Hi,
I’m looking at schools to potentially transfer to. Vandy’s acceptance rate seems enticing, given how they had a 37% acceptance rate this year compared to 11% for freshmen. However, I was wondering if there’s something inflating these numbers? Like, for example, how Cornell has the TO and how the UCs favor CC students. That’s all.
Those percentages were for 2020, and were a bit higher than in 2019 (23%) and 2018 (25%). This year will probably even lower than 23% as many T25 schools received record numbers of transfer apps. However, Vanderbilt is definitely more transfer friendly as they plan each year to have a 200+ transfer cohort and they don’t have any guaranteed transfer option and they don’t tend to favor CC applicants.
Yes, it is, especially if you’re a full pay transfer.
Not so sure about the “full pay” transfer comment. Vanderbilt is very good about keeping a wall between Admissions and Financial Aid. My D had no hooks and was accepted to Vanderbilt. Several days afterwards the Vanderbilt Financial Aid Office tracked her down to tell my D her mother didn’t fill out any financial aid information and advised her to do so. The amount of aid she received was fantastic!
Compared to all other schools in the country, is Vanderbilt easy to transfer into? No, a 20-25% transfer acceptance rate is still somewhat of a crapshoot, as you are more likely to be in the 80% pile that get rejected. However, compared to all the other T20 schools (and LACs of similar rigor), it is probably the easiest to transfer into. Places like WUSTL, Cornell, Notre Dame, UCLA, and UCB that have transfer acceptance rates similar to Vanderbilt all have caveats as to why their acceptance rate is seemingly high. Cornell has the TO, Notre Dame also has a pre-planned transfer agreement, and UCLA/UCB accept mostly CCC students (students outside this category have less than a 10% acceptance rate). WUSTL seems to be very need-aware for transfers–I spent my first year there and became friends with a student who transferred in, and speaking with them as I went through my own transfer process, most of the transfers they knew were also full-pay. So, if you are willing to shell-out $80k, then I guess your chances will be similar to Vandy.
Vanderbilt is need-blind for transfers, but their waitlists for both first-year and transfer students are need-aware, so keep that in mind. I was accepted this past year without filling out a FA application, but we asked to fill one out after I deposited and was actually given a decent package. Although I am not going there as I was accepted to another school I preferred more, Vandy’s transfer process seems to be relatively meritocratic.