Which school offers better internship opportunities, WashU or Tulane?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that WashU offers a broader pipeline into traditional national recruiting and research-oriented internships, while Tulane gives students unusually direct access to New Orleans-based opportunities in public health, government, culture, hospitality, and community work. St. Louis has major health-care systems, research institutions, financial-services firms, and a growing startup ecosystem, which aligns well with WashU’s strengths in medicine, engineering, business, and science. New Orleans is a smaller corporate market, but Tulane students can build distinctive local experience through the city’s hospitals, nonprofits, public agencies, courts, cultural organizations, and tourism-related businesses.

WashU’s alumni network is broad and tends to be especially useful for students targeting larger employers or looking beyond their college city. Its career center, school-specific advising, employer events, and strong undergraduate research culture can make it easier to pursue internships in fields such as consulting, finance, technology, biomedical research, and health care. Students still need to network and apply actively, but WashU has more established infrastructure for paths that rely on formal recruiting.

Tulane’s location can be a real advantage for students who want hands-on work during the academic year rather than only summer internships. The university’s emphasis on service, public health, and civic engagement connects naturally with New Orleans organizations, and its alumni network is particularly engaged in the Gulf South. For a student interested in areas like environmental resilience, disaster policy, infectious disease, education, law, social impact, music and entertainment, or hospitality, those local connections can be more relevant than a larger but less targeted network.