Exactly. We still don’t know this student’s unweighted GPA, nor rigor, nor number of core courses, etc.
Recommendations for application strategy might be very different if he has a 3.6 vs 3.8 as an example…knowing this info as well as other schools on the list would be very helpful as well.
I don’t think the OP needs to give us any more information! The Board has answered the question asked. OP did not ask about Plan B’s, or the likelihood of getting into Vanderbilt.
I for one would never give every bit of information about my kid/family/admissions process, understanding that the replies I might get on CC will not be taking everything into account.
The OP did state that her son attends a “college prep, well-respected HS”. As such, especially if it is a school with little grade inflation, there is a good chance sharing his GPA would be totally unhelpful. Often GPAs are best considered within the context of ones’ own school. Naviance, if available, can be helpful along with the college counselor’s opinion, which seems to be somewhat encouraging in this case.
There’s very little to gain by doing ED. Seriously, take some time to actually shop around. All bachelors degrees have virtually the same accreditation. Once you compare what you’re actually getting for the money, you’ll see what a poor value most private schools are. The real value is in a scholarship.
I’m not sure if you heard but Vanderbilt now super scores, so guessing your son would have a 35. If he has an otherwise strong application and works hard on essays, it seems like he will have a reasonable chance for ED. Best of luck! My S19 is very happy there so far. He was accepted RD but says almost all his friends did ED.
@Middling I totally get where you are coming from. I lost sleep myself going back and forth about ED1, ED2, EA, RD strategies.
My two daughters attend Vanderbilt right now. No hooks.
One of my second daughter’s 4.0 U/W GPA friends was devastated when she was denied by Vanderbilt, Northwestern and Harvard, yet she ended up matriculating at Stanford! It only takes one!
When my eldest was a freshman in high school, I received great advice from a good friend who had 3 daughters attending Duke, Harvard and Stanford. No lie.
I said, “Alrighty, you must have the secret sauce for college apps. What is it?”
She replied, "My daughter at Harvard was rejected by Duke and Stanford. My 2nd daughter at Stanford was similarly rejected by the other two. The same for the third who attends Duke.
“If your child meets all the acceptance criteria it only gets her a seat at the Top 20 poker table. After that, it is literally a crapshoot. Just do your very best to let your kid like a bunch of elite universities without letting them fall madly in love with a single one.”
My daughters were accepted to some and they were denied by others. Some were headscratchers, but who cares? My daughters were jumping around in a cloud when each was accepted to Vanderbilt. In the end, they are ecstatic to attend Vanderbilt and so am I. Vanderbilt has taken such great care of them, I feel I owe the university for life.
Do your best to encourage your son to like a handful of schools that are reach and match and hopefully find a safety he can live with, but let him take a rip at the Vanderbilt ED1 app if he’d like, because you can’t roll the dice if you don’t step up to the table of life.
My kid spent 70% of his time and effort on REA application to his dream college, 25% on his applications to his match colleges using similar essays as his dream school ones and 5% on his true safeties with merit moneys. Worked out for him. Once he got into his dream school, he did not apply to any more schools because I told him not to waste time deciding among top schools if he got in, and getting into multiple top 10 schools can be a bad thing. We also had no hesitation asking a gap year from his dream college when a great opportunity opened up after he got in.
This is the often quoted fallacy given by parents who never planned for paying for their kids college education and are at the mercy of mostly lower quality colleges begging for high stat kids that are in mostly undesirable locations
You lose all credibility when you say all bachelor degrees are the same. If that’s your benchmark just go to a community college for 2 years and transfer to your cheapest in state public university as you have received the exact same education and will have the same career outcomes as someone attending a Top 20 college like Vanderbilt, or Princeton, or MIT, etc.
Look up the definition of “rationalization”, it’s very revealing…
OP said V is his top choice. What point in dismissing ED, for that family?
Maybe your feeling that V isn’t worth it will be part of your own directions. But it’s not OP’s situation.
That was pretty much my dd’s experience. In at Michigan and Wash U. Waitlisted at Vandy. Chose a different school all together!
Vandy is your kid’s top choice.
Vandy is affordable for you.
Right?
So…what are you worried about in terms of ED? Are you worried he won’t get accepted? Sheesh. Let him apply. And see.
Have him complete his other applications as well. If he gets accepted to Vandy, he can withdraw the others. If not, he is good to go on the rest of his application list.