Also greek life does not segregate by race based on my experience as a minority. Although I’m not sure if I’m going to pledge (large time commitment v gpa, still uneven with my time management), my experience has been pretty good.
Doesnt matter that much if Vandy gives A- when the average grade in premed prereqs is a 77.
Also, my brother goes to my state school and I’ve seen all of his tests. It’s a joke compared to Vandy. The reason state schools have such low GPAs is because so many of the students are just there to party and have fun. Like I said, if youre smart enough to get into Vandy, youre smart enough to get a high GPA at a state school.
“Is a proton positive or negative?”
As for med school there are many things you must consider and plan for. Yes, if you come from a state with top state schools or from a noncompetitive state your state schools are probably OK. In VA, UVA, VA tech, and W&M are excellent but the grading scale is also difficult. In SC, Clemson and USC are fine. Avoid the weak and unranked state and private schools.
Lefty on the other hand comes from an ultra competitive state that sends thousands of students to elite universities. Their med schools will have thousands of applicants from elite U’s so his state schools are not good options to maximize his chance of med school acceptance. To make things worse he is an over represented minority at a time when med schools want their students to resemble the racial mix of our country. So the bar is set very, very high for lefty. I don’t think his state U’s are his best option. He needs to look for a top 30 U.
The good news at Vandy is students with >3.3 and MCAT >30 have an 83% acceptance rate. That is pretty good. Furthermore, Vandy sends 160-175 graduates a year, 10-12% of the graduating class, to med school. Again that is excellent. Most state U’s struggle to graduate 40% of their class in 4 years. Attending an academically enriched university will help with MCAT’s the same way attending an academically enriched high school helps with SAT’s. Also, happy students make good students.
Other great options are top 30 U’s with massive grade inflation. Brown, Yale, Harvard, Stanford and difficult to get into, but if you do, and you show up on exam days, and spell your name correctly on the test you are pretty much guaranteed a 3.65+ GPA. These U’s are great for pre-meds. Avoid MIT, Princeton, UofC, Cal B, WFU, BU, BC, JHU, & GA tech.
This has been brought up a bunch of times on this forum so I don’t have the energy to argue with everything Derp said. He/she clearly has a very negative view regarding inclusion on campus but that’s not reflective of the entire student body. Vanderbilt certainly has work to do (particularly in drawing in more non-international minorities which will help them build a critical mass), but many of Derp’s views of the school are exaggerated or unfounded.
I will say that the idea that minorities students are all are at the rec on the weekends because they cannot get into fraternity parties is absolutely absurd. It shows just how little you understand these students that you’d even suggest that. I had the pleasure of working with a few Malaysian students on two engineering projects so I got at least a glimpse into their culture/perspective.
Malaysian students gather at the rec on weeknights because they enjoy playing soccer/badminton on the courts and that constitutes a great weekend night for them. Not to mention, the rec is pretty empty at those times (no rec league/pickup basketball hogging the courts). Most of these students don’t have ANY interest in attending a fraternity party because it’s just so far detached from their culture. I’m sure you can imagine how a Malaysian girl who is wearing her hijab and refraining from alcohol consumption wouldn’t have fun at a fraternity party, where the general behavior is fairly immoral/inappropriate. That said, a Malaysian coming to a fraternity party would be held to the exact same standards as anyone else (do you know anyone here, did you come with girls, etc).
The Malaysian students are somewhat of an anomaly on campus. There is a language barrier than can make it a challenge to work/study with them. They remain in their own social groups and don’t speak English when socializing.
I will repeat that the number of minority students we see joining fraternities/sororities are reflective of the number we see signing up for the rush process in the first place. The notion that Greek orgs are filtering these students out is simply not true. In fact, to my knowledge, every girl who joins rush is actually guaranteed a bid at a sorority. What is true is that minority students choose to rush with lower frequency. There are surely a number of reasons for this. The fact Greek life is predominantly white certainly turns some students off. You also have to consider that cultural/socioeconomic differences make Greek life unattractive to some students, as explained above. There are also other organizations that seek out minority students and pull them away from Greek life.
