Tony Tye, Post-Gazette Kate Frankola, 19, of Wilkins, had barely moved into her dorm at Tulane University and had not taken any classes when Hurricane Katrina hit and forced her to leave. Since then, she has been studying at Carnegie Mellon University, but she returned to New Orleans on Wednesday. Click photo for larger image.

College freshman Kate Frankola has bid farewell to friends she made at Carnegie Mellon University to return to a campus where she spent four hours before fleeing Hurricane Katrina, Tulane University.

"I only had enough time to drop off my belongings and then immediately evacuate," she said.

Ms. Frankola, of Wilkins, is one of thousands of college students from New Orleans who were forced to scatter across the country, spending their fall semester at different colleges and universities which opened their doors to take them in.

Many students are headed back to the Big Easy now that the schools they fled are set to reopen. The city's largest schools, Tulane, Loyola University and the University of New Orleans, are reopening this month.

"When you come to college and make relationships, you'd like to think you've got four years to build on them," said Ms. Frankola, 19, whose friends she's leaving behind include a boyfriend. "Saying goodbye to people I'm just getting to know feels really awkward and sad."

Some of the students who wound up at Ivy League or top schools such as Harvard and the University of Virginia want to remain at the schools they're attending, particularly freshmen who never got attached to their colleges in New Orleans.

Many colleges are refusing to admit them permanently, being leery of breaking their promise to other schools to admit them only temporarily, and not wanting to let students use the situation to trade up to a more prestigious school.

"We wouldn't allow that," said Dr. Michael Murphy, associate vice president of Carnegie Mellon. "We did not entertain applications for transfers except for students whose programs had been terminated."

Carnegie Mellon admitted 26 students from Tulane, the University of New Orleans and Loyola. Some other schools that received New Orleans students included the University of Pittsburgh, which hosted 30, and Duquesne University, which welcomed four during the fall semester.

Dr. Murphy said one displaced student was likely to continue at Carnegie Mellon only because his engineering program at Tulane had been eliminated. He said five other displaced students expressed a desire to transfer to Carnegie Mellon, all of them freshmen who had never attended anywhere else.

Many students are leaving Pittsburgh-area colleges with feelings of gratitude toward their host institutions, which charged them no additional tuition, and are eager to embrace the challenge of studying and learning in a city they'll take pride in helping to rebuild.

"Tulane was where I really wanted to be," said freshman Elaine Frey, 19, who spent the fall at Pitt and stayed with her parents in McCandless. "Now I need to be here more than ever to help with the rebuilding effort. I absolutely love New Orleans and I want to help bring it back."

Ms. Frey has volunteered to clean school buildings and help with other recovery efforts. Ms. Frankola did lots of charity work in high school and was excited to get e-mail about the volunteer programs Tulane is organizing.

Besides that, she wants to see what's outside of Pittsburgh.

"I've lived in Pittsburgh my whole life, and I'm ready to travel more of the country," Ms. Frankola said . "I went to Oakland Catholic, a block away from CMU. I want to have an educational experience that feels new."

After Katrina, colleges around the country took in an estimated 18,000 New Orleans students. Now the New Orleans universities desperately need them back on campus, paying tuition, although the city is still a far cry from being mended.

Fried alligator has returned to the French Quarter restaurant scene and Cajun music spills into the streets. But it's a much quieter and less populated New Orleans. Whole neighborhoods are dark and housing is so scarce that about 200 Tulane professors, students and staff members will be living on a cruise ship docked in the Port of New Orleans when classes start Tuesday.

Still, Mike Strecker, director of public relations at Tulane, said 10,000 of the 13,000 students enrolled there before Katrina will return for the spring semester. And although Tulane eliminated six of its engineering and computer science programs and eight of its athletic teams, he said, enrollment applications for next fall are up to 12,000 from 10,000 for last fall.

"We've gotten a lot of student interest. When the storm first hit, a week afterward, we had students wanting to help, but it wasn't possible," Mr. Strecker said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be a part of rebuilding a great American city. Community service is a big motivator for young students."

Loyola, which started classes Monday, had 90 percent of its student body, now 2,822, return, said Kristen Lelong, director of public affairs. The campus sustained about $4 million in damage, but all of its buildings are online except for the fitness center.

The University of New Orleans will open its lake-front campus on Lake Pontchartrain on Jan. 30 with considerably fewer students; 9,000 of the 17,300 who enrolled last fall have indicated they will return. But college officials believe that number will rise to more than 11,000 by the start of school.

None of the New Orleans colleges, however, sustained more damage than Dillard University.

Dillard, one of the city's smaller schools with about 2,100 students before the hurricane, temporarily moved its administration headquarters to Atlanta and was forced to move its campus temporarily to a New Orleans hotel.