Fact Checking: Vanderbilt's Amazing Alumni Accomplishments

Colleges and Universities A-Z Vanderbilt University
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Hello everyone. Recently I have read several posts on CC where people say that Vanderbilt’s alumni accomplishments are not as good as the other lower Top 20 schools, such as Rice and Emory. I don’t think so, and I would like to share with everyone about Vanderbilt’s fantastic, top-20 level alumni accomplishments.

Let’s start with a comparison across Vandy, WUSTL, Rice and Emory.

Number of Rhode Scholars
Washington University 27
Vanderbilt 26
Emory 17
Rice 11

Number of Churchill Scholars
Vanderbilt 10
Rice 5
Washington University & Emory 2

Number of Goldwater Scholars during the past three cycles (2015-2017)
Washington University 8
Rice 7
Vanderbilt 6
Emory 2

Fullbright Scholar Acceptance Rate 2017
Rice 34.8% (8 out of 23 accepted)
Vanderbilt 31.7% (13 out of 41 accepted)
Emory 21.1% (11 out of 52 accepted)
Washington University 15.3%(4 out of 26 accepted)

Number of Nobel Prize Winners (Bachelor’s degrees only)
Rice 2
Vanderbilt & Washington University 1
Emory 0

Number of undergraduate alumni who became U.S. President/VP
Vanderbilt 1 (John Nance Garner, drop out)
Rice, Emory & Washington University 0

The above statistics show that Vanderbilt is every bit as good as WashU/Rice/Emory, if not better.
Now, let’s list some notable Vandy alum, shall we?

Business/Economics
Bill Bain, Founder of Bain&Co
Bruce Henderson, Founder of the Boston Consulting Group
Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines

Education:
Lamar Alexander - former U.S. Secretary of Education
Former President of UPenn & Tulane
Former President of Notre Dame

Politics
Two U.S. Vice Presidents
(former) Governors of Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, and Oklahoma
Prime Minister of Puntland (an African country)

Literature:
Robert Penn Warren - U.S. Poet Laureate
Allen Tate - U.S. Poet Laureate

Medicine/Healthcare/Other Science
Antonio Grotto - former Dean of the medical school of Cornell University
Thomas F Frist Jr - Founder of Hospital Corporation of America
Stanley Cohen - Nobel Prize in Chemistry

NASA astronauts

Wikipedia has a really thorough list of Vandy alum if you want to check it out
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Vanderbilt_University_people

I am very proud/feel very privileged to be a Vanderbilt student. I chose Vandy over Michigan, USC, and UNC-CH and I have never regretted my decision.

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@Otemachi : You cannot limit some to 1 or 2 cycles for some analysis (like we know Fulbrights between it, Emory, WUSTL are very similar if you count all cycles. Same with GW which you can DEFINITELY not use two cycles because it flips on and off for most schools): Overall, VU is more in tier with those 3-4 than it is schools above it and with those with same scores. That is fine. But all of them can be doing better. Also NONE of these schools should be remotely competitive with Emory. They should all be far above in every respect but are not. Emory entered the AAU in 1995 and was not relevant as a research powerhouse.

You can cherrypick in certain areas but the fact is, it looks more like Emory, WUSTL, and Rice than it does other places.

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@bernie12 Hi, thank you for your response. If you check my other thread you will see that my main argument is Vanderbilt is AS GOOD AS WUSTL, Rice and Emory. I am not saying it is better, no. In fact I agree with you that Vanderbilt’s academics needs improvements especially in areas such as economics, computer science, etc. I am an econ major and I can tell you that many of our econ classes here are overenrolled.

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Newest fulbright data are in if anyone is interested: Nine Vanderbilt Students named Fulbright Scholars 2017
https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2017/05/09/fifteen-recognized-by-fulbright-u-s-student-program/

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@Otemachi Also, beware of GW, as congressional district can certainly play a role in selection. You may want to stick to highlighting the Rhodes (which it SHOULD do well at as it is a D-1 school. Rhodes often likes students who are excellent academically and athletically. To see WUSTL and Emory do so well is honestly surprising). And definitely do not go by 3 year cycles for it as they fluctuate.