The only way you’ll get an honest answer is by asking a minority. Whites (both students and parents) will paint the rosiest picture you can imagine. Email members of SACE and see what they say. I bet you it’s closer to what derp says than what any white student on this website will say.
So ultimately, I 100% agree with derp and I have no idea who he/she is. Vanderbilt is for white students. They know it, the minorities know it, and anyone who says otherwise is fooling themselves.
I can agree with criticisms of Vanderbilt that are focused on issues of racial inclusivity. As I have said before, a large part of Vanderbilt’s culture is greek life, which is a product of affluent white culture. This results in a form of implicit rather than explicit discrimination where some minorities are not comfortable participating in greek life, and are therefore left out of the social mainstream. Segregation and diversity are real issues that can be productively addressed. It is a good idea to get a variety of opinions from groups like SACE.
However, I fundamentally disagree with the universal “laws” like the ones handed down by derp and just above by VandyDone. They are just plain intellectually dishonest. They distill all the intricacies in the variance of human lives down to simplistic axioms of “You either agree with my one sentence black and white rule, or you’re a liar/stupid.” Just a few posts above, Suffer posted his perspective as a minority student that was less negative. Apparently his opinion is not worth anything, and can be ignored and marginalized. I showed some of these posts to a friend who is a non-greek minority, and he was actually quite angry that some individuals have decided to speak for the entire minority opinion and are actively discouraging prospective students from looking at the school. Racial issues should be addressed, but there are more honest and less exaggerated methods of doing so.
lefty163, don’t fret about all this now. See where you get in and then go with your best financial deal and instincts. Mother of a Duke 09 and a Vandy 13 grad. Emphasis on FINANCIAL DEAL esp if you have graduate school aspirations. Duke son liked being a member of the Duke Symphony but got a huge kick out of Blue Devil sports and all the great male and female athlete scholars on campus. Vandyson rarely attended sporting events, had zero interest in anything Fratty, and was busy night and day with friends and activities.
You have zero to worry about re competitiveness at Duke in bio/premed majors. You will have to work your tail off in either program to make it to med school. If you are admitted to both or to either school, and you make sacrifices in your social life to hit the books from day one you can make it! (Both of my sons stumbled in year one and had to retake one class each due to poor time management in a difficult semester…but hey…everyone at Vandy has the goods if they have decent health and very very good study skills.) My Duke son graduated with plenty of Bs and Cs and still thinks it was worth every second to be working next to many brilliant students. In fact, I think he learned more re how to manage his life and his ambitions and his time from his classmates than from his teachers. Mid sized universities are like that. Access to teachers ranges from Eehh…to very good.
both of my sons, no matter how up or down their personal performance was in a class never had anything but praise for the quality of teaching. Both did remedial work at least once. (all par for the course!)
I’m another minority and I agree with derp and VandyDone. The south/Vanderbilt is not for minorities.
However, I do admit that your opinion is completely contingent on what race you are. Like VandyDone said, the white students will make their best attempt to make Vanderbilt look like the perfect social school, and minorities will dispute that because of their experiences. It’s a bit hard to explain, but white students and minority students live in completely different worlds in Vanderbilt. Their entire mindset/perspective is different. It’s like asking a 5 year old rich kid and a 5 year old kid living in Africa what their biggest problems are. The African kid will probably say hunger/thirst, but the rich kid will literally have no idea what he’s talking about. They live in two different worlds. The problems of one are not understood by the other.
However, OP said that he was a minority, so it probably is best if he gets the opinions of other minority students who have actually gone through life as a minority student. It’s easy to just observe the Vanderbilt social scene as a white student and make assumptions that everything is going great, but it’s completely different if you’re a minority who actually has to go through that themselves.
