@collegecrazy2017 @oPhilippos I know for a fact from our 2018 CV Scholars groupme that there are MANY white students who received the CV Scholarship this year. Maybe you believe AA played an important role, but that is simply not true. You did not see the applications of the other applicants. Test scores are not everything. I am not trying to argue with you, but I do not want non minority underclassmen students on this thread giving up their chance to apply for an amazing scholarship (CV is full tuition + stipend + guaranteed admission to the College Scholars Program) because of your misinformed comment. Yes, I am not an AO, and I donât know now nor will we ever know exactly how much income (Vandy is need blind btw) and race comes into factor, but EVERYONE has a FAIR chance at this scholarship and it is MERIT based.
What the girl at your school got was NOT a scholarship, but an invitation to MOSAIC. MOSAIC is an invite to minority students who have dedicated their high school careers to advancing diversity and equality in their communities. As I said earlier, test scores and GPAs are not everything. Maybe the AOs saw something in her essay or background that they thought was a great fit for Vandy. They have done this for MANY many years. Trust them to do the right thing.
Ingram is for students with a preprofessional interest and a commitment to community service. They are contacted in early Feb and have to interview. Maybe your friendâs interview didnât go as well as the other applicantsâ did. The race of the finalists is a mere coincidence. Stop trying to downgrade the accomplishments of minorities. I repeat, you have not seen their app.
Chancellorâs is for students with commitment to diversity and bridging gaps between different groups, and CV is for academic achievement. There are many Chancellorâs and Cornelius Scholars who are white.
To the underclassmen out there, please apply for these merit scholarships. They will provide you numerous opportunities and it is not a waste of your time. You will 100% not get it if you donât apply. You canât blame AA for everything, and I am saying this as an ORM, who are usually viewed as getting disadvantaged by AA.
collegecrazy2017âŠyou kind of lost me on several of your inferences. âmaybeâ? the Cornelius Vanderbilt is based off of academic endeavors? (!!) You clearly do not know how the CVs are distributed and how amazing the students are who receive them. The only ânewâ thing under the sun is that the amazing high stats and academic promise seen in every CV winnerâŠis not really that different from the rest of the admitted class. This is the new reality at Vandy. There used to be a notable stats gap in achievement of CV winners (my eldest applied when there were a total of 11 thousand plus applications!) and the stats of the rest of the admittees. Not so with 30 thousand plus applicants. The admitted class at Vandy, including the waitlist and those denied admission-- will likely be awarded merit dollars and fine offers from their flagships and from multiple institutions, and many of them will have stats equal to CV winners. Why? 30 thousand plus applicants. Secondly, you do know what blind admissions means, right? No awareness of income need. Vanderbilt does practice âneed awareâ when filling their waitlist spots. The admissions staff has a mission to build a class of wonderful young adults.
The student with the 29 ACT (you imply was a URM) and who according to you has Cs on her transcript was viewed as an asset for the class who would succeed at Vandy. She will no doubt have multiple offers in May, as most admitted students will. Gifted students do not resemble each other as they age up. The more âgiftedâ you test, the more likely it is you have one or two areas of unique talent that makes your promise unlike the promise of the next admittee. This is why college can be such a refreshing break from having to succeed within the herd mentality in high school when everyone must take the same heavily weighted and most challenging courses in their high school. While it is necessary to be good at rote learning to make it through Vandy, it is not necessarily the only measure of exceptional promise. My WASP son was a Chancellorâs scholar. The awards go to students who demonstrate interest in issues of social justice and diversity. Lastly, going through the interview process is an honor for Ingram, and it is a valuable life experience. College students of all backgrounds and races have only begun to interview and to experience being the unchosen. I think my Vandy son was passed over for about half of the things he attempted to do at Vandy that required essays, interviews and letters of reference. Ditto in graduate school. Ditto in the work force. I am speaking about internships, research jobs, offices and summer positions that are sought after while you are on campus. He was so grateful that his college application rounds toughened him up and prepared him for being passed over. Interviewing is a skill set. For all of you reading, do your best to congratulate every single person you know all through spring. The distribution of admissions and honors are transient things that are not in anyoneâs control.
@Faline2 well said
âAs far as the other scholarship, it is literally based upon diversity and ethnic background.â
FWIW, my suburban white bread kid is a Chancellor/diversity scholar. Go figure.
