If you ever find the time, do keep us updated with your actual college preparation and college life. I’ll be lookinf forward to posts from “survivorfan” 
In the meanwhile, I wish you all the best at Vanderbilt.
Wow. The fact that you were able to resist the “hot girls” pitch shows that you may have a more detailed thought process than myself, lol. But for real, this was a very intriguing read. I’ll definitely chronicle my decision like this next year. Congrats on Vandy
What a fun read. Thank you for posting.
For some strange reason, my dad, completely unprompted, called the Duke admissions office recently, five months after the rejection. He asked them why I was rejected and told me that the call was to “see if I can make a donation and get you in”. But, why now? I think that he thought that the fact that I got into Vanderbilt could be used as ammunition. Of course, nothing changed, though they did offer an explanation: my SAT score (2310) was not enough to set off my somewhat low for Duke GPA and that it was not a difficult decision at all. Part of me also wonders if having our valedictorian apply ED as well may have hurt me (he got in). Our Naviance says that they have accepted exactly one student from my school several years in a row.
But, I think that Vanderbilt puts more weight on the SAT score in general, which probably helped me. Their average scores are slightly higher than Duke’s, despite having a higher acceptance rate and being considered easier to get into. I think that my profile just was more weighted to what Vandy wants. Also, I am the only person going to Vanderbilt from my school, so they probably wanted to maintain some sort of relationship with my school.
But, I want to make it clear that I had nothing to do with my dad’s desperate attempt.
Hopefully you are more ethical than your dad, assuming he really did call with that intent.
I want to post my thoughts now that it has been a while since I had to make any decision about colleges.
My biggest concerns with choosing Vanderbilt over Alabama were that Alabama had the edge in sports culture, first-year dorms, and has better politics and weather. Without turning this into an Alabama-bashing post (as I did like the school enough to at one point plan to go there), I will explain why I am comfortable and happy with my decision to go to Vandy.
Probably the biggest downside for me was the loss of the possibility of winning national championships in football. Call me crazy, but college football and basketball are huge parts of my life and things that I pay attention to year round (and spend all day Saturdays from September to March watching). But, Vanderbilt is in the SEC and has a very vibrant sports culture. The football team is not going to be ranked #1 in the country in the foreseeable future, but it has finished in the Top 25 two years in a row. The coach left, but there is genuine excitement for the new coach. In addition, Vanderbilt is better than Alabama at basketball. Two years ago, we beat Kentucky to win the SEC Tournament (and that was the year that UK was dominant and won it all). The baseball team is on the verge of winning the National Championship, being undefeated in the College World Series thus far. I will be just fine sports wise in Nashville, which also hosts the SEC Basketball Tournament and has pro teams (though, I will always be a Phillies and Eagles fan!).
The dorms are nicer at Bama for one year, but then you pretty much have to move off campus, while at Vandy, you can (or really have to) live on campus all four years, in much nicer dorms eventually. Being on-campus will increase involvement in the school and really give me that classic college feel. Vanderbilt is also by far the most Conservative of the top 20 schools. While it is not quite as Conservative as Alabama, it does appear to be very friendly to Conservatives (and actually is one of the few colleges with a higher Conservative score than Liberal score on that other site). Most polling suggests that about 50% (some say a little more, some a little less) of the students are Republicans, which is excellent for a top-tier university. I talked (online) to the head of the Republicans group (after my decision) and she really made it sound like Vandy is a right-leaning place. Yes, the weather is not as nice as Alabama’s, but the winters are still 5-10 degrees warmer than what I am used to. That is a small tradeoff for going to an elite university in a very interesting location with a great student life.
Another concern was the lack of an undergraduate business school, but after picking classes, I am realizing that it is a blessing in disguise and that (as an Econ and Spanish double-major), I can take relevant and interesting classes from a variety of subject areas. They do even have management classes (though, you cannot major in it), but I will have to take that next semester. I will still be able to get my MBA eventually to have that more business-focused education, but Vandy prepares students well for business.
