<p>^^ Neither is Tufts. So what? Not everyone can go to an Ivy or WANTS to go to an Ivy! There are a lot of things to consider besides a few percentage points in selectivity. The top students at Vanderbilt, Tufts and many, many other schools are every bit as strong as Ivy students. Colleges aren't filled by assigning people to colleges based on SAT scores and GPAs. There is, thank God, a mix of students at most schools. I'm sure there are reasons someone would choose Tufts over Vanderbilt (I can't imagine doing so, but that's my preference), Vanderbilt over Duke, Michigan over Penn, etc.</p>
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^^ Neither is Tufts.
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I know it isn't... I was just merely responding to this thread (which was about vanderbilt, before someone brought tufts up)</p>
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I'm sure there are reasons someone would choose Tufts over Vanderbilt (I can't imagine doing so, but that's my preference)
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I would (didn't even apply to vanderbilt)</p>
<p>Milk, you're crazy. Stop trying to rip on a college on an internet discussion board (bringing up all sorts of old threads) you're embarrassing yourself.</p>
<p>"I worked so hard in high school and did so many activities, but I was rejected from all of my top choice schools. This one kid I know at my school is going to WashU, which is more prestigious and well known (and higher ranked) than Tufts but he did not work as hard as me or had the depth of ECs that I had. I also know a lot more people who didn't work so hard or cared so much about everything as I did but are going to higher ranked schools."</p>
<p>Bummer.</p>
<p>Neither is Tufts. So what? I'm sure you're getting a good education there, and Vandy people are getting a good education, so why the hate?</p>
<p>Milkmagn, you said you turned down JHU and Georgetown for Tufts. Are JHU and G-town as selective as any of the Ivies? No. So what? Does that make them not good schools?</p>
<p>Frankly (and I say this as someone who turned down Georgetown myself), I think if you want to talk the dreaded P-word (prestige), I think Vandy, JHU and G-town all have more prestige than Tufts. Tufts isn't on the radar screen for Chicago.</p>
<p>As an international student i don't get this obsession with USNEWS ranking ...Prestige among the general public is worthless... before caming to the us i didn't know about ivy league ofcouse i knew about harvard , columbia princeton etc this ivy league is just some name...Vany will offer an outsdanding experience...and those who are a little more educated will know the grat university Vandy is.</p>
<p>I understand that they play basketball at Vanderbilt.</p>
<p>This may be unfair to Tufts, but...
I have a friend whose son chose WashU over Tufts because of the Ivy League wannabes at Tufts. The reasoning was that, within a 200 mile radius, WashU was a dream school, as is Vanderbilt. The pinnacle. Tufts has to look up the butt of Harvard, MIT, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Wellesley and maybe Brandeis.</p>
<p>^^
Perhaps that gets to the heart of this debate. As we globalize and have the internet and live increasingly transient lives, it seems schools can no longer define themselves regionally. They are now in competition with schools from Los Angeles to Boston to Bangkok in a way that they never were before because people would typically focus on a region.</p>
<p>Maybe the issue with Vanderbilt is that it has always been considered a top school in the South without question or doubt and drew people enmeshed in that mythos much like New Englanders are compelled to laud the Ivy League but West Coast people tend to be more or less apathetic about it.</p>
<p>Judging by this forum, it seems Vanderbilt is now struggling to define its place in a broader national and increasingly international context amongst people who are not offering it the respect it has long held regionally. </p>
<p>I may be wrong. Just an observation.</p>
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Judging by this forum, it seems Vanderbilt is now struggling to define its place in a broader national and increasingly international context amongst people who are not offering it the respect it has long held regionally.
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<p>applejack, if you change the phrase "struggling to define" to "successfully defining", then you will be correct. The suggestion that Vanderbilt is having difficulty making the transition is far off-base. This year saw a greater than 30% increase overall in freshman applications; the geographical, racial and ethnic diversity of the applicant pool has increased hugely over the last ten years, as well. Statistical measures such as SAT/ACT scores, class rank, gpa continue to rise. Without question the administration and board recognize and welcome the need to move beyond regional fame, but Vanderbilt is not "struggling" to do so.</p>
<p>^^ Totally agree. I had the same reaction to "struggling". In fact, I have rarely seen as smooth a transition from "top regional" to "right up there with the big boys nationally" in ANY entity- educational or corporate. Vanderbilt is riding the wave.</p>
<p>Bless that guy in the bow tie. Gordon Gee his name was?</p>
<p>^^^As far as I know he has neither changed his name nor joined the departed. His name is still Gordon Gee. He is sporting the bow tie at Ohio State nowadays.</p>
<p>Well, then maybe it's just my personal experience and my observations on this board. I guess I've never heard Vanderbilt held in the same regard as the other schools and people on this board seem to be pretty defensive about it in a way that people are when they're trying to get their school pushed up the line. </p>
<p>I hope it is transitioning well. Rather than bickering over who's better endowed (pun intended), I think people in the U.S. should step back and take a lot of pride in having so many incredible public and private universities and colleges spread clear across the landscape. I don't know if any other nation (even the European Union) could boast such an accomplishment.</p>
<p>The European Union is not a nation...</p>
<p>Also, Vanderbilt is not "struggling" in any sense to become a global University, the only people that are struggling are the at-heart Southerners that still go to Vanderbilt or have graduated and don't want this change to occur, of which there is a solid number.</p>
<p>^Yeah, I feel bad for you man. I know a number of kids at Duke that feel the same way about retaining the Southern Culture there.</p>
<p>The traditional cultural identity at the top schools in the South centering around football, barbeques, hot southern girls and Greek life is being ruined by prestige-mongering International students, grade-grubbing Asians and guidos from New Jersey.</p>
<p>Aren't you a grade-grubbing Asian yourself? Or are you a traditional cultural Southerner?</p>
<p>I think Vanderbilt and WashU have some commonalities insofar as years ago, they were well-regarded regional universities and they have both made the transition to being well-regarded national universities. In fact, I'd say that Vanderbilt has made even more progress --WashU was always a "serious" school, whereas Vandy had a bit of a Southern-belles-and-mint-juleps reputation that it needed to overcome. Nonetheless, it's doing a fantastic job and it easily deserves being a top 20 school.</p>
<p>You're spot on evil asian whether or not you were trying to be witty. Also, Duke's southern identity died a long time ago.</p>
<p>Applejack,
Your comments on Vanderbilt remind me of the passionate defenses you made, on another thread, in support of Cornell when you felt that some posters were not giving the school enough credit. Would it be accurate to describe your efforts there as “pretty defensive in a way that people are when they're trying to get their school pushed up the line?” I doubt it. I’m sure you don’t think of them that way and neither do I nor do I think that is the motivation of those who post in favor of Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>I might suggest that those that are familiar with Vanderbilt (and other top southern/southwestern colleges such as Duke, Rice and Emory), know that there are plenty of smart, talented folks there and that the undergraduate academic quality and the student quality is every bit the equal of the more ballyhooed colleges of the northeast. As you would probably agree, all of these southern/southwestern colleges are less familiar to many in the northeast who have known the Ivy colleges for decades and had little need or interest in looking elsewhere. But, as the numbers so clearly indicate, this is changing/has changed. </p>
<p>I think it is also clear that, among some southerners, there is real ambivalence about this because these schools have historically offered a special, differentiated experience and they don’t want to lose this. I personally don’t share the fears about the evolution ongoing at these colleges as I think that the colleges can retain their very attractive and distinctive personalities while assimilating some new groups and some new thinking that will work to the long-term benefit of these colleges.</p>