<p>I've been accepted as a transfer student to Vanderbilt's college of Arts and Science as a math major for fall 2009 from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. The average GPA at Rose is about a 3.1; mine was a 3.73, but that GPA came from nearly all math, physics and computer science courses (I only took one humanities course my freshman year).</p>
<p>I'm honestly concerned about the difficulty at Vanderbilt. I'm not too worried about the math courses there since I did fine at Rose, but the non-math courses scare me. I only got a 660 in my SAT verbal and a 600 in my SAT writing, which is well below average at Vanderbilt, I believe.</p>
<p>Anyway, I was wondering specifically what the average Vanderbilt GPA is and how most professors curve. I tried googling this and found some contradictory information. Apparently the average GPA at Vanderbilt is a 3.2 (~3.1 for men and ~3.3 for women, I think it was). But I also read in a couple of places that Vanderbilt professors tend to curve the classes so that half the class has a B- (2.7) or better and half the class has a C+ (2.3) or worse. If the latter is true, then the average GPA should be around a 2.5 at Vanderbilt (if the remaining grades are fitted to a bell curve).</p>
<p>Not that it’s a big difference or anything, but the average GPA for 2008 was a low 3.3.</p>
<p>Honestly, a 660 Verbal is really good and while I don’t have the numbers in front of me, I’d venture to say that your Verbal score is just barely below the average for Vandy, which I’m guessing would be mid to high 600s if you include all the 2010, 11, 12 and 13ers scores. I think most transfers are a little intimidated at first because you hear about all the grade deflation hoopla and how hard Vandy is, but I think that once you finally get there, you’ll realize that it’s not as bad as you expected.</p>
<p>According to:
[Vanderbilt</a> University: RE:VU - Quick facts about Vanderbilt University](<a href=“http://www.vanderbilt.edu/facts.html]Vanderbilt”>http://www.vanderbilt.edu/facts.html)</p>
<p>For incoming freshmen:
SAT I-verbal mid 50% range: 650-740</p>
<p>I’m very close to that bottom 25%… But I know test scores and numbers aren’t everything.</p>
<p>On a slightly different note, can anyone attest to the curving system at Vanderbilt? i.e. whether or not some professors curve to a low B/high C?</p>
<p>Honestly, the bell curve is hardly used at all in my opinion. Different professors have different curving methods (I refer to it as scaling because basically they adjust the grading scale). I think curving/scaling is most prevalent in math and science courses. I don’t think you’ll find it as much in other disciplines but that’s just from my experience.</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d worry about the test score thing much. I never even took the SAT. You should be fine.</p>