Fact Checking: Vanderbilt's Amazing Alumni Accomplishments

@Sam-I-Am : No…many schools have programs, if not more specialized ones than it that aim to target first gens. and minorities. the % of URMs is very similar to other elites (not so much ORMs) and the SES diversity is still lower than many other places outside of the Ivy Plus, so while I applaud them for taking financial stress away from its matriculates the efforts you mention hardly make it a leader in any metric of diversity. It merely does okay and gets a “thank you for trying” like all of the others.

@Otemachi : I question the utility of that metric. The out of college incomes income wise are similar to say…other southern elites and this does not address the SES diversity issue. If you start off with little SES diversity to begin with, of course many students will eventually land in cushy spots. Again, high median income of the parents will correlate with monetary outcomes because this is often related not only to academic performance at any given point in time but connectivity/networking. The more SES elite students are, the more things that tend to open up. Of course now-a-days most millenials will drop down vs. the parents, but if you start off with an edge, it often lasts relative to others with less of an edge. Without putting such data within that context, we can’t tell why this is the case. Yale has a much lower mid-career income than H, I don’t think that makes it particularly worse. In fact some data suggested that it is because Yale grads. are more evenly distributed across job sectors, meaning some choose to go into lower paying more service or civic oriented careers than H and even some similar schools. I have witnessed numerous anecdotal evidence that it seems wealthier students usually have more “access” even if the academic performance isn’t all that great. I wish I had data (and can perhaps find some), but I think SES status of the family a student comes from can propagate and affect such data in interesting ways.

It isn’t come on because I noticed a lot of departments there also gave top awards to seniors exclusively based on the highest GPA…perhaps and hopefully there will not be any or many 4.0s. VU also, like many schools grants Latin honors only based upon GPA tiering as opposed to only doing departmental Latin Honors. How am I supposed to know. If 4 people get 4.0, then things like favoratism could come into play and they ultimately choose to limit the medals to the few people that have 4.0s if a prize is GPA based. Do not underestimate the shallowness of college honors in some arenas.

And folks party on Thursday…the term is “thirsty thursday”, you should know this lol. Folks who participated likely ain’t waking up at 8.

@bernie12 Vanderbilt does not use shallow methods for awarding prizes. GPA is always one component of many, and more than GPA is transcript strength (they see Neuroscience performance as more impressive than a WGS seminar, for instance). The proof of that is in the incredible pedigree of those that receive awards - in addition to top GPAs, very few of them 4.0s, award winners have several things that get them such accolades, whether it’s stellar writing, amazing personal skills, STEM ability, musical prowess, etc. etc. How the faculty of each college decides the first honors recipient (Founder’s medalist) is proof enough that a 4.0 isn’t a requirement. Probably a 3.9+ is but I don’t think that’s an unreasonable way of narrowing down the top 5% when it comes to things like first honors.

@Senior2016M : I moreso meant that in theory one could use something like an honors thesis among many other things. Your response brings hope though. It kind of makes sense for departmental awards to be simply based upon a GPA (okay, not really. In some depts grades are really compressed so often depts like history for example, in order to just stick to “performance” as based on GPA, must further break prizes down into specialties. In this case, instead of doing all that, simply winnow it down to those who did senior projects and then choose either based on GPA or something else if it is a close call GPA wise), but it wouldn’t make as much sense for large awards (believe it or not, some places, even good ones do it, which is why I asked). I also do not care much for Latin Based Honors that are based on the GPA brackets simply because there will be truly exceptional folks even outside of GPA and then other high GPAs will result from very strategic course selection (I do not operate with the illusion that all students at elite schools are these perfect brilliant scholars who all want to be super academically engaged. Many, as smart as they are, just “do what they have to do”) schemes which even the most motivated of students are very prone to at any of these types of schools (this has been studied and at places like Cornell and Dartmouth where they used to publish median grades per course, there was a noticeable effect in those time periods). I am partial to the senior thesis as a criteria for honors. It sets a GPA threshold per department and then it wants to see what you actually contribute to your area of study. Earning very top grades is not always easy at these types of places, but ideally schools should focus on turning excellent students into scholars no matter their future career paths. I usually see the implementation/proliferation of capstone projects or writing as a good sign for a department/school.