<p>I loved Vanderbilt when I went to visit, stayed with a friend in a frat and partied with him. My one concern is that I only saw it for a night, not four years. My ideal college town is University of Wisconsin Madison, something urban but still has the complete college experience. I want to feel a part of the athletics, totally immersed and obsessed with the school, and I want the town around it to be all college all the time even though it's "off campus." I also want an environment where I will really only see college kids (or just no families). I don't want the town to be like half college students and half families, if that makes any sense. I would like a more academic school than Wisc though--Vanderbilt. So how is Nashville as this type of "ideal" college town? Will it meet my expectations or should I look to something larger like Ann Arbor? Thanks</p>
<p>Curious about your “something larger like Ann Arbor” so I did a quick look on wikipedia (truly THE source for all knowledge 
) and according to that the Nashville MSA is roughly 3 time larger than Ann Arbor’s (since that does not include Detroit). </p>
<p>Nashville and the surrounding county area are over 1.5 million in population so you would be getting “larger” with Nashville which correspondingly means that the entire region does not revolve around the campus even though Vanderbilt with it’s graduate schools is the largest of several institutions of higher learning in the area. (You know, Nashville has the state capital thing and the country music thing going on.) Furthermore, you will find that lots of people in N’ville are (gasp!) UT Vols fans. The “town-gown” relationship is very good, unlike someplace such as Duke and Durham, and Vandy students take advantage of all the great stuff to do in Nash-vegas. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt football is generating lots of excitement but it will never compare to Big Ten Football, period. Nashville will not be awash in a sea of black ‘n’ gold on game days. People around campus will be going about their daily lives regardless of the game. (I understand what you mean about seeing families around, my son was put off by all the senior citizens he saw around and on the UNC Wilmington campus.)</p>
<p>This may not come across in my post, but I am actually a big supporter of Vanderbilt and highly recommend the school; I think that some of the things you might regard as negatives are actually good things about Vanderbilt and Nashville and would prepare you more for the World After College.</p>
<p>Good luck in your decision making and applications to colleges!</p>
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<p>So you want to shut out anyone who is not just like you. So much for diversity.</p>
<p>@LHSCary Thank you. I was not aware that Nashville was so large. Is it all usable space by college students, like bars, clubs, etc.?
My real question is how Nashville would be as a college town, like would I be able to get the whole “college experience?”</p>
<p>yikes.<br>
aren’t these questions about your gut feelings/personal preferences about a college community —the questions you pose in April after you find out if you were even admitted to Vanderbilt? Admission is the first hurdle when there are 25 thousand plus applicants and admission rates are slim. The first hurdle for many people before the admission challenge is the question of “what can I afford to pay”?<br>
If lifelong thrills with sports as an alum are part of your hopes for college, there are colleges with more die hard sports programs, if you can afford to pay for your education at out of state rates. In some cases, Vanderbilt is actually cheaper than flagship colleges and OOS rates if your family’s estimated cost of attendance is low because Vanderbilt has a need blind and a no loan financial aid program. If you can afford Vandy at the full price point, you can ostensibly afford the OOS rates in public colleges with huge sports scenes.
Vanderbilt is an intensely academic college with the entire student body highly prepared to perform in the classroom and already possessing top study prep skills. Classes are in general much smaller than you will find at Ann Arbor and access to faculty members is entirely different (more intimate) at Vandy.<br>
I have lived and worked near Vandy twice and have a Vandy senior.