Fulbright: Do not use percentages because they fluctuate with the amount of applicants. If you use overall number, VU is about the same in any given year. For example, last 3 cycles. I also weigh the amount of applicants because usually the number of applicants gives some indication of ambition. For example, most medium sized top tier schools give far more than consistently in the 50s at least (no I don’t count Emory as one, last year was fluke"ish" I think), so even though Duke comparatively flopped in 2016 (only 12, which is off of there last cycles),in the last two cycles they had at least 60 applicants

2016-2017:
VU 13/41 (strong)
Emory 11/52 (strong)
WUSTL 4/26 (really? Come on. At least get more folks interested)
Rice 8/23(Rice is smaller and STEM leaning even more so than the 2 ahead of it so I will cut it slack)
2015-2016
VU 7/32 (?? By this time, students should be all over this)
Emory 5/43
WUSTL 9/41 (a big improvement!)
Rice
5/19 (k, I guess that is okay for them)

2014-2015
Vanderbilt 4/41 (okay y’all flopped, but at least lots of folks were interested)
Emory 12/36 (meh…good return, but wish more folks were interested).
Rice 7/32 (quite the improvement)
WUSTL 6/49 (not the best return, but the amount of interest was great).

Regardless, as proud as I am of my school and you are of yours. You should be asking for more.

Right now, it looks like, among these 4: Emory leads in Fulbrights over the last decade or more if you total, but none have garnered interest or returns seen at the other top level schools.

VU leads in Churchills.

WUSTL leads in Rhodes (weird, but both it and Emory do have unusually strong D-3 programs I guess)

I would expect Rice and WUSTL to be more consistent with GWs but don’t know for sure (they both invest inordinate amounts in engineering. I would expect schools with decent engineering schools to produce lots of NSF graduate research grant awardees and GW scholars as those have an obvious bias against say pure pre-healths…maybe MDPhD for GW, but not pre-MD. NSF, you are only allowed to emphasize basic science applications). But regardless I do not think any touch most of the even higher tier schools: For perspective. Take a look at the tops list made in 2006: https://www.math.ksu.edu/events/ksucomp/goldwater/goldwtr06.htm WUSTL fares well (it used to be an institute, no surprise) I guess consistently hitting 2-3/year. You only get 4 nominees so that is a strong record.

Keep in mind it started in 1986…

These places are doing fine, but need to work more to ensure that more of their students go big or go home. In WUSTL and VU’s case, they have basically HYPM scoring students now, so should be seeing much bigger returns. This is what measures the actual school. Rice is now pretty up there stats wise (but no VU, Chicago, or WUSTL yet), but you have my old school, Emory hangin’ with the big boys despite lack of an engineering school (a bigger engineering and physical sciences scene will naturally help with GW and Churchill, but Emory has had years where 2-3 would win some how even though most were pre-health) and having always had lower stats. If you have gotten those high stats and have yet to yield results similar to most top 10-12 schools at least from those cohorts (and even ones before. VU may have surpassed Duke in 2010 stats wise for example, so effects should have at least been as consistent as theirs by 2013 or so). Regardless, I see no evidence that it is better than the others. It has different strengths I guess, but competes in their league (again, if you look at all data for most categories, very similar), which…I think it should aim for more as should all of them.

What appears to have happened is that WUSTL was an academic leader in research so it got to have its UG prestige first among the 4 (AAU membership in 1923), then VU(1950), then Rice(1985), and then Emory(1995). It basically looks like they have essentially converged over time at the undergraduate level to be of similar caliber which essentially means that Rice and Emory pretty much “caught up” or basically closed the gap with the other two in terms of undergraduate academics (though I believe WUSTL still pretty much leads all 3 in research infrastructure. VU and Emory have converged, and Rice is ULTRA strong in certain areas). Differences in these accomplishments reflect different foci and the past to some extent. Again, in 2 of the cases, it is just an under performance (especially now) and not them being particularly “worse”. You should be aiming to make your list show that VU is relevant in comparison to other top 20s is what I am saying. VU has made its mark as have the others, but they have some serious work to do IMHO.

