I was accepted to Vandy as a transfer, but I am worried about how easy it is to acclimate to Vandy’s environment as a would-be junior transfer. Is it hard to make friends, join clubs/Greek life, and in general fit in well with other people at Vandy? Can other students (ideally transfers that entered as a junior) provide some input on their experiences with/as transfers?
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It’s going to be a little bit tougher as a junior. They do a reasonably good job of trying to welcome the transfers and have events/activities, but after the short orientation period, you’re kind of just treated like another random upperclassman. People are nice, but you won’t meet friends from class/dining hall/gym/dorms (that attitude sort of goes away after freshman year), and you don’t have a whole lot of time since you only have two years. You kind of just need that environment that facilitates regular social interaction to meet friends. So you’d definitely have a couple from your transfer group at least, but if you wanted to be engaged/connected on campus you should seek out a socially demanding extracurricular (greek life, an intramural/walk on sport, wilskills (outdoors club), live in Mcgill or mctyeire (dorms with specific interests/communities), etc). If you do that, it should be pretty easy to fit in.
Being a junior won’t really have any disadvantages compared to being a sophomore transfer (other than having 2 remaining years to do stuff instead of 3). Although, some of the “top tier” greek orgs will be a little bit less interested in taking junior pledges, especially if they don’t really take a substantial class in the fall semester, so you might have to settle for being in a little bit “lower” of a group than where you would naturally fit.
One of my best friends transferred in as a junior! She had no problem finding friends; it really just matters that you get involved in clubs and find people you mesh with!