<p>Barrons- SEC crappy in basketball? Have you heard of Kentucky? Not to mention that Vandy was ranked in top 25 all year last year. This year Vandy has an amazing team.</p>
<p>This is really a silly discussion. Agree with annasdad. No real comparison.</p>
<p>Browsing through past posts takes only a few seconds and answers a lot of questions about the OP.
OOS and from the east coast.</p>
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Teaching and pharmacy. </p>
<p>Needless to say, Peabody at Vandy is well-known. For pharmacy, either school would be fine. Although a four year degree is technically not required for pharmacy (through 2-4 years of college are), it is becoming increasingly common for students to complete a BA/BS before applying for a PharmD.</p>
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<p>Only sports the SEC is really better are FB and baseball.</p>
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<p>Every BCS conf. has 1-2 schools like UK.</p>
<p>Overall, the SEC has been lagging a bit behind in BB.</p>
<p>Itâs not just about having better teams. Itâs about how intense and fun the conference is. There are drawbacks, too, but overall being part of SEC is great. I have a lot of exposure to both Big Ten and SEC, and there is no comparison in terms of the intensity of the rivalries. Some of it might be because there are so many alums from the other SEC schools in Nashville, and the whole UT thing.</p>
<p>^ B1G FB is intense enough for most college students and specifically, the CFB atmosphere at UW is more intense than what it is at Vandy.</p>
<p>Camp Randall is usually on the Top 10 lists when it comes to most enthralling game day experiences.</p>
<p>BlueJJay,</p>
<p>In case you are still reading your own threadâŠ</p>
<p>There is one difference between the undergrad. experience at UW and Vanderbilt that may be important for you. </p>
<p>Vanderbilt still expects all of its undergraduates to live on the campus for all four years. At this time, a small percentage of seniors live off campus, but I think the plan is to build and renovate enough dorms that there will be no shortage of housing on campus, and then everyone will be in some sort of university housing the whole time. That doesnât always mean standard issue dorms; there are different arrangements available after freshman year.</p>
<p>Unless things have changed radically, at UW a lot, perhaps most, of the undergraduates live off campus. I donât know what is available now, but way back when, I lived in a variety of rented places, none of them high-rises. </p>
<p>Many people think having all of the undergraduates housed on campus is one of the reasons Vanderbilt has a very active, lively campus. It is certainly convenient for students, since you donât have to deal with buses, finding a parking space, riding a bike on city streets and so on. On the other hand, some students prefer the idea of being more on their own, finding their own place and not being on campus all of the time.</p>
<p>It is a little hard to know ahead of time how you are going to feel about the issue, I guess.</p>
<p>I guess it could be personal preference, but for me Vanderbilt is the obvious choice. If you donât live in Wisconsin, Vanderbiltâs financial aid may make it cheaper for you. They are need-blind and meet 100% of need without loans as a part of the FA package, or so they claim. Iâve been researching their merit aid some too, and they offer full tuition scholarships for various things.</p>
<p>I can only really talk about Vanderbilt. Itâs in Nashville, Music City USA. Vanderbilt likes to talk about âbalanceâ - a balance of social life and academics. Students are there to learn, but also to have fun. Most of Vanderbiltâs Arts & Sciences majors are a little useless, in my opinion, but you can create your own major. The more practical learning that goes by the name of âinternshipâ beckons from the city. Plenty of students study abroad. Thereâs a small (180 students I believe) classical conservatory of music, a school of engineering, and a school of education - all of which are good if not great! The male to female ratio is really balanced, and dating is big there (according to the Fiske Guide, but what would they knowâŠ). Iâm sure that the campus is beautiful, but Iâve never gotten the chance to see it!</p>
<p>The main negatives that people bring up are that there are lots of blondes (people worry they wonât fit in I guess), but diversity (ethnicity-wise, socioecononic-wise, and region-wise) is increasing. I think their merit aid has helped make the old Southern money majority⊠become less of a majority, but they may still have work to do.</p>
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<p>The OP is a HS student, right? So heâs looking for an undergraduate program. The major world rankings focus on features like research productivity that usually are more relevant to graduate students.</p>