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@Otemachi : From what I can tell, it appears VU has similar enrollment level issues that I saw at my alma mater in economics, math, and CS. I knew something was up when I stumbled upon some VU course websites and the level was the same. I understood it for Emory as many in those are not “pure” majors, they are double or joint majoring or are pre-prof dabbling in a second major. VU has more pure math, econ, and CS, which is housed in engineering, majors, so any weirdness likely has to do with enrollment levels. They were just stressed to the limit and quality suffered (we developed what seems to be an alternative, the QTM major/institute). I think VU can afford to improve UG life sciences education in comparison to the other 3 (chemistry, neuro, biology) as well (from what I see, there are not enough instructors using bio 2010 standards as there is still an unusually heavy focus on detail oriented memorization of content), but things like psychology, English, History, physics, engineering and many other things are very solid to pretty much as you would expect them to be at even some top tier elites.

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@bernie12 Vanderbilt/WUSTL are not necessarily harder to get into/have better students than Rice or even Emory just because we have a lower admit rate/higher scores. I was waitlisted at Rice. A friend of mine got rejected at Emory. Still another person I know chose Vandy over WashU. What I can tell you is that we simply have a different admissions philosophy from you guys. Most people that I know here have 2300s on their SATs but several of them were rejected from seemingly less selective schools.

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@Otemachi : VU has higher yield than WUSTL. VU is stereotypical in many respects in terms of a college experience. Emory and WUSTL have high quality of life but do not have the vibe of a Duke or VU. I can easily see students choosing VU over it or the others Many at Emory, WUSTL, and even Rice are often choosing it for certain majors (business and pre-health and life sciences majors are huge at WUSTL and Emory and engineering, math, and physical sciences are huge at Rice). Most people I notice choose VU for an overall experience (much less have like a pre-profession or very specific major in mind for example). Duke is the fortunate one because it is so strong academically that it can pretty much draw the types that maybe prefer a WUSTL, Emory, Rice type of vibe while also drawing those that want a VU type of vibe. Stanford takes this to an even higher level though (it is like if you mixed MIT and a laid back version of Harvard or something).

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@bernie12 As an Asian male, I would have chosen Rice over Vanderbilt in a heart beat, but I do believe Vanderbilt is the best option for me among my available choices. Regarding Vanderbilt’s yield rate, yes it is very high, close to 45% now I think. BUT, remember Vandy has two ED rounds, while WashU has only one. It is better to compare Vandy’s yield to Emory’s, which also has 2 ED’s.

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@Otemachi : And Emory gets creamed lol. As one would expect. Part of it has to do with it flat out not taking risks in its admissions (admits lots of students) and another part is just it straight up being in the south and lacking things such as D-1 sports (taken seriously by those considering southern schools), an engineering school, bad PR in the recent past, and lower financial aid packages for middle/upper middle income families (on the governments scale, not a highered institution’s scale). Emory spends a lot of fin. aid on those on the other end of the financial scale and admits a lot more low income admits. It takes a toll (but the QB scholar recruitment efforts are nice though). But even before then, I think VU had higher yield. Just two completely different schools.

Given that many prospective students judge how things look on paper super heavily, I am sure that with higher admit rates and lower scores, most will just assume it isn’t as good (and Emory has basically always had lower scores than VU methinks) even if they were to prefer it for whatever reason. Now a bunch of other factors exacerbate that idea as well. More ethical recruitment methods do not typically play well when trying to build prestige. Those who do not more seriously research the schools/are not going for academic reasons definitely subscribe to a “I wouldn’t join any club that would have me as part of it” sort of philosophy so may be more prone to choosing by rank and input metrics and many other superficial things (I also typically see these battles between other similar schools where those debating will split hairs over 10 or 20 points on an SAT range and focus on that). There are a good chunk like that. It can hurt the winners and losers of a yield battle, and can even hurt the student making the choice (they may choose the place that doesn’t fit whatsoever for sketchy reasons or for simply not having considered it at all).