Some Nashvillians are loyal Vandy football and basketball fans but Nashvillians are more likely to have purchased seats for professional sporting venues, or to be traveling to support their own alma mater college games. UT orange is very visible in Nashville just as there are more people sporting Chapel Hill colors in NC near Duke. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt’s college town scene is more like the blocks of fun places around the residential area where Rice University is in Houston…several hip fun corners of Nashville within walking distance of campus, other fun corners of Nashville require a short car trip. Vanderbilt is not only one of the signature institutions in Nashville. It is a top employer in terms of the entire state of Tennessee, and it is a regional powerhouse for medicine and top graduate schools, and a point of pride throughout the region.</p>
<p>Having just been in Ann Arbor for a UM tailgate, I can tell you that Nashville is no AA. You will not see keg stands on the front lawn as you walk near campus, nor will you see open consumption of alcohol around town. If that is what you want, then you want a large state school that is football-obsessed. You will not find that at most top schools. If you want to party, that scene is available … it’s just not the city vibe.</p>
<p>That said, my D liked Nashville a lot while in school. Now that she is out of school, she lives in Chicago & prefers that as a post-college place to be.</p>
<p>Faline, as usual :-), has made some excellent points about affordability and the increasing selectivity of Vanderbilt; however, I regard your questions as more of trying to get a feel for whether you even want to apply to Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>Every person defines their “ideal college experience” differently but I sense that what you are looking for is a bit different than what you might find at Vanderbilt. At Vanderbilt you will find a good mix between academics and school spirit, an intelligent, competitive student body that is diverse geographically, economically and ethnically (but still tending towards upper class, white and from the southeast) and a greater emphasis than I think you might see at a large state university on giving back to the community/environmental awareness…(I can’t articulate it well but I am thinking of Alternative Spring Break, the charities supported by the religious and Greek organizations on campus and Vanderbilt’s interest in sustainability, recycling, and LEED certified renovations, etc.)</p>
<p>There are some great Nashville neighborhoods near campus with restaurants and clubs but you are just as likely to find Belmont University students in the ones in Hillsboro Village as Vandy students. The club almost across from campus where The Black Keys filmed their latest video is over 21 and I don’t think it was entirely coincidental that the filming took place in the summer after school was out. Other music venues near campus will likely have many non-students turn out for the shows. </p>
<p>To somewhat repeat my earlier post, there is a lot going on in Nashville that is not exclusively catered towards students but that is because it is a large city that has professional sports teams, a thriving music industry (not only country music) with the accompanying tourists several blocks from campus, and the state government–if you want an academically challenging college experience where the school is “the only game in town” you might want to look at Univ. of Michigan or the honors programs at Ohio State or Penn State. Other highly ranked schools that would have a big time college feel like UNC Chapel Hill or UVA are in smaller cities (sorry I can’t speak from experience to any of the schools in the west like USC, UCLA or California).</p>
<p>Here is one difference between Vanderbilt and UW Madison that I am not sure has been mentioned: at Vanderbilt, students live on campus all 4 years (you can move out as a senior with special permission). At UW Madison, many people move out of the dorms after the first year, and if not first, then second. What do you think of that?</p>
<p>Nashville feels like a smaller city, but it is a lot bigger than Madison.</p>
<p>There is nothing like Madison’s State St. with all the funky shops and restaurants near Vanderbilt. Hillsboro Village is tiny in comparison.</p>
<p>All the top 20 universities offer elite academics and job opportunities. Only a few of the top 20 offer “the total college experience”. Vanderbilt, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, and Notre Dame. These school tend to attract more top students who are looking for “the total college experience”.</p>
<p>You know, the city that may fit your bill is Boston. LOTS of students (a quarter of a million, I think). Lots of student-y areas in Boston and Cambridge. However, there isn’t a big college football/athletics scene that I know of (besides hockey, and besides Boston College, but I always feel like BC is not really in the city). Boston is much more into professional sports.</p>
<p>I live in Nashville and I can certainly tell you the city does not revolve around Vandy. To be honest, I feel like there are probably more UT Vols fans in Nashville than Vandy fans when it comes to football season. Plus, music is a huge deal here.</p>
<p>I think the intersection set of colleges that satisfy the various requirements you look for in college life is empty. UW-Madison is not a place where you will be surrounded primarily by college kids. On Saturday mornings I am among some hundreds of parents dropping their kids off at Humanities for UW-run youth orchestras. Sporting events are highly attended by families. The way the university is intertwined with the city, and the relatively large population of families nearby guarantees you’ll see lots of families. On nice evenings, there are as many families as students on the Memorial Union terrace enjoying ice cream and lake views. More families in the boats they are watching. Ditto sunny days on trails around Picnic Point. Many kid’s activities use university venues or nearby facilities, eg, state basketball tourney at Kohl Ctr. High school kids attend math classes there. Families are out on State St. shopping, dining, going to farmer’s market at capitol, etc. Music lessons and drama classes for kids are taught by university students on campus. School academic competitions use university facilities frequently. I think you will find this the case in most colleges set in urban areas. If you look at schools that are set in small university towns surrounded by rural areas, there will be more college students relative to the number of families near enough to spend much time at the university, but the urban flavor is lost, or anyway, muted. Think Cornell, Purdue, or lower on academic scale, Iowa State, where we used to live. Maybe Northwestern would be a compromise that would suit, not sure.</p>
