Vanderbilt transfer

Colleges and Universities A-Z Vanderbilt University
1

I am currently a sophomore majoring in Anthropology with honors and History with honors at a state university.
I want to transfer to Vanderbilt because 1) It will be accompanied by so many more opportunities, 2) the anthropology department at my current university is simply existing to satisfy concentration diversity for the large student body but it is not thriving and excelling, 3) the student body is way too large (about 19,000) and I would prefer a smaller community and 4) I want to be challenged academically so that I can grow academically.

Here are my specs:

*GPA— high school=4.0, college=4.0
*community service hours— childhood to senior year of high school= 2,100 hours as assistant activities director at a local non-profit organization. I still maintain the same position and dedication to this organization and I volunteer monthly.
*ACT— understand that I was homeschooled unconventionally so this was the very first exam I had ever taken and didn’t study at all for it because I had to take it almost immediately after I transferred to public school. The second time I took it I didn’t study at all either because I had to take care of my dying grandmother in a different state but had already registered for the exam. I got an 18 the first time and a 19 the second time.
*outstanding recommendations.
*Have been awarded a few minor ($2,000-2,500) scholarships for civic service combined with academic performance.

Course load:

In homeschooling most of my classes were advanced placement and I was doing college maths, english composition and sciences in ninth, tenth and eleventh grade (because college textbooks were easier to find used). In twelfth grade at a public school I chose to take regular senior level classes instead of honors because I didn’t know how I would react to the transition from homeschool. However, I was in an honors english because of scheduling.
In college:
my first year I took it easy and took only 13 an 12 hours to allow a good adjustment period. I worked six hours a week also.
Now, and next semester, I am taking 16 credit hours and working eight hours a week. I would take more classes but my university will not allow me to take more than 18 hours, and because my language course is 4 crds instead of 3 I am at 16 for five courses instead of 15 but adding a course would put me at 19, which is not allowed.

I would also like to note that I commute an hour to school. I know this is not considered in the admissions process but I think it might be something I should include in my essay since this is the very reason I have not been involved in the campus community but have instead remained involved in my local community. I feel that I can help more people at the local organization than I could with any student organization because all of the campus involvement opportunities for civic service are very disorganized and inefficient and are only in place so the students can sign in, get a t-shirt, socialize with friends all day and then get drunk at the after parties.

I am planning on taking the ACT again this spring and already have a study plan in place.

What are my chances in getting accepted into Vanderbilt University and what do you recommend for increasing these chances?

Thanks,
missnicki

2

missnicki, besides visiting the admissions pages on a college website for information, you can, in general, type in the phrase “Common Data Set” in the search window of edu sites to view the stats of last year’s student applicants. This can be very helpful to you in gaining perspective. Vanderbilt has become very daunting for admission due to high numbers of fully qualified applicants. Another quick way to gain a sense of perspective is to peek here at the posts when admission letters went out in previous years on this board. Not scientific at all --but will give you a sense of admission decisions. The students not accepted to Vandy are often very similar to those accepted, just as the wait list looks a lot like the admission list. 30 thousand applicants makes for a very narrow run on available seats. If you are serious about your ACT, do the tests in the Red Book of Real ACTs. Study the answers. Time yourself. And best wishes as you seek out your college home.

3

4.0 from a major state university will put you in good shape grade-wise, but you’ll need a much higher ACT (probably around a 30 unless you have a major hook that you didn’t mention in your post).

Starting from a 19, you’ll have some major gaps in both content knowledge and test taking strategy. The positive aspect is that you should be able to drive your score up pretty quickly before reaching the point of diminishing marginal returns, so you should see some good initial gains. 3 semesters of college courses should have helped you out as well, so you might make a reasonable jump even without studying.

Just buy any reasonable ACT prep book (i.e. princeton review, whatever you prefer) and that should help a lot for content and strategy. Also buy the real ACTs book and complete them all, doing as many as possible in a full-length test center-like condition. The test taking forums on CC also have some reasonably good resources. Unfortunately, you’re a little bit late on this - unless you’ve already signed up for the December ACT, the deadline for that has passed, meaning that the February test will be your one shot. So it will have to be a major priority over your winter break and start of spring semester, and it will require a good bit of work to bump your score up ~11 points.

Just for full disclosure, an increase of this amount after ~2.5 months of studying would be pretty extraordinary and is unlikely. You mention taking AP classes as part of your homeschooling - did you take the AP exams? If so, how many did you take, and what were your scores? If they were mostly 4s/5s that could help your application a bit, and it might signal that you could make ACT score increases faster than normal.

4

Agree with the above concerning your ACT. You must also consider Vandy’s and your state U’s COA. Unless you have a good job waiting for you or professional school in your future you can not afford to have student loans as a anthropology and history major. Great job opportunities in these fields is limited in terms of future income so stay loan free.