However, there are a few things that I would do differently next time:
<ol>
<li>Eliminate all LACs (Davidson, Rhodes, F&M)- nothing against them, but they are not the right fits for me</li>
<li>Not apply to Wharton, as I can say that, had I gotten in, I wouldn’t have wanted to go there, but would have felt pressure to.</li>
<li>Not apply to Drexel and Bucknell- I knew deep down that I would never go to a school without a real campus or college community or one that was too isolated</li>
<li>I had no reason to apply to Oklahoma or Baylor. I had enough safeties, and they did not offer anything that others did not.</li>
<li>After taking off those 8 schools, I would have added UVA and Wake Forest, to give more options in the match to reach range that would both be good potential fits</li>
<li>Apply ED2 to Vandy after the Duke rejection, as I don’t think I would have had to wait for the waitlist had I given them a commitment a bit earlier.</li>
</ol>
My list would have been:
Duke (ED)- Reach- Reject
Vandy (ED2)- (Low) Reach- Accept
UVA- Low Reach- Unknown
Wake- Match- Unknown
Richmond- (Low) Match- Accept
Tulane- Safety- Accept
Alabama- Safety- Accept
Kentucky- Safety- Accept
South Carolina- Safety- Accept
Miami- Safety- Accept
I would have felt good about attending any of those 10 schools, while I can say that I wouldn’t really want to be at most of the other ones I applied to (except maybe OU, but it offered nothing that Bama, UK, or SC didn’t). After Vandy and Bama, and excluding schools I didn’t get accepted to, my next choice would have been South Carolina and then Miami.
I want to thank you all for reading about my decision process, and I will probably make another post at some point once I have been at Vandy for a little while to talk about why (I hope) it is a great place for me.
@SurvivorFan
How did your final decision end up sitting with your parents? I thought you mentioned paying full price to attend Vanderbilt would create some serious financial pressure for your mom. Did you consider that at all when making your decision? (Apologies if I’m “misremembering”!)
@LucieTheLakie
My mom told me after that she thought I made the right decision (though she still wanted me to go to SC). We are not in a position where there will be any serious financial pressure (for instance, my dad called Duke about making a presumably large donation to try to overturn a rejection). While it is more for my mom to pay her part than it is for my dad, neither side will be under too much financial strain. My dad later on tried to change history by saying that he always wanted me to choose Vandy, but I know that isn’t true. But, it seemed that what he was most looking forward to about Bama was going to the Iron Bowl, but he will have to settle for the Vandy-Tennessee game on that same day. And, we are in the College World Series Finals against Virginia.
Great thread! Really helpful!
Will be sharing your thread w DS who has a similar slate of schools, and similar issues to weigh. Thank you!
Thanks for the added details. Sounds like your family situation is a bit on the intense side. Glad everybody seems to be on the same page now that the decision is made and that you sound so happy about the final outcome. One of my son’s girlfriend’s older siblings went to Vandy and loved it.
Keep us posted after you get there to let us know how it’s going, and best of luck @SurvivorFan!
Now that I have been here at Vanderbilt for several weeks, I wanted to give an update to my decision process. I think that I made the right choice, as Vanderbilt does offer the best of both worlds (the school spirit-crazed state school and the private elite academic school). Now, don’t get me wrong- I did have higher hopes for football season than a 30-point thrashing at the hands of Temple, but maybe we come out strong against Ole Miss on Saturday. If not, at least we have the College World Series.
In terms of some of my other questions at the time of my decision, I am satisfied with the political environment here. I am in the College Republicans and Students for Life clubs here, both of which help to talk to other right-wingers. But in all seriousness, there are just as many, if not more, Conservatives as Liberals here, so it is at least better than my high school was for me. Plus, being in Tennessee and that my roommate is Republican do help.
