Vanderbilt Transfer Thread [Fall 2017]

Based on what I’ve seen, for vandy, rejection rate in CC was like 30% last year, and 70% 2 years ago weirdly.

What do you guys think admissions will think of a GPA that’s very high with a few individual grades that aren’t so great?

yes, I think cc comprises of the applicants with the most desire to go to said university. But desire does not always equal best stats and intelllgence.

oh okay- I am really nervous bc I want to go there…I go to a prestigious i think higher ranked school than vandy rn

Well, I’m not saying everyone on CC is overqualified, but that most usually are. The keyword here being most. That’s the reason why there are “chance mes” at the beginning of this thread filled with applicants who have sub-4.0 GPAs and good extracurriculars/recs (I’m guilty of this). Of course, they all have a good shot at getting in, CC is more of a community to make the application process not so lonely for involved students rather than a diverse representation of all types of applicants.

I would disagree that most are “overqualified”. Their is a difference between being a competitive applicant and an overqualified one. Unless you have a 4.0 from a T-30 school with rock solid ECs/Essays/LOR then I don’t see how your overqualified for Vandy. This is a T-20 school, lets be realistic for a second.

so do you think people at T-30 schools have upperhands than ppl at community college or perhaps state school? Surely, it would be harder to get 4.0 at CMU than to get 4.0 from Idaho State Univ.

@inordie One would think they have somewhat of advantage, right? I mean its only fair, since, presumably, their classes are harder. But I don’t know if they would rather have a 3.6 student from UC Berkly as opposed to a 4.0 from UF. You know?

@HopefullyIGetIn Yes, you’re right about that. Competitive was the word I was looking for.

@Mastodon97 Cool, apologize if I came across over-aggressive, just as stressed about this process as everybody else

Yeah. It would be pretty unfair if the admission officers weren’t looking at the competitiveness of the school. Like if you had a guy who got 4.0 from MIT, possibly the hardest school in the US, and one guy who got 4.0 from community college, it would be pretty unfair to say that both achievements are equally weighted.

Not at all. Also, are gen-ed classes really that much harder at different universities? Because that’s what freshman up to a sophomore would be taking.

I think they definitely care about what school you go to. I go to a top 40 university and one of my friends was accepted to UNC and Michigan engineering with a 3.2 freshmen year GPA. I don’t know about his high school grades but they are probably good. Anyway, I don’t think it is possible to get into those schools if you come from a state school or a community college with a 3.2 GPA.

@inordie At the same time, as someone whose coms from a middle of the pack school, I’m tempted to say F these elite schools transfers, they don’t need fair, thery are already at top unis. but yea lol

It’s a two sided argument really.
If the applicant in question, coming from a similarly ranked school, has a solid reason to transfer, then I would imagine that they’d have a better chance of being admitted than a CC student with the same GPA.

But that’s the thing, what reason would a hypothetical student for a top 30 school have to do a lateral move? Vandy has a prettier campus? Their current college doesn’t have resources(extremely unlikely)? Vandy has “always been their dream school”? God forbid your reasoning includes that Vanderbilt is higher ranked. Those reasons won’t cut it.

If the applicant has an insipid reason for transferring, then they won’t have the upperhand when placed against a community college student with excellent stats, whose objective is to transfer from day one.

@AGoodFloridian I concur, they are probably very good at smelling out applicants who just want to be accepted because of the prestige.

Well, but I think most of the schools have the “business” aspect, and they would want best students to be part of the community you know xD

Also someone transferring from MIT or CMU would need to have very different set of reasons to transfer than from somebody who is coming from a community college or a state school.

Lol, my school is ranked top 40, but is in a huge debt. So my reason for transferring was mostly limited opportunities and class limits cuz school was broke af

@AGoodFloridian for good measure, we should hold all other variables constant when evaluating influence of rank of ones current school. Their is plenty of reasons for one to do a lateral transfer, as their is plenty of reasons for one to do an upwards transfer. need new environment, different class structure, school doesn’t have major, etc.