<p>@silversparkles18 congratulations on your acceptance to med school!
We just sent my daughter’s deposit to Vandy! yeah! She was accepted into the School of Engineering and she wants to major in BME, and do the pre-med track. I worry about this route because I think her GPA will suffer doing BME and I think GPA is very important when applying to med school. What are your thoughts about BME @ Vandy and getting good grades enough to be competitive when applying to Med school? Thanks for your help.</p>
<p>Feliz,
One of D’s close friends/sorority sisters was a BME major and still managed to be Greek, score high on the LSATs, and be accepted to a top law school. I can’t say that all kids can keep all those balls in the air, but some certainly can. Good luck to your D!</p>
<p>Feliz…glad your D will be a Dore!</p>
<p>Feliz, I don’t know why so many people say that BME is harder than regular premed. Tons of students choose the BME route to get to med school. If you are more about math and physics than it should actually be easier. That’s just my opinion though.</p>
<p>Macaroni and cheese, </p>
<p>There’s ill-perpared: Blacks, Whites, Christians, Asians, Mexicans, Cubans, Latinos, Hispanics, Gypsies, Arabs, Muslims, Democrats, Republicans, Short People, Tall People, Gays and yes even JEWS, who are ill-perpared for the academic rigor of Vanderbilt. Thus, using ethnic minorities as a scapegoat for why Vanderbilt’s academic environment seems to be lacking is simply baffaling</p>
<p>Or in the wise words of P. Griffin your comment is quiet shallow and pedantic.</p>
<p>El Taco Grande,</p>
<p>You say that many people at Vanderbilt are not prepared for the school’s academics, but then you turn around and seem to say that Vanderbilt’s academic environment is lacking. These two statements seem to not make sense because if Vanderbilt was so easy academically, then anyone would be prepared for it.</p>
<p>Or in the wise words of myself, your comment makes no sense.</p>
<p>Just to add to my comment, nothing against El Taco Grande, but if you try to bash Vanderbilt students as a whole, look at SAT scores and admissions stats (the students are very accomplished as a whole).</p>
<p>NewandImproved, </p>
<p>I kindly ask that you cease making straw mans out of my comments. </p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>Burrito: try “prepared,” straw “men” and “baffling.”</p>
<p>Macaroni and Cheese,</p>
<p>Try Catalan, Castellano, Lingua Italiana, Limba Sarda, and Portugu</p>
<p>better question el taco: why are you writing on college confidential when you could have been at rites?</p>
<p>I don’t like Vanderbilt because there’s a strong atmosphere of anti-intellectualism outside of the classroom. There was even an article in the Hustler about this.</p>
<p>Understatement … ^</p>
<p>Really INVENIAMVIAM? Is it really that bad? Because that’s exactly the opposite of what I wanted outside of the classroom in college. How exactly is it expressed?</p>
<p>Sigh. That worries me.</p>
<p>biggorangefan</p>
<p>I am not going to say that Vandy is the most intellectual hotbed in the USA outside of class but the students are across the board capable in the classroom.</p>
<p>Anyone looking for companionship that includes all the cultural arts on campus can find it…in recent weeks, son has told me about attending recitals for friends at the Blair School of Music, attending a film festival with talks held by professors at the conclusion of some films, and attending talks by Elie Weisel and General Petraeus and Ralph Nader (on his endless tour…I saw him 30 years ago). I know he attended several political events this year as well. Alternative Spring Break was something he really got a lot out of including a new set of friends.</p>
<p>my son has many friends outside of class who have similar interests to his…and he has mentioned enjoying conversations many times…he and a certain group of friends attend many lectures on campus…four of his housemates are bilingual </p>
<p>also he has been to the Symphony in Nashville’s world class Symphony Hall downtown…and he had dinner at a professor’s house this week…one of his living groups carries on discussions with a professor on hand, he is in a reading group, he is involved with the film community, he is a runner and has no problem finding people who like to run around Nashville…plenty of good places to go…He has other activities that are academic, some of his friends are staying on campus to do research this summer.<br>
The newspapers have a pretty fab website and I like the fact that Vandy students actually debate and are not alike. That said, I think the writing is not up to par with what I would expect from the Vandy student body often. Hoping the new classes at Vanderbilt will start to participate and submit articles that are better written.
That said, I am pretty sure he has yet to take full advantage of all the opportunities that exist at Vanderbilt for those who seek them out.</p>
<p>i’m a junior at vandy and HIGHLY agree with what INVENI said above. very true, and not an understatement. </p>
<p>i don’t like vandy because of the social scene’s heavy focus around greek life.</p>
<p>My D will graduate this week and never once felt restricted because she wasn’t greek. She started rush but decided to not follow through. Still has many greek friends and plenty of GDI’s. I’ll be she wouldn’t trade her 4 years at Vandy for anyplace else. Any school is what you are going to make of it. If you go to any school looking for the negatives (like the title of your thread) you will find them. Best of luck but you are selling any school short by focusing on what they don’t (or do have but opinions vary) have…</p>
<p>I dont like vandy because…
- nashville is just crappy city (and the weather too!)
- most social life is centered around frat/sor
- vanderbilt and just south image in general…is not really that favorable. (well to some people.)
- quite conservative compared to other colleges around the nation</p>
<p>Well, some people talked about grade deflation…
although i agree that private schools may give good gpas, the classes are much harder compared to many state schools. Also, it has to be noted that especially this year, i guess almost half the freshman declared themselves as some sort of pre-health major when they first came in, now i have plenty of friends and people i know who switch their majors in second semester or next year because they are suffering in classes such as gen bio, chem and calc 1&2. Those classes are brutal and unless you invest fair amount of your time on studying you will never get good grades</p>
<p>Also 2VU0609, </p>
<p>about 60% receives some sorts of financial aid, but if you think about it 40% are paying 50,000 + every year, which is certainly way more than other private universities Also this school image is really really preppy and rich white school, which in general is very true.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is certainly not “way more than other private universities”. This information is available on the Common Data Sets (section H2) for those universities that make the CDS public. For those that prefer to hide the information, try looking at Institutional Research for various schools. I looked at the numbers for quite a few schools, including several Ivy League schools and Stanford; their percentages are similar to Vanderbilt. If you account for the fact that many of the merit award winners at Vanderbilt would be receiving need-based aid if they had not been awarded non-need aid, Vanderbilt’s numbers would look even more favorable.</p>
<p>oops that was my mistake. I agree with what you are saying but theres a huge difference between paying full for stanford/ivy league and paying full for vanderbilt. I dont think vanderbilt worth 50,000+ dollars while you can spend the same or even less amount of money attending way better schools. I guess i should have mentioned that.</p>