As for the financial side, my family has not had any trouble and my parents were able to reach an agreement with each other, so no one has complained about that to me in a while, Plus, my dad and his family came down for the first time for our first football game last week and loved it, so they now really see why I made the choice I did.
Also, none of this is against Alabama, South Carolina, or any of the others. I am sure that I would have had great experiences there as well, but I am happy where I am. Nashville is also a really cool city, but I have not gotten to go into it as much as I would have liked so far. The work load is actually no worse than high school (maybe even a tiny bit less), but I just haven’t gotten off campus as much as I would have liked yet. Maybe, it is just because it is all still relatively new to us.
Anchor Down!!
As I near the end of my first semester of freshman year at Vanderbilt, I am still very confident that I made the right decision last spring. Academics are always an important consideration with a college decision, and that has probably been the biggest surprise with college. But, the surprise is that a top-20 university is considerably easier than my high school. For all of the talk about spending 2-3 hours working per hour in class, that number has probably been in the neighborhood of 15-20 minutes for me here. And, I am on pace to walk out of my first semester with a higher GPA than my UW GPA in high school. Given that Vanderbilt has not been overly difficult, I wonder if some of the other schools I was considering would have been almost too easy (though, to be fair, I do not have a full 4.0 here).
I also think that I much prefer the course offerings here to what it would have been like in a rigid program, like South Carolina’s IBA. Here, the major and minor requirements are not overly high, so I can really pursue a few different areas of interest while still getting the business background that I need. I will major in Econ and probably double major, but maybe just minor in Spanish. That mostly depends on how I like a Spanish Literature course I will take this spring- if I do a major I will have to take several more literature courses. I will also do a minor (a major is not offered) in Corporate Strategy in the Managerial Studies department and possibly a minor in Political Science, as I am very interested in politics and think the classes would be interesting.
I have also gotten very involved in Vanderbilt College Republicans. I am on their Freshman Steering Committee and in the running to be the committee’s president. Back before the elections, I was campaigning almost every day with them (either for local races or for a very controversial ballot measure in Tennessee that narrowly passed- I’d like to say it was largely because I devoted countless hours to campaigning for it in various forms). We also took a weekend trip, fully funded by the Georgia Republican Party, to Georgia to campaign (which, unfortunately, prevented the then-president and me from going to her semi-formal that she had asked me to go to) and were invited to an event in Kentucky with almost every prominent member of the KY GOP, including new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and potential Presidential Candidate Rand Paul. Another potential Presidential Candidate, in Jeb Bush, also came to campus to give a talk. We have also gotten to go to many other cool events and have had great speakers come to our meetings. Perhaps most importantly, some of my best friends are the other people on the freshman committee and the other very active members of College Republicans.
I also think that, had I gone with one of the very rigid programs, I would not have been able to get as involved in something that has meant so much to me as CR, as I would have had to devote an entire year to study abroad. International experience is still something that I would like, but, should I be named president of CR for my junior year (the president will be a junior from now on so that there is always someone with past experience to advise them), I will not be able to devote so much time to it. As of now, my plan is to study abroad in the summer one year, which is something that I could not have chosen to do in some of the other schools I was considering. Even had I gone to Alabama, I cannot imagine having been given better opportunities!
The one area where Vanderbilt has been disappointing is in football (we are 3-8 and 0-7 in SEC play). Maybe, we can win against our arch-rival, Tennessee, on Saturday, but even if we do not, it is still only one thing. Also, it’s not like South Carolina or Miami have had banner years, either (but, Alabama is currently ranked #1). But, our baseball team is the defending national champion, and our basketball team is undefeated so far this year! Even if we have not been winning, the football games have still been a lot of fun! I even made the trip to Athens for our game at Georgia, which was a lot of fun, even though we lost.
Finally, even though it is not all-you-can-eat, the food is really good here! I love living in Nashville and in the South, in general. As I suspected during my college decision, Vanderbilt is just a great mix of some of everything I wanted!