One other point. Vandy is one of the relatively few schools that meets full financial need. So a merit scholarship often does not make that much of a price difference to a poorer kid (URM or not).
If the poor kid has an EFC of $10k, then the family will pay $10k and will get need-based fin aid of $50k. If the same kid gets a merit schollie of $45k, the kid will get a fin aid award of $5k and the family still pays $10k net.
So regardless of ethnicity, the merit schollies really only matter to those middle and upper middle class families who have larger EFCs.
@northwesty yes thatâs true and as a private institution knowing that in order to be need blind they would need to pay (or at least pay most) for the lower income families to go no matter what and that they wouldnât necessarily have to pay for an upper middle class kid to go, it would make financial sense for the school to give preference of merit scholarships to lower income families as thats an expense theyâd have to pay anyway in the form of need based grants if they accepted them.
@ProllyBrokeSoon That is not true. I received the CV this year and my EFC is way too high for me to get aid anywhere, even the Ivies. Every single NPC has estimated $0 aid for me. Vandy is need-blind and would not âgiveâ preference to low income students. Where are yâall getting all this false info?
An anecdote doesnât necessarily indicate a trend. Iâm saying preference for scholarships not for admission. And Iâm just saying it would make financial sense if that did end up happening. Btw for admissions I would predict that high income applicants to get a boost for the same reason (if income were to play a role) Vanderbilt is need blind in admissions tho, Ik @thesoutherngirl
very well said @faline2 I appreciate receiving information from a well-spoken and well-informed user. Sounds like your son is doing very well!
Best of luck
@faline2, are there other merit scholarships that Vandy may offer when admission letters are sent out in late March? DD did not get CV, Ingram or Trustee but given her other college acceptances and merit offers, Vandy not coming through as of yet has been a red flag (not saying this to be pretentious). At this point, acceptance without any scholarships is equal to rejection from Vandy, if you know what I mean.
Hi Holistic: I do understand what you mean regarding the probable reality that if your daughter was accepted, you would be pleased but without merit $ your family would most likely ask her to select among her offers with advantageous ratio of value to cost. For our first-born, we did not put any financial limits on him (and we were just barely full pay and not eligible for assists). This was not his fault. We were just as parents not quite in reality. I would encourage you to not make our mistake in what I call facetiously âpromising your son or daughter the Pony.â The question is would you really be doing them a favor, and are you clever enough to let them deliberate this question with you, doing the numbersâŠafter all they have aced Math on those exams? We ended up paying a chunk out of our home equity for four years at Duke even though my son had honors admissions at our state institutions whose graduates soar in the long run into the same graduate schools and jobs that you may expect from a private school classroom. I guarantee you that anyone who is admitted to Vandy or Duke (or similar great institutions)⊠can totally ace usage of their years at a state flagship where they might also have significant perks, with resources at the ready for grad school. Duke son loved Duke greatly-- which was comforting. But there are consequences you should discuss and share with your seniors. In our Duke sonâs case, a consequence was that we gave him very limited assists in graduate school. He bought his own vehicles. He had to choose night school while working full time. That was a bit of a shock to him but he had a fine job and he kept it. We would occasionally gift him some support. In fairness to this outcome in our family, our son shouldered the consequences and would not change a thing. There are pathways to graduate education that are affordable without you. Not everyone wants med school!
This is your last big season for Parental Lesson opportunitiesâŠhow to make decisions among honorable wonderful offers of admissions in a shrewd manner, while responding in a reasonable manner to disappointment. Recognize that families of seniors do have different financial resources that are none of your businessâŠbut it is your business to be good stewards of your resources and to set that example of the Long View. If I had a nickel for every parent who went to college in the 70s who said to me "Graduate School is âon Them.â Yes, it can be, but get realistic about pathways that will require your support. Some elite med schools and law schools require YOUR financial information until your son or daughter is 28, married or single. Somehow this is never comes up at high school college planning nights.
