Aside from geographics, I’m not quite sure if I should or shouldn’t lump these three together. I don’t know much about them aside from Rice… I’d love if you guys could tell me more about the school communities, academics, similarities/differences between the three schools. Thanks! 
Emory does not have engineering as a major. Vandy or Rice are probably more prestigious
Vandy and Rice are more difficult to gain admission into, and may hold more prestige, but no one hears “Emory Graduate” and wonders why they didn’t go somewhere better. Vanderbilt is a healthily mixed school in terms of campus culture from what I hear, differentiating it from a lot of elite schools is it’s political demographics (the school is nearly split 50/50 when it comes to the right versus the left). Both Emory and Vandy have lively southern cities as their homes, and if we’re going to talk about sports, Vandy itself is better at sports but Atlanta definitely is the better sports city IMO at the end of the day.
Sorry for rambling hahahaha.
Socially these schools are different. Vandy being considered the biggest party school of the bunch with a big Greek presence and a more ‘Southern’ vibe.
All three have similar prestigious, but they attract different students. Vandy looks for high ACT/SAT kids. Rice looks for the real intellecutal students. while Emory looks at the well rounded student.
Emory has a business school for undergraduates, the others dont
The others have undergrad engineering, Emory doesnt
Rice mostly recruits to Dallas/Houston
Vanderbilt is really scattered
Emory mostly recruits to Atlanta/Miami
@FreaksAndGeeks hey! question: by “the real intellectual students” do you mean students with high GPAs or students who simply display high interest for learning?
BTW love your icon! haha
Oops didnt mean to right that. Meant to write REALLY intellectual students, not real. That’s is just the atmosphere of the school. Other comparable atmospheres i’d compare to rice’s would be CMU and Chicago. By that i mean students who display a really high interest for learning.
@FreaksAndGeeks can you link me some more info about Rice? It’s really somewhere I want to go, and I think I can show love for learning with my self-studied research papers. What other qualities do they really look for?
also they like community college transfers? I didn’t do too well in high school due to bullying, people would call me ‘retarded’ all of the time (i dont like that word, but quoting what they said)… do they look for these extenuating circumstances and forgive applicants if they’ve done well in community college?