I’ve decided to share about my experience with Vanderbilt social life because nowhere else before coming to the school did I hear anything remotely close to the truth. I am a senior, and if it wasn’t for how absolutely outstanding the academics are, I would have transferred sophomore year.
Let me reiterate what you have probably heard about Vanderbilt social life: work hard play hard, non-exclusive fraternities, the Commons Experience. All of those things are somewhat true. Let’s start with Commons- it’s awesome. I loved it and made most of my current friends from it. The fraternities are definitely pretty exclusive but it’s not too hard to make friends with people who join them and still be able to go to their events.
I had no interest in the Vanderbilt fraternities. Why? Vanderbilt loves to say how they are an SEC school like that somehow means something for their fraternities, but they actually suck. Imagine 60 guys thinking their small house is on the same level as an Alabama fraternity and centering their whole world around it. I know this is essentially what all frats are like, but the difference at other schools is at least they have the power they think they do. At Vanderbilt they act the same but it’s all steam. Quite the turn off to a social aspect that is almost half of the schools social life.
What about the rest of the school? How is that social life? I can only describe it as high school 2.0. I grew up around a big southern school and experienced social life there all through high school. Imagine my surprise when I get to Vanderbilt and it’s more like my small high school than the actual college. 1600 people per grade sounds like a lot, but within a few months you pretty much recognize everyone. Everyone forms their cliques and you pretty much get locked into the friends. The gossip and exclusivity feels like a large high school. It’s almost a chore to make friends. And then rush comes around and half your guy friends leave for pledging which you’ll never speak to them again after because they think their fraternity is the world. Then soon after half your girl friends join their sorority to the same effect.
It’s really like a big high school. That’s what happens when you mix such smart kids with the opportunity of an SEC school. They adopt the SEC status and it inflates their ego. The social life here, at best, is a C. The problem is that somehow everyone gets brainwashed that pong in the basement twice a week is an A+ event. It’s so incredibly lame compared to other schools it’s not even funny.
You should still consider Vanderbilt, don’t get me wrong. Just realize that the social life is much more academically centered than partying centered. Most of my good remaining friends are from classes. The partying is elementary. The people who rave about it are like the jocks in high school- just blowing hot air.
IMO, your opening salvo is so seriously flawed that it renders whatever salient points you try to make appear as meaningless rantings. Therefore, I took the liberty of purposing an alternate statement.
Vandy has lots of happy students and rates among the highest for happy students. Sorry you didn’t have the social experience you wanted. Sounds like you should have gone to a big party school instead. I’ve never heard Vandy described like that by anyone and I know lots of students who loved their experience there. Your mistake, imo.
For the record, Vanderbilt is a great choice school. I could not be any happier with the academics. I just feel like the social aspect is widely misrepresented to people who don’t go there, and that’s why I made this post, to explain a little more of what it’s actually like. I know I didn’t highlight any in my post but there are good social aspects as well.
Thanks Vandytruth, it’s nice to read opinions about social life on this site - IN MY OPINION - they are few and far between. Social life is something that is presented in a carefully cultivated way by the colleges themselves and even by the student panels that are available virtually these days. If you don’t personally know anyone attending a school, it’s hard to determine this very important component of college life for a school like Vanderbilt that is part of the SEC. Your comments may help future students - either moving Vanderbilt up their list or down depending upon their particular desires for social life.
I agree. Several kids would do anything to attend Vandy, myself included. I have not heard one single negative thing about it, and if there was something negative said, that person ended up transferring.
@vandytruth What is there to not love about Vandy? I mean, they’re located in Nashville, and they have something called “Dine in Nashville” where you can meet several people in Nashville at local restaurants with your friends. The competition between the commons seems really fun. Isn’t Vandy focused on community, working with others, empowering others, etc? I am sorry you may not have had the best social scene at Vandy as you probably would have at a bigger party school such as USC, UCSB, San Diego State, or all those other party schools, but I am still glad that you enjoyed the academics at Vandy. From the sounds of it, the social scene at Vandy was not necessarily for you, which is such a bummer.
I will share with you a small piece of philosophy from William James. Essentially, he claims that truth differs from person-to-person. What may be true to you may not essentially be true to another person, so I would not necessarily say that this is “the truth about Vanderbilt” because your perspective may not exactly be the same as another person’s. Is it a fact that Vanderbilt has a cliquey environment? Maybe, but I essentially believe that every college has a high-school-like aspect to it, and that is a given.
As described in the original post, Vanderbilt’s social atmosphere appears similar to that of Duke as depicted by Cohan in The Price of Silence and to that of Dupont in Wolfe’s I Am Charlotte Simmons.
Dude, the point of attending college is to learn. Saying “academically it’s great” is enough.
This idea that college has to be a Transformative Positive Social Experience is silly. You are an adult, and should be able to establish your own social life without your college providing you with a pre-prepared boxed social experience.
While it is important that the type of students who attend a college would be a good match, things like fraternities or other college-sanctioned social organizations and activities are frills and fripperies that only really exist in American colleges.
Besides:
A. it is not high school, and you are not socially limited to your cohort. You can make friends among any of the 6,000 or so students at Vanderbilt.
B. there is no way that you recognize 1,600 people within a few months.
C. about 32% of all undergraduates are in a fraternity or sorority, so that leaves many people who are not in the Greek system, Moreover, you say that half of your friends join a fraternity or a sorority, That means that half do not. I kept about 1/3 of the friends that I met in my first year of university until my last, and a couple stayed friends for a while. So half is pretty good as a social circle.
In short, there is nothing in what you describe which separates Vanderbilt from most other very popular colleges, such as Duke, as @merc81 describes.
In all honesty, what I see here is your unwillingness to either join a fraternity, to accept their presence, or to ignore them. Instead you seem to be spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about them.
OP, I’m sorry the social life at vanderbilt is something you struggle(d) with, but it does not surprise me very much. when i took my gap year, i made friends with a fantastic group of people who are part of this year’s graduating class. since vandy is only a few hours from my home, i figured i would visit them to see what the school was like and see if i wanted to try my luck and apply. long story short, as much as i love(d) them, i didn’t like the culture, and i knew it was something i would have struggled with should i have applied, gotten accepted, and potentially committed. you’re not alone, and a school’s culture can oftentimes be why a student may choose not to commit to it. other times, the culture may be why a student ends up transferring away. that’s just the way it is.
do i think you would probably have enjoyed a less academically focused school that is still very good like, say, Alabama? maybe, but I’m not you, and neither is anyone else, so it’s really not that important.
furthermore, just because you have an opinion that may differ from other people’s, it doesn’t make it any less valid or far from it being true. many of the people on this website are either adults of high achieving children, high achieving adults who genuinely want to help guide us on our post-high school journey, or high achieving students who are about to set off on their post-high school journey. in other words, most people on here do not know what it is like to be a student at vanderbilt, and what you’re saying is valuable. don’t let anyone (or any moderator) make you feel like your truth is less than the truth of those who have had a different experience.