Hi,
I’m a prospective Vandy female engineering student (class of 2020) living in Nashville. VU is my number one school by far. 
Unfortunately, I have no summer
research experience unlike many other applicants. (Vanderbilt had a program but it just did not work with my already full summer). 
I have many other credentials such as founding an engineering service project, (projected) National Merit Scholar, 35 ACT, top of my class, many different service opportunities, and a counselor at an engineering camp.
Will this lack of research be a huge hinderence to my acceptance?
Thanks so much!
Apply ED and get some good rec letters and I think you will be fine.
Unfortunately I don’t think I will be able to apply ED because I don’t have enough money to go there out of pocket if the aid falls through… Although I would love to apply ED
Research experience is very rare amongst high school students. Don’t worry about it.
Your family should take a close look at Vanderbilt’s net price calculator to see what Vandy would cost you. Then you could decide if ED is a good move.
Agreed… our FA was more generous than we had hoped.
@Pancaked since you seem so knowledgeable on the subject of Vanderbilt, I have another question for you
My school offers about 10 AP Courses that change from year to year…
By the time I graduate, I will have taken 5 of these AP Courses, every honors that is available, and 4 semesters of college courses at Lipscomb University in an actual college classroom.
The reason I did not take more of these AP Courses is because they were not relevant to my major, electrical engineering. (The other courses were AP Art, AP Macro, APUSH, AP Government, and AP Psychology.) Will Vanderbilt Admissions take this into account?
I’m not a part of admissions at all but I’ll say what I do know.
Your counselor fills out this form for the CommonApp and something similar for other applications:
http://www.du.edu/apply/media/documents/2012CASSR.pdf (look at the second page).
It is up to your counselor to decide how rigorous your schedule was compared to others at your school. That’s what’s important, really. Not the exact number you took out of those available, but that you took a very demanding workload relative to your peers and performed well. Colleges certainly don’t expect you to take every single AP course available to you.
I definitely wouldn’t make an excuse for it anywhere in your application – not only is it unnecessary, but Vanderbilt strives to provide a balanced liberal arts education, and wouldn’t want to hear an applicant say they avoided certain courses that were not relevant to their prospective major.