Emory has half of matriculates come in through ED, BUT the RD yield is super poor obviously. If you deny a lot more applicants, you can increase yield here provided that you have a good model to make that change (maybe heavier use of waitlist as yield protection if you migrate to that strategy).

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@bernie12 There must be some ways to manipulate the yield. Take a look at Northwestern. Its yield has risen from the mid-30s in 2008 to the mid to high 40s. Would you say Northwestern has magically improved its academics/become more attractive all of a sudden? I don’t think so.
https://dailynorthwestern.com/2013/05/12/campus/northwestern-admissions-office-boasts-highest-yield-rate-to-date/

Also, admissions policies emphasizing high test scores can only go so far when it comes to college rankings. There is a reason why Vanderbilt’s ranking has risen so slowly despite its low admit rate. Eventually, all schools in the top10-20 range will converge to a 8-10% admit rate, IMHO. To drastically improve its ranking Vanderbilt really needs to improve its endowment, I think, for its lowest among the four schools. After its split from the medical center, the school’s endowment is now only 3.8B.

Lastly, regarding your Duke comment. Yes, Vandy’s scores have been higher than Duke’s since the class of 2014, but that’s pretty much the only area where Vandy’s better. As much as I love my school, I honestly think Vandy (as well as Rice, Wustl and Emory) is a tier below Duke, with schools like Northwestern and Cornell in between. Building school reputation takes a lot more than accepting high scoring students.

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Vandy only recently became regarded as a top end university, prior to that it was more in the Tufts/UVA/WF category. It will take time to get to Duke or even NW/Cornell levels although they’re on the right track

Also don’t forget Packers legend :wink: Jay Cutler as a Vandy alum

Seriously though I think the first female TIME CEO was also a Vandy alum and the person who did the first heart surgery went to VUSM

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@Suffer Hi, thanks for your response. I thought Vandy has always been better than WF/Tufts. Vandy has been ranked in the top 20 by USNEWS since 2003 whereas WF/Tufts have never been ranked in the top20. Besides the undergrad ranking If you check the U.S. News graduate school ranking Vandy is also ranked (much) higher than the two schools in most disciplines. UVA has always been a peer of Vanderbilt.

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@Otemachi I meant historically. Today it is much better than those schools and I think it has surpassed UVA. But the point was that change takes time, and since Vanderbilt has relatively recently broken into this category there will still be a lot of people that don’t recognize it as on par with its peers even though they should

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Admit % reduction is a poor way to try to move up the USNews ranking – it’s worth just 1.25% of the total. More productive is to increase test scores among admits, since the test score metric is worth about 8% of the total.

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＠prezbucky Thank you for your response. Admission selectivity only weighs 12.5% in USNEWS ranking calculation,s, that’s why I said “admissions policies emphasizing high test scores can only go so far when it comes to college rankings. There is a reason why Vanderbilt’s ranking has risen so slowly despite its low admit rate.”

Let’s break down Vandy’s ranking to identify areas of improvements

GRADUATION RATE (18%): six year 92% Not bad, on par with Northwestern (93%), Rice (91%) but lower than Duke (94.5%) . Although the year before Vandy’s 6 yr graduation rate was actually 93%

RETENTION (4.5%): 97% excellent, equal to NU and Duke

PEER ASSESSMENT (15%): In 2013, Vandy’s PS score was 4.1, same as WUSTL. better than Emory and Rice. much worse than Duke (4.5) or NU (4.4)

HIGH SCHOOL COUNSELOR RATING (7.5%): Vandy ranks 15th in the nation in this category, same as its overall ranking. This is equal to NU’s ranking but lower than Duke’s at #10.

STUDENT SELECTIVITY (12.5%): I don’t have data but Vandy must be excellent in this regard

FACULTY RESOURCES (10%): Probably very bad. Vandy’s endowment of 3.8B is one of the lowest among the top 20.
NU’s endowment: 9.6B

Duke: 7.2B
Emory: 6.6B
WUSTL: 6.46B
Rice: 5.3B
Vandy: 3.8B

ALUMNI GIVING: 5% No data but probably doesn’t matter very much.
As one can see, Vanderbilt needs to improve its endowment and peer assessment scores.