I’m getting a lot of mixed reviews from both minorities and non minorities here. It seems as though it really depends on how you make it, although minorities seem to have to try a bit harder to fit in and make their lives comfortable.
^That is the best possible summary of life at Vanderbilt, and at most schools where minorities make up such a small percentage of the student body. You will find minority students who are totally immersed in Vanderbilt’s social scene, and others who feel left out and cast aside. There are minority students who don’t feel any different than the rest of the student body, and those that feel like they don’t belong. Of course, these feelings are not unique to minority students and can be felt by anyone of any ethnicity at any college.
I feel like I’m seeing too many negative posts on this forum for some time now. I’m a minority (and an international student) on campus, and while I cannot speak for everyone, I can assure you that there are plenty of opportunities to become friends with people from all backgrounds, and find your niche here. Not everything is perfect, but it certainly isn’t as dismal as you may think it is.
I feel like the comment about more diverse schools have self-segregation issues is interesting, but isn’t nuanced enough. My observation (as a person who attended one of these schools) is that typically URMs make spaces for themselves through various organizations and such but often these were relics of earlier times before ethnic diversity increased on said campuses. Outside of these organizations and even within, the social groups are pretty mixed…including Greeklife. It is after all, unavoidable if like 55-60% is Asian or of some URM/international background. The only self-segregation I sometimes observe is among Asian (including SE) internationals and this is visible when they are a huge chunk of the 20% of internationals in each class. But among domestic students, such self-segregation is less common. It may also depend on the school and what social environment students come from. Like some students from more diverse environments (say internationals or Americans who attended international schools) may self-select into similar colleges. In addition, it could be simply connected to how linked social and academic life are. For example, if they are very intermixed and friend groups are formed in classroom environments/via academics, I’m willing to bet that would yield less self-segregation. My old ochem teacher for example, now constructs what are effectively “learning teams” that are ethnically diverse (I know for a fact that this is intentional). The teams usually must complete a packet of medium level problems to earn bonus points on the exam (Idea is to prepare them in the basic/fundamental concepts by working in a group. The TA led sessions are exclusively for higher level application and conceptual problem types). This fact usually leads to more frequent study group meetings to generally review material and usually friendships. And of course, this sort of thing is very common in the smaller classrooms of the humanities and social sciences already. Idea is that, if the diversity is there, it will almost work organically especially when instructors try to create a collaborative environment. Also, more diverse schools are almost always more conscious of a need to pay attention to diversity, so often have more initiatives and organizations in places to deal with it. Sometimes this is at an administrative level and sometimes instructors (like mine) will play their own role. Like whenever you here of instructors at large or elite universities flipping science classrooms, often this is based on research that suggests that not only does everybody benefit from a high level of active learning, but that URM’s especially benefit from it (no surprise gen. chem at my school has finally been flipped).
I would also like to chime in and say that Vandy’s CC threat has and overwhelming amount of negativity in the way it describes the minority experience to the point of hyperbole. So while I will say I disagree and find Vanderbilt to be inclusive and fun, though with some minor problems, I will also say…
To prospective students: look for yourself. Check out the school on social media (there are class pages and other facebook groups), read the Inside Dore’s blogs on the admissions site (they are real students who have real diverse perspectives) or even read some of the student newspapers (Hustler, Slant, etc). At any given moment there are 6000+ undergrads an in this internet age, each one of them is recording their experience in some way. Dont let the overwhelmingly negative experiences of a few student here on CC paint your picture of a large student body with diverse attitudes and perspectives.