^^
With the way the Vols have been playing under new QB Joshua Dobbs, it would be a miracle if Vandy pulls out a win against them.
@NoVADad99
One can only hope- and they did lose to Mizzou last week, so they are not unbeatable. I’m looking forward to the game Saturday, whatever happens.
Dude, how much money does your dad make? He offered you 20 grand to PICK his school and tried to bribe Duke to get you in?
Let me bump this thread one last time to reiterate what a great place Vandy is and how happy I am with my decision. As I mentioned somewhere before, it really has a little of everything that I wanted in my college selection process- good academics, fun sports, political leanings, location, campus, etc. I got extremely involved in College Republicans, and I will be the only sophomore on the executive board next year! I also am on the Vandy Fanatics committee, which plans events and giveaways to get students excited about sports games and even takes us on bus trips to some away football games.
Academically, to be honest, it was easier than I expected. My GPA is 3.61, only held down because I was convinced to take Portuguese, which was a tough class for me. In fact, the second semester was the first time in my life that I made A-range in every class, and I worked less than an hour per day outside of class! Nashville is a really great city as well, but I love being separate from the city, so I still feel like I am on a college campus, rather than thrown into the middle of a city. The other thing I voiced concern about last year was being able to have a social life that did not revolve around partying, and I think that the degree of my involvement in organizations like College Republicans (by the way, I am interning for the College Republican National Committee this summer) has given me a group of friends that makes it so that I have no reason to join a frat or go to parties, which are just not my thing at all.
THANK YOU so much for the update SurvivorFan, it is always a treat when students explain where they are after one year in college and if they are still happy with their choice. 
Yes, nice to get an update!
Awesome update, glad you enjoyed Year 1 at Vandy!!
I haven’t checked in here for a year and a half, but I was just thinking about it for some reason, so I’m going to update y’all (if anyone who was here in the spring of 2014 is still around this site)! After I had to guess about 5 passwords to get on, that is!!
So, I am officially double majoring in economics and Spanish and double minoring in political science and corporate strategy (which actually make a lot of sense combined in my head, even if they seem very different) at Vanderbilt. Actually, last fall, I took a class on Spanish for Business and Economics which really tied everything together nicely. At least as of last year, that professor was planning to offer a “Maymester” class this upcoming May to Chile to study the topic further. If she does, I will try to do that, as I have prioritized leadership in student organizations over spending a whole semester abroad.
I never did wind up becoming the chair of the College Republicans, but I still serve as an adviser on the executive board, and I both resurrected the Students for Life, which is now going strong with new leadership, and I started another conservative group (Young Americans for Freedom (part of Young America’s Foundation)) that tends to be a little bolder in fighting for the values that Ronald Reagan stood for.
We may have had more disappointments than successes in sports over the last couple years, but the games have been a highlight of my time here. I guess baseball has been really good, almost repeating 2014’s national championship in 2015. Basketball did sneak into the NCAA Tournament last year despite a lot of fans predicting a lot more than that. However, storming the court after beating Kentucky might have been the highlight of my time here so far. I’m in charge of planning the Fanatics tailgate for our game against Florida in a couple weeks, and we’re leading a bus trip for students to go to the game at Auburn in early November.
The biggest change between me of a couple years ago and me now is that I am, believe it or not, even more passionate about politics now. I did another internship in Washington this past summer, in an economic department at The Heritage Foundation. I don’t necessarily think that I want to work fall time in politics (although I do want to run for office later in life), but both internships have been related to business/economics, so I hope they will help me find a job in just a year and a half. I also host a conservative talk radio show on campus, which is a lot of fun for me, especially when I have a guest.
I’m happy to be back here for my junior year, but this past summer was also the best summer of my life, so I really miss it and all of the people! Fortunately, there is a huge conservative conference in February that many (most?) politically active young conservatives go to, so hopefully we will all see each other again then!!
Hope everyone is doing well!!