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@Otemachi
Forgot to respond, but back to non-superficial things that you cannot see: No, NU has not changed much. With the scores policy, I became worried when WUSTL popped…it is really sensitive it seems (and I guess I got it right, the class that came in in 2010 at VU had higher scores than Duke…Duke still seems not to care lol). If you fall out of a tie ranking wise, it’s a wrap. And yes, endowment is one of VU’s issues, but I must say that separating from the medical center can do lots of good. I don’t know how WUSTL is, but it may be similar to Emory in some senses where the College of Arts and Letters unit could have a lot more money (it does have more money than Emory ECAS but could still have a larger share) if the health sciences and healthcare system was not ultra dominant in terms of how many is allocated. Everytime I realize how struggling the ECAS endowment is there, I realize how amazing it is that it has created or revamped so many programs/curricula over time as this requires energy and resources. It basically means the departments facilitating it have to be very self-reliant.

VU has some historical educational innovation via the Peabody School especially, but I really feel as if much more of it needs to extend to ECAS. To me it just looks very traditional and it has this standard paradigm of very large section sizes in lecture/auditorium style in most of STEM and surprisingly high use of transparencies and powerpoints in what should otherwise be problem solving oriented courses (basically less engaging pedagogies making the courses feel impersonal and maybe not achieving the level that they should. Suggests that more faculty need to get on board with more engaging mathods and sometimes this takes incentive). Like everywhere else, many social science and humanities are fine once the section sizes drop, but large section courses in like any discipline look super stereotypical there. At Rice and Emory a lot look a bit different, and WUSTL likes to be innovative in its actual course offerings in terms of STEM. It should also push to get more co-curricular opportunities for students that are directly linked to academic departments. VU really excels with EC opps, but I think the Immersion VU initiative should focus on making more programs such as departmental fellowships, scholarships, co-curricular opps. This could play into the endowment issue and how monies are allocated.

Like the other three may have more of this because several departments have more money to allocate toward undergraduate enrichment at said schools. Like when I looked at several popular depts (as in ones with solid numbers of majors or those that were popular among those with a certain pre-prof track) at each, I saw how different the level of funded and stipended opps were and then in STEM (my clear area of interest), the others were more likely to have departmentally hosted or linked Study abroad opps (VU had some performance prizes for some things but they were based on GPA and were not often decent size travel or research grants) and even separate UG research symposia (suggesting they had the necessary amount of participants and funding to put these on). Getting more money for these departments to allocate to undergraduates could really help VU engage (or at least promote engagement) much more students beyond ECs or opps peripheral to the major.

Lastly, in all honesty, except maybe Rice which could perhaps just afford much more balanced strengths, Basically all 4 may just need cultural changes at the UG level especially among students. There is a lot to like, but WUSTL and Emory’s pre-professional following may limit the amount of risk-taking to some degree and for Immersion VU to really take off and be successful, many more students must actually really want to engage beyond ECs (do things like want to write an honors thesis or senior project). Unfortunately, this could put a large dent in the pure “work hard play culture” which many students came there for. It often spells lots of students completely separating academics from EC life and makes for less desire to do time consuming co-curricular opps (E and WUSTL have much more of a co-curric. culture but they are heavily saturated in some key areas).

Schools should try less hard to manipulate their rank, and harder to improve the level of education offered vs. the limited resources they have (okay, H is virtually unlimited for all intensive purposes).

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@bernie12 Play hard work hard at Vandy is total BS IMHO, applies to only HOD major I guess. The school keeps posting videos on FB demonstrating Vanderbilt’s balance or whatever but they never say that mental health is a real issue here.
In addition to what have you said regarding Vandy’s STEM courses, I found many of the econ courses here quite disappointing. Econometrics, which is one of the most important courses for econ majors I think, is not even required. Additionally, only one semester of calculus is required as opposed to two at many institutions. Furthermore, the faculty strength of the department is definitely not top-20 level, worse than schools like the University of Rochester. You can compare the faculty of both schools here:
https://www.sas.rochester.edu/eco/people/faculty/
https://as.vanderbilt.edu/econ/people/

Basically we only have one econ professor who went to Harvard, one or two from UChicago, none from Princeton or MIT. I’ve heard some bad things about Emory’s econ, too.