To my fellow Commodores: Remember that your experience is not “The Vanderbilt Experience”. We have a bad habit on campus of ending up in echo chambers, and while you accuse the white students of refusing to consider other perspectives as they tell each other that Vanderbilt is great, consider that you may be refusing to consider the positive perspectives of other minority students based on experiences you and your friends, a small subset of the population, may share. So please, share your feelings and experiences constructively with prospective students, but remember that they don’t have the opportunities or experiences on campus to contextualize your comments. If you describe a bad night or roommate conflict you have, they don’t have the knowledge of all your good nights and supportive friends to put it all in context. So give a charitable reading of the university experience, because while Vanderbilt isn’t perfect, neither is America. But in both cases, I think they are places worth living, learning, and working to make better.
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/opinion/article_b9487b0a-d26a-11e4-95c6-17d88593792f.html
“To say it differently: African-Americans victimized by Whites produced much less of a response than Whites being victimized by African-Americans. This difference indicates blatant racism. Clearly then, covert racism is alive and well even among young college students in the United States.”
http://www.vanderbilthustler.com/opinion/article_a6b2dd94-2d94-11e4-be2b-001a4bcf6878.html
“The provost failed to make a peep about the racist image of the school’s Black football coach. This leads one to the conclusion that he was either indifferent toward the “fear, anxiety, and anguish” that this mural brought to Black students on campus, or he suffered from the same racial ignorance that he bemoaned of the student body.”
I understand that you guys want to believe that Vanderbilt is the best school in the world. Really, I get that. But some of you are borderline delusional. @RedHawk99 remember that your experience is not “The Vanderbilt Experience” as well. Like @Happy2102 said, you don’t understand how it is for minority students. The first step in fixing any problem is to recognize there is one, but it seems like you guys are incapable of even that.
Then again, I guess racism doesnt really seem like a problem to you guys since it doesnt directly harm you. I guess that would explain it.
@derp125 : So, say I am willing to concede that there may be a big issue. I read some of those Hustler articles and one or two alluded to other articles or incidents where AA’s were apparently called the n word while walking across campus. Me being a cynic (despite being AA and actually somewhat sensitive and aware of at least microagressions or subtle forms of racism) wants to think that their is hyperbole or lack of context going on (like a wonder if such an utterance was intended to be the derogatory version of the n-word or the other one that we tend to use among ourselves. For example, it is well-known that sometimes a white person with a large AA friend group may more or less be given a “card” to use the word. Admittedly, this card, if to ever be used, should only be used in the context of that group of friends, yet I can see the confusion and empowerment one may get thinking that other AA’s outside of the group just “understand” where they got that from). I know that, as sensitive as some folks are, they may want to exaggerate or make very sensationalist claims to get the point across and rile people up. For example, I would have no trouble believing in the microagressions, subtle hints of racism, or self-segregated social environment if it were indeed based on multiple accounts…however I question when people make claims that there are students (who average from 1450-1500 something on the SAT) who flat out just utter the n word out loud to another black person with derogatory intent. Stuff like that can be left out (especially if it isn’t true), but sensationalism is what gets people to a tipping point I guess. If this were the 70’s-80’s, heck even 90’s, I recognize that such a thing occuring is indeed possible back then, but it just seems so unlikely now, even if there is racial angst on a campus. Unless that person is a future Donald Trump (who likely was not at that intelligence level)…I just don’t see it.
What is your take on that? Do you believe they were telling the truth or do you think they had good points and many observable truths but just decided to take it a step further by creating a fictional tale? These are grey areas where I just can’t tell when it comes to details like that. However, the frequency of such articles does suggest that there is certainly some angst and concern over the issue (mainly that there is certainly more than one person who feels uncomfortable). But I wonder if it is mostly social interactions among students driving this, or is it like MIT in the 90’s with the faculty also contributing (a video discussing URMs at MIT had many such students highlight how TA’s and instructional faculty and staff simply set lower expectations for them to the point where they would refuse to regrade an assignment even if the points were tallied up wrong. They would apparently say things like “you should be happy with a C” when the student had actually earned an A… I found this claim believable…such inadvertent or intentional biases are/were very prevalent in STEM and are well documented and discussed in the literature…my experience tells me that even peer expectations in STEM are also…very interesting). If faculty inadvertently play a role, then that is another more dicey issue (and honestly, I imagine that many faculty who may do this are actually unaware of their bias and its impact).
