<p>My current college doesn't have distribution requirements. This year, which is my first, I chose to take classes confined to three subjects (a total of 2 foreign language classes, 2 religion classes, and 4 English classes). Is it likely that I won't get sophomore standing at Vandy because my classes weren't as diverse as those of other freshmen?</p>
<p>I believe sophomore standing will be based on hours earned. However, when S was going through in the days of CPLE (precursor to AXLE which now establishes gen ed requirements), you received a letter prior to your junior year letting you know if you were deficient in certain requirements. You’ll want to carefully monitor your progress, using the Black Book (VU catalogue), your advisor, your online access to your records, and the registrar’s office to see what it required to make sufficient academic progress. Be very careful to keep everything. D has had to work with registrar’s office three times to get a class noted as meeting the AXLE requirement which no longer meets that requirement, but did at the time she took it. Always retain e-mail correspondence and print as well. Never throw away the print materials they give you about graduation requirements until the diploma is in your hands!</p>
<p>If you’re in A&S, you should be in contact with Molly Thompson about this, and Janelle Rein if you’re in Peabody! How they evaluate transfer credit is they will request that you send a course description and syllabus for every class you took at your old school (ahh…start collecting those now!), and then they distribute the syllabi to the department chairs (in your case, foreign language, religion, and english), and they evaluate whether Vanderbilt offers classes that are equivalent.</p>
<p>If they deem your classes to be equivalent, they will give you “equivalent credit” for them, and assign you credit for the Vanderbilt class that is equal. This credit can potentially count toward a major, minor, or AXLE requirements. However, if they don’t see enough similarity between the classes you took and the classes Vandy offers they will give you “non-equivalent credit” which means that your hours come in as elective, and do not count towards a major, minor, or AXLE requirement.</p>
<p>For me, I spent 5 quarters at my old school (over 75 quarter hours!), and Vandy decided that only NINE hours were worth anything, and the other 60 are “non-equivalents.” Because of this, I lost junior standing and have become a 21-year old 3rd-year sophomore, haha. But it’s okay because I’d be depressed if I only had one more year here!!</p>
<p>I would like to point out however that my situation is, for some reason, MUCH worse than everyone else I seem to know. Most of my transfer friends only lost a few credit hours and came in at the right standing. I think it is because my old school was on quarters vs. semesters so I got 2.7 hours instead of 3 for all of my classes, which is not good enough to be equivalent. Don’t worry about the diversity of your classes, what matters is whether or not Vanderbilt offers comparable classes. Feel free to PM me if you have more questions…I’m VERY familiar with the transfer credit evaluation process!
Mal :)</p>