<p>May or may not be two regularly compared schools, but I'm a current Vandy student who's considering applying as a transfer to UT for spring 2011. My biggest reason is homesickness--I'm 11 hours from home (Dallas), and that's really hurt my grades at school. I'm a mechE major, so my GPA is pretty important to future employers, and I think that, after adjusting to college life, my desire to see my family impacted my grades the most. (In fact, I had a panic attack or two in April after I hadn't seen them since I returned to school in January.) I'm very close to my family, so it's been hard being far.</p>
<p>That being said, Vandy is a top-20 school. I have a lot of friends who live in Austin, so I'm not too worried about the social aspect at either school; actually, most other important things are ceteris paribus, so I'm mostly just worried about academics. Would I be hurting myself by transferring out? Do yall have any maybe pros and cons of each that could help me decide whether to make the move?</p>
<p>Oh, and my parents are paying about $5k/semester at Vandy, and with the Texas Tomorrow Fund, UT would be really, really cheap for me. That being said, they told me to not take finances into account for my decision, because they can handle the Vanderbilt tuition, although the extra money would be nice to have.</p>
<p>MechE at UT is top 10 in the country. I don’t even know what Vandy is ranked.</p>
<p>How are your grades looking? Last time I spoke to an advisor (2 months ago) he told me that Cockrell is looking for around a 3.7 GPA.</p>
<p>If you can’t handle the pressure being away from your parents or home town even just for Uni then you never will… how would you cope in a working environment?</p>
<p>I don’t know you personally, you’re a better judge on deciding whether or not this is such a big deal. Can you cope with your homesickness or is it effecting your grades that much? Have you tried remedies which might help?</p>
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<p>Haha, I transferred to Vandy last fall and I, too, missed Texas. If you are confident that you’d like to work in Texas, I’d probably transfer. UT > Vandy in Texas. </p>
<p>When I looked for internships this spring through the careerlink, there weren’t really that many internships in D/FW. In the end, I found my internship through the UCAN network, but it’s only so-so and it’s not the kind of internship that leads to a full-time job offer.</p>
<p>I can live on my own without my parents, but the fact that I couldn’t see them had I needed to was the problem. I don’t know, maybe I’m just overemphasizing that point in my post/to myself.</p>
<p>In terms of GPA, that’s where I head into a problem. I’m only at about a 3.0 cumulative, and I think I’ll do much better next semester, but they won’t take those grades into account for transfer admissions, right? I suppose the ironic thing is that I got into Cockrell Honors as an incoming freshman, with merit aid, and now I probably can’t even get into it regularly. Oh well.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses :)</p>
<p>Oh and how much would my high school stats be taken into account? I had a 4.0 at a competitive public high school, graduated top 3%, and had a 2110 SAT/34 ACT, if it still matters.</p>
<p>Well you could stay at Vandy and complete calc 3, diff eq., linear algebra, engineering physics 1-2, and some lower level engineering courses. That might give you enough time to get your GPA up.</p>
<p>Then again if you’re truly homesick and you want to get to UT asap I suppose you could risk applying to the college of liberal arts (supposedly easier to transfer to) and applying for internal transfer to Cockrell after accumulating 24 credits. However there’s no guarantee that you’ll get accepted. Plus the ME stats for fall '10 internal transfer are just ridiculous.</p>
<p>I don’t see you getting into Cockrell with a 3.0 unless you’re a URM.</p>
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<p>apply to UT if you’re really homesick. UT will not auto-reject you because mech-E is known as a difficult major</p>
<p>^average transfer gpa for UT is like a 3.5-6 and they don’t care whether it comes from a CC or Vandy</p>
<p>i had a cousin with a similar situation as u, he got into ucla with a scholarship and aid but decided to attend washu instead…he started feeling homesick and had a 3.0 at washu his second year. after his second year he decided to apply to ucla again and wrote an essay about how being away from his girlfriend and family was affecting his grades and he promised to do better in ucla…and they admitted him</p>
<p>Hey I thought about Vandy to UT Austin last year!</p>
<p>My advice is to for sure apply to UT, but at least for me, when you’re looking at that acceptance letter to transfer and you keep hearing the name Vanderbilt in your head… It’s a hard change to actually make. Cause like you said… it’s Vanderbilt.</p>