orleans post Katrina was awful. I had a buddy who worked for a newspaper. One of this favorite quotes was, “If it bleeds it leads.” No one makes money on good news, so it wasn’t surprising that the major media outlets continually find ways to make New Orleans look like a backwater that it really isn’t. So I set out to change people’s impressions, and now over 5000 of you visit every month to get the real scoop. Take that, Rupert Murdoch.

I don’t have to tell you New Orleans is an awesome party city. Pretty much any excuse to get out and party and enjoy life this city takes advantage of. We’ve got Mardi Gras, French Quarter Festival, Jazz Fest, Horse Racing, PGA Golf, not to mention some of the best restaurants in the nation. But it’s also a great place to live. I woke up almost every morning and biked 2 minutes from my home to the gym for a workout. I ran along St. Charles Ave. every Thursday, passing the street cars before turning into the loop at Audubon Park which rings the 18 hole golf course. And yes, for those of you who aren’t into the whole cardio thing, there are lots of people walking the loop with their dogs, enjoying a glass of wine. Yep, you can drink wherever you want in this city, and most everyone is responsible about it. Outside of the quarter there’s no trash, bottles littering the gutters etc. Inside the quarter trash is cleaned up every day, sometimes twice.

As a city, New Orleans is back from Katrina. Back in an economic and industrial sense. There’s still large swaths of residential areas that are rebuilding or abandoned because of future flood concerns. But the hotel, restaurant, entertainment and transportation industries are in full swing. This past French Quarter Festival was the first one since the storm to be open two consecutive Thursdays. The people who are moving to New Orleans are young, urban professionals who have an entrepreneurial spirit and a penchant for starting new ventures.

New Orleans is also a relatively inexpensive place to live. Before all this gas price craziness a JetBlue MSY-JFK direct was around $330. You can also get direct flights to Chicago, Atlanta, DC, Ft. Lauderdale, Salt Lake, San Francisco and Houston. Rents aren’t bad either. The year after Katrina there was a shortage of housing and landlords really ripped people off. Now it’s not hard to find a 2br 2ba place a few blocks from Tulane/Loyola for under $1500/mo. Figure $1500 max for everything: cable, gas, internet, etc.

I won’t even mention the Tulane MBA – it’s been a great experience, as has has been mentioned a bunch before. An MBA is the last time in a long time you’ll be able to take two years off from real life. Why not do it in a city as rich as the Big Easy! Food, entertainment, sports (I didn’t even mention the Saints and Hornets…but tickets are always available and cheap for both), cost of living – this city has it all. I’ll probably never return to live in New Orleans, but when I come back to visit I know I’ll be welcomed as a resident and someone who invested a ton in a city I fell in love with for two years.

Have a great weekend,
Joel Yarmon, joel@tulanemba.org

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