The crash of October 2008 came, conveniently in the fall of second sonâs senior year in high school. He had pretty much already settled on an expensive graduate school pathway that notoriously offers very few merit discounts in costs. We decided to wake up and smell the coffee regarding our limitations (home values in our town are flatlined and do not increase in value for instance). Vandyson said goodbye to costly offers to his crush liberal arts admissions. The key is that he was sincerely ready to go to the state flagships and he developed great affection for them throughout high school. Readiness to attend your best financial offer in a fine college is something that every family should strive for, truly. Attach to your financial match. Model for your son or daughter the graceful way you wish for them to mentally process this first round in life of acceptances and denials and financial decisions. Be open hearted in congratulating others since we were also supposed to teach our kids that life isnât always equitable and fair, run your own race etc etc. we all know what we were supposed to teach themâŠin all honesty, the recession of 2008 probably was our big teacher.
@Faline2 - similar situation for us. DS has been offered scholarships at both private and state schools. We are letting him choose between them; private college with no help from us in grad school vs. public college with âconsiderableâ help from us in grad school. Basically, we have a fixed amount of funds for education and it is his decision where to spend them. It is tempting to fund it all, but that would be promising a pony (as you said) that we currently donât have, and may never have. Itâs good for him to see the entire picture and make an adult decision.
As per the other discussions on how demographics, income, etc. come in to play. First, I am not on the âinsideâ on these things, so I have no facts. But common sense tells me that colleges want a diverse student body and therefore these are factors in SOME admissions and SOME aid decisions. That in no way diminishes the accomplishments of those receiving them, nor those that did not receive them. DS is a white, middle-class, male, and completely struck out on elites (0/4 with just Vandy left). I wonât bore you with his stats, but it was a bit surprising. Is it because of his background? Perhaps. Or did that not matter at all? Perhaps. We will never know, so no need to speculate. We simply give congratulations to all and look forward to making the most out of his education at the college he selects.
well, I will make a statement of confidence in Vanderbiltâs Chancellor and his Trustees. They had a vision. They put their money where their values and vision lay. I am glad they didnât do away with merit offers no matter how few. It would be grand if some day they could do the magic that a handful of schools with huge endowments can do and that is to limit how much of your income they will require. (We are talking institutions with huge endowments that allow for this extra reason to consider going full pay as a family). Still, Vanderbiltâs decision to direct their money toward No Loans has been very impactful. I do believe they are need blind in admissions because they set the money aside to do it. They could fill the entire class with full pay students, as could many of the top universities in the nation. The quality and diversity of students applying to Vandy went up up up once they offered no loans in their financial need packages. This also happened at Washington and Lee and at Davidson. The economic diversity and all that might come with that factor went up. Nevertheless, the income of those paying full price is elite, at Vandy and elsewhere. But the sons and daughters of those who are full pay worked equally hard and competed for the spots they might have expected to inherit in decades behind us. Vandyâs new alumni look a lot more like the college educated alumni of our future as a nation. Admittedly, it is those who do not qualify for financial aid at all and who have not saved or who simply cannot manage their ECAâs who will not benefit from things as they are. I know this personally since we volunteered for this subset once. Looking backâŠsome regrets, but also it is equally a fact that our first-born is super energized, has a graduate degree paid for and behind him and totally supports himself so I share our experience for you to consider, for good and for ill.
Donât take my comments that colleges strive for a diverse student body as a negative comment. In fact, we chose the high school we did to ENSURE our children experienced and embraced diversity (both ethnic and economic) at a young age. I do think (without proof) that the cards are stacked a little against him on admission/scholarships at the elites, but thatâs OK. DS will succeed regardless of where he goes.
@thesoutherngirl I received the CV scholarship for 2018. How do I get added to the groupme?
@morningJanet join the vandy fb group!
@thesoutherngirl not on fb now-any other way? 
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very well said. We are processing your last paragraph and I read it to my D. After being invited to Mosaic and admitted to Vandyâs Engineering program, the price tag came in at $75k with the EFC calculation, but with no regard to the CSS / interim circumstances of unemployment/single parenthood. After reading about Vandyâs great financial aid, it was a bit of a stunner (D did not get merit) but she was accepted to her dream LAC (top 5) with aid, and her state schoolâs engineering program which kicks Vanderbiltâs to the curb in ranking (20 place differential). Regardless, she loved her visit there and really liked the size, locale and diversity it offered - the staff was very kind, but there was no formal appeal process (âsend an emailâ) where as the LAC had 5 pages of data requested. A pain, but at least they were looking/listeningâŠonward to the next decisionâŠ
Just curious about how this worked. I thought the early application was binding.