I’d rather just tackle/participate from an intellectual/experiential viewpoint because I don’t actually know the truth. I have to use soft evidence (like reading the articles/ibserving their frequence) and trying to understand where it may be coming from).
@derp125 let’s pull another article (a recent one) from the Hustler too… http://www.vanderbilthustler.online/2015/10/12/2015-outstanding-seniors/ look at the 20 Outstanding Seniors-- looks like a diverse group and each one lists multiple organizations and positions of leadership on campus.
Just because some minorities are on that list doesnt mean that racism doesnt exist. Think about the admissions pamphlets that Vandy sends out; they always have minorities on them. Vandy tries its best to put out a good image, but unless youre a minority, you dont know whats really going on.
@derp125
Source 1: It is true that this is an example of racial discrimination. However, this is just a local repeat of a well-known genre of psychology experiments, confirming previous data. Here is another example, and there are tons of them: http://psych.colorado.edu/~jclab/FPST.html
The issue exemplified here is one that is systemic to American society itself. This means that it is somewhat irrelevant to the issue at hand, since the same implicit biases will exist at any American school, and are not unique to Vanderbilt.
Source 2: I am somewhat well-versed in critical race theory and sociology, so I have read plenty of similar opinion pieces as well as theoretical discussions. This piece is alright; it has both good and not so good portions. It reads like it was written by an amateur rather than a scholar, as its analysis is a bit overly focused on the actions of individuals, as well as a rather simplistic view of modern racism as consciously and explicitly performed by whites. For these reasons, I don’t find the accusations towards David Williams, Provost McCarty, and Matthew Wright particularly productive, as the argument is vague and grasping. I would agree with other theorists in arguing that modern racism is discursively reproduced in sign structures and symbolic orders, manifesting in a superficially benign implicit racism. For this reason, I find the discussion at the end regarding greek life, VSG, and “Black Monday” to be very adroit at addressing the issues at hand. What this source does not do at all is to say that Vanderbilt is completely and utterly racist, and minorities should not even consider attending, which is the opinion you are trying to support.
Here’s the thing: as I have said before, I encourage a diversity of perspectives on this board, and agree that Vanderbilt has it’s own issues with racial integration. I do have a problem with you hyperbolically generalizing and insisting that your opinion is unilaterally correct. @RedHawk99 posted just to say that there are many different opinions, and one has to take them all into account (where did he say that his opinion was the “Vanderbilt Experience”?). This is an extremely mild opinion as it is pretty vague, and you still attacked it. Are you actively disagreeing with the idea that humans can have different opinions, and all can be taken into consideration? That your experience with the issue is the only voice worth hearing? You also explicitly accused other posters of being incapable of empathy, willfully ignorant, and completely uncaring towards minority issues. These are some heavy accusations, so much so, that I don’t know if I can take your posts seriously anymore.
Well I guess I’m done commenting on this thread. This always happens whenever diversity issues are brought up. The voices of the minorities are quashed by the majority. The benefit of being white in this country is that you’ll always have the majority to back you up.
I am very much in agreement with some of the points you offer in your question. The strange thing is that Vanderbilt isn’t even a “southern” school. It is almost completely populated by upper-middle class well educated northern kids. Due to their background, I would not expect them to be explicitly racist. Who knows, maybe there is some sort of system where non-racist individuals are indoctrinated into explicitly racist attitudes while they are here, but I have not found that to be the case. Racism definitely exists here, but it is mostly in implicit attitudes, institutions, or micro-aggressions as you mention in your post. This is why I am slightly skeptical of hyperbolic anecdotes describing the use of racial epithets or conscious racist conspiracies. They just seem to be a bit dishonest, avoiding all nuance and complexity in favor of creating a very clear cut and obvious characterization.