<p>While not a Vanderbilt academically, UT in Knoxville is very close to the college experience you desire. That area of Knoxville is predominately populated by college students. Football Saturdays are a site to behold. A sea of Orange and White floods the campus when 104,000 fans invades the campus. The UT area is like a small college town by itself, simply surrounded by the bigger city of Knoxville. </p>
<p>That said, I live in the Nashville area and love it here. You can find whatever life you want here. There is a booming night life downtown. Theater and Opera are available a few miles away. Hillsboro is a quirky small community near campus. Murfreesboro (a true college town) is only 30 miles away if you want to hang out in the typical college town bars.</p>
<p>If you want a nice campus then Georgia State and ITT tech are around the top but their underrated.</p>
<p>The problem with using MSAs is that you’re comparing apples to oranges. A better indication might be city population, but Nashville (like Louisville) counts a combined city/county for census purposes, making it list higher than Denver, Atlanta and many other cities that are clearly larger.</p>
<p>Nashville’s census population includes rural areas that are an hour away in traffic and that no Vandy student will ever care about… Nashville should be viewed as a city of about 400K and, for the purposes of the question, what really matters are the dynamics of downtown and midtown/West End. </p>
<p>Step a block off campus and you’re not only talking “families,” you’re talking a complex mesh of urban development and former slums, with many establishments where Vandy students are likely not to be welcome (or get into fights or be robbed). The legacies of southern poverty and racism, also play heavily Ann Arbor is a very educated community, while Nashville is a city whose functional literacy hovers at 80 percent or so, in a surrounding state with literacy under 2/3rds.</p>
<p>I personally would not have wanted that to be my undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>It’s very complex, and I’d thus recommend that the OP do much more research to see if they fit into what’s here.</p>
<p>I’d second this “to say the least.” There’s a small area of 21st (much of which runs through the campus) that has a large Vandy presence. There’s some bleed into the Hillsboro Village / Belmont area. Otherwise, I’d say Nashville is not really much of a “college” town and perhaps downright hostile, both from American antiintellectualism and from social tension.</p>
<p>You’re in a city with high unemployment, low income, poverty and illiteracy, and often referred to as “the city of broken dreams.” You’re going to an elite school that will almost guarantee a job and a very good salary in comparison. And you need to work a lot, in a culture that is otherwise rather slow and laidback if not downright footdragging.</p>
<p>You think you’re going to have much in common with the locals 
?</p>
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<p>You obviously have not lived in a real city :). Nashville is a big small town, nothing more. It is not Boston, San Francisco, Paris, Berlin or Antwerp or even Ghent or Cologne or any of a hundred cities a quarter its size. It has significant limitations, beyond what you’d normally expect in a city of just under half a million, including the poverty and near poverty of many residents, significant ghettos relatively unique to it (admittedly, now much safer due to the Purcell and Dean administrations), and a particular lack of the ‘critical mass’ of ideas and talents that characterize college towns?</p>
<p>Murfreesboro is only a college town in the sense that Bowling Green, KY to the north could be considered a college town: there are a lot of young people drinking :). Niether are particularly college towns in the sense of concentrations of ideas and what might be called “free thinking individuals.”</p>
<p>@chunkylover…</p>
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<p>It’s not really that large; see above. The MSA counts stuff as far away as Amherst is from Boston; even the city population counts stuff an hour away in traffic. With an on campus housing experience, likely you’ll rarely leave the midtown section of the West End corridor (if Nashville gets BRT to the East Side, then you might make it two miles along that corridor to the scene there, if you can find the time).</p>
<p>Sports addiction? Plenty if you want it, but don’t expect football to win. And to counter the above, there’s plenty of tailgaiting with alcohol if you want it, we just don’t do it on the front lawn :P</p>
<p>Wow Kenthomas, that is a lot of hating on Nashville! You make it sound horrible! It’s not. It’s quite pleasant. You sound like a cosmopolitan snob! Sorry it’s not Antwerp. Sheesh. Who goes to Antwerp anyway?</p>
<p>Wow, that is a lot of hating. A few facts:
- Vandy is located in a nice safe part of town.
- Students can and do walk off campus to 21st ave. and midtown in the evenings.<br>
- Nashville is a large enough market to bring the NFL into town.
- 6 million people save up all year to vacation in Nashville.
- Nashville is a center for music (producers, studios, songwriters, upstarts and stars live in town), healthcare (Vandy and HCA), banking, state government, education (21 colleges and lots of PhD’s) and tech jobs.<br>
- Forbes Mag. ranks Nashville as a top 5 city to live and work.
- Vandy and Nashville have a great relationship.</p>