Unfortunately, improving UG academics is not Vanderbilt’s priority now. Rather, the priorities include the Opportunity Vanderbilt financial aid program (which partially explains Vandy’s low endowment), and the undergraduate residential colleges system. The newest res college costs $110M and looks amazing. Long Term plan is to convert all dorms on campus to residential colleges. You can see the photos here: http://www.dmsas.com/project/e-bronson-ingram-college/

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@Otemachi : You “heard” some bad things? Please, you don’t know the half. It got so bad that their PhD program was targeted in the department cuts…and that wasn’t good (made it a struggle to hire after the doctoral admissions freeze was lifted). Emory’s econ’s inkling of quality survives off of the few solid lecture track faculty and some appointments from banks or reserves and usually those folks are okay (the new concentrations are nice…I guess) and it does have the requirements you mention (the intermediate instructors are pretty rigorous apparently. I showed VU friend one of Dr. Francis’s exams and he was quite surprised…so was I. Some traditionally easy instructors like Banerjee also cranked it up a bit, especially at that level. Econ. stats used to be notorious because of this one instructor who did a proofs based course, but he may have changed). Emory’s department has a major case of “we are in the shadow of the business school”. Interestingly, when I was there, grade inflation started to seriously float there, yet many students wanted to do honors theses, so they had trouble choosing (even after setting threshold to 3.6-3.7). They instituted a b-school type of grading distribution in core courses ( http://economics.emory.edu/home/undergraduate/major_minor_requirements.html) and look at the effects: http://news.emory.edu/features/2017/05/commencement2017/index.html

I believe the policy started in 2013 and many double major or major in econ.(may rank 3rd or 4th) so they would be the first cohort fully effected. Emory’s graduating GPA dropped by 0.04. Good for the appearance of rigor, but “ouch!” at the same time. The last graduating class was identical academically (input wise if you count scores as a predictor which is poor…but let us keep it simple). The course atlas has many post syllabi and you have some instructors who propose the possibility of curving downward, but many who just set A cutoffs and other cut-offs higher than normal to fit the distribution so you have lots doing faux rigor.

What Emory kind of likes to do (perhaps to a fault, but playing into the hands of folks like me, STEM oriented people) is invest and create changes and investments only in areas that it has traditionally excelled. It doesn’t seem to like much risk taking outside of that, though things like QTM (apparently other places/elites are considering getting on board with a similar model), chem. changes, Voluntary and Health major are impressive I suppose, especially since they came shortly after a really bleak economy.

Opportunity VU DOES NOT explain the low endowment however, it may explain where resources of the CAS, UG engineering, and Blair are going (indeed, this could further constrain departmental allocations for certain things). Remember that only a portion of the endowment is spent and that fin. aid is pretty much localized in one office.

My friend who will graduate tomorrow (He was in Atlanta so I was curious and asked what he thought because I thought it had potential) questions the effectiveness of the residential college system being implemented there, basically claiming that the intellectual/academic climate will not support it as well as they are supported at places that employ the system. Basically, it isn’t “ready”, but they will certainly look nice on paper(adds to QOL). Got any opinions? Emory is too sprawly to consider that (like we have Clairmont for example) so tries to improve upon the impact of themed halls.

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@bernie12 I believe the college system is amazing, especially considering that HYP and Rice all have one. There are several ugly dorms built in the 60s on the west side of campus. Specifically, Carmichael Towers are of public housing quality IHMO. You can see the picture here:
https://www.emporis.com/images/show/385494-Large-exterior-view-of-southeast-facade-from-25th-avenue-parking-garage.jpg

I’ve been to Emory and I can tell you none of Emory’s dorms is nearly as bad. Therefore I believe it is absolutely necessary to replace Carmichael Towers. Branscomb as well as Morgan&Lewis are also very ugly.

You get charged the same price for housing regardless of the type of room that you move into. As a result, it is very difficult to get a room in the only upper classmen college (Warren and moore) these days. I was rejected from it as a senior.