<p>i visited vandy and LOVED it, but i went on **************.com and the reviews were awful. Do non-white non-blonde, non-rich non-southerners really not fit in? Are girls really treated like pieces of meat? And is peabody really a joke? I loved it, but I'm concerned, do a lot of people dislike vanderbilt, or was this just a select group of angry people?</p>
<p>Please do not take the information on that disgraceful website seriously. The posters on the campus are - as you asked - a select group of angry people. They are not representative of the student body.</p>
<p>My son is not rich, not southern, not dark but not blonde, a graduate of a huge, diverse public school, and he fits in just fine.</p>
<p>Are girls treated like pieces of meat? That seems pretty insulting to the many confident, intelligent young women I have met and talked with at Vanderbilt. If women are reporting on that website that they are treated poorly by male students, they need to find a different group to hang out with.</p>
<p>In every organization, it is the disgruntled that make the biggest noise. If you LOVED the campus on your visit, you should trust your instincts, in my opinion.</p>
<p>None of us parents really knows how women are treated, but I can tell you from what my daughter says, and what her friends say: the kids in Peabody are viewed as second-class citizens by SOME kids in arts & sciences. They are just freshmen, and they are still high on Vandy as the greatest school on earth. They are sort of into the US News rankings, and want to see Vandy's ranking rise. I've heard at least twenty times: if Vandy didn't have Peabody and/or football players, it would be ranked so much higher. They gripe about how easy Peabody classes are and how hard their own classes are, etc. But If it is any comfort, I know two people with Ph.D.'s from Peabody, and they are very accomplished and well-respected in their fields.</p>
<p>The Peabody school has a very highly ranked graduate program in education. I find it very unfortunate that some non-Peabody students are dismissive of the Peabody undergraduate program. They are taking a rather innovative approach to teacher training, and the program deserves a great more respect than it gets from some of the pre-med crowd.</p>
<p>As far as I've experienced and heard as an A&S upperclassman, many Peabody classes are easier than most A&S or engineering classes. This is why most Vanderbilt students will agree that Peabody students have an easier course load than most people on campus. However, this does not mean that Peabody is any worse than other schools (a&s, engineering) at Vanderbilt. In fact, the graduate program for Peabody is one of the most prestigious in the nation so there are some very highly recognized faculties in the school. Also, Peabody students are still Vanderbilt students and are recognized as just as intelligent. This is a competitive college so there are bound to be jokes about easy classes/majors; and there are in every college (usually business majors). You may hear a few jokes about Peabody but you can't really take them too seriously since your future employers probably won't. Also, if you want a more challenging course load, many of my Peabody friends double major with something in A&S. </p>
<p>As far as the stereotype about Vandy being white and southern, there's very small truth to it. I'm a minority who is neither rich nor southern and I've fit in fine for many years.</p>
<p>As for negative comments, detractors are ten times more likely to voice their opinions than someone with an average to great experience. Don't be so swayed by comments online. It's like taking a (poorly populated and selected) poll as fact; they're bound to be skewed.</p>
<p>i was not insulting the women at vanderbilt, only repeating what i had read</p>
<p>^^^Yes, I understood that; I didn't mean to imply that you were in any way being offensive. Sorry I wasn't clear.</p>
<p>Every school has its negative sides and its positive ones. It is truly ignorant to tell the OP that he/she should ignore negative posts on such matters because they can be true. I advise you to consider everything but I can give you one piece of advice objectively- do not read deep into materials any school sends you or their info sessions/tours. All these brochures, videos, meetings, etc are forms of propaganda that schools are using to increase their enrollment rate.
Want a real feel for a school?
Try to find a student you know that is currently enrolled (preferably upperclassman) and stay over for a weekend/few days. This will give you an accurate experience of the school. Stay away from admitted students weekends/MOSAIC ( in the case of Vandy) as they tend to give a misguided view of the school.</p>
<p>If the website that the original poster visited was **************.com, I'd have to say that those who characterized it as "disgraceful" and characterized the people who posted comments there as "angry" got it very, very wrong. I just read the negative posts, and they were thoughtful, serious, substantive, and more reflective of regret and sorrow than anything else. </p>
<p>On College Confidential's Vandy site, certain parents of kids with perfect grades, perfect social lives, perfect morals, and perfectly sober behavior at all times seem determined to try to paint Vandy as a school where these kinds of kids are not only common, but increasingly common. I'm not doubting that these parents' kids are perfect, I'm just doubting how numerous and prominent their numbers are on this or any campus. Who knows. I think they sound too good to be true, but I'm fairly cynical.</p>
<p>The posts about the treatment of women by frat boys ring true to me, not only because I've known many frat boys, but also because the many, many, many serious people who write on various Vandy boards can't all be liars.</p>
<p>The posts are true mirimom. A majority of the Greeks here are HOD/Peabody majors and they tend to have higher GPAs although not by that much (~.05) because of their unbelievably light/easy workload. When the Greek society advertises their "higher GPA," don't be misled because most of them are Peabody majors.</p>
<p>I wouldn't classify Peabody students' workloads as "unbelievably light/easy." Having entered Vandy through A&S and then switched to Peabody later, the difference is in the type of work rather than the workload. I don't know many engineers who write 20-page papers several times a semester like most of the Peabody students do. Besides, the reputation of your major within the school shouldn't matter to you-- people who think you're stupid because of your major (at a school as difficult to get into as Vandy!) aren't going to be your friends anyway.</p>