<p>Any large public university will offer far more courses than a small/mid-size private school with an undergraduate, liberal arts focus. Where the % of classes under 20 really makes a difference is in the first two years of introductory & intermediate classes. In those critical first 2 years, a school like Vanderbilt will offer more small, discussion-based based courses, with more written assignments and essay-based tests, relative to large lecture courses. This is a non-trivial difference. If anything, the numbers probably understate it where it matters the most to a typical student (because the larger schoolâs count is inflated by many sparsely attended upper level courses.) For some very well-prepared students with specialized interests, who can place out of some intro courses, the advantage may tilt to a school like UW.</p>
<p>For education/teaching and/or pharmacology? At the graduate level, USNWR ranks UW #9 in education and Vanderbilt #1. It ranks UW #9 in pharmacy and ⊠I canât find a USNWR listing for Vanderbilt. According to the Vanderbilt Dept. of Pharmacology site, it has placed in the top two NIH ranking positions for sixteen of the last twenty years.</p>
<p>Theyâre both good schools with different strengths & weaknesses. Itâd make sense to choose the one with lower net costs.</p>
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Thatâs quite an understatement given that UW Madison is one of a handful of top public research universities and an esteemed founding member of the AAU.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt is a decent private university, nothing more, nothing less.</p>
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Thatâs because Vanderbilt doesnât have a school of pharmacy. The OP wants a professional degree in pharmacy (PharmD or Doctor of Pharmacy), not a graduate degree in pharmacology. There is a world of difference between the two.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt does not offer a PharmD degree so you have to do that
elsewhere.</p>
<p>It typically takes 6 years â 2-year pre-pharmacy plus 4-year PharmD. You can take your pre-pharmacy at Vanderbilt and then apply elsewhere for your PharmD; or you can take it straight through at Wisconsin (still have to apply to the PharmD program).</p>
<p>You need to fulfill your PharmD prerequisities in your first two years, which is typically at least:
<p>This accounts for about 3/4 of the courses of your first two years. You can debate whether âmore small, discussion-based based courses, with more written assignments and essay-based testsâ are important compared to âlarge lecture coursesâ for this curriculum. You can debate also whether it is worth enough to spend two year at Vanderbilt and then transfer to another (likely) large research university?</p>
<p>Now if the OP is not sure he wants to be a pharmacist, that of course is another story.</p>
<p>Wisconsin isnât in the same league as Vanderbilt. Education is an investment and the extra 100k you spend on a Vandy degree will pay back high dividends as you progress through the rest of your professional career. Outside of the state of Wisconsin, a UW degree has no marketability. Unless you are a 100% sure you want to be a pharmacist, I would lean towards the more prestigious school.</p>
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Even if you will only spend two years at Vandy for pre-pharm? The diploma of your professional degree (PharmD) will have the name of another university on it. It may even be Wisconsin!</p>
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You couldnât be more wrong. A Wisconsin degree is more well known around the world than Vandyâs.</p>
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<p>Weâre talking about undergraduate education.</p>
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<p>Neither is all that well-known around the world. Vanderbilt is unquestionably a better school, with a significantly higher quality student body, but Iâd wager that outside the home regions of each school, they are equally unknown - or known only for their athletic teams.</p>
<p>Marketability of degrees.</p>
<p>Average starting salary</p>
<p>Wisconsin $46,900
Vanderbilt $51,300</p>
<p>And for reference:</p>
<p>Michigan $50,100
UIUC $51,500</p>
<p>Average mid-career salaries</p>
<p>Wisconsin $84,800
Vanderbilt $100,000
Michigan $86,400
UIUC $94,300</p>
<p>[Top</a> US Colleges ? Graduate Salary Statistics](<a href=âhttp://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp]Topâ>http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/top-us-colleges-graduate-salary-statistics.asp)</p>
<p>I repeat: a decent flagship, nothing more.</p>
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^ Way over-stated. </p>
<p>
[Estimating</a> the Payoff to Attending a More Selective College: An Application of Selection on Observables and Unobservables](<a href=âhttp://www.nber.org/papers/w7322]Estimatingâ>http://www.nber.org/papers/w7322)</p>
<p>Numbers that have already been shown to be worthless many times here due to lack of scientific approach. Some real numbers.</p>
<p>Major Co. CEOs produced UW 17 and 4th in the US. Michigan Vanderbilt outside top 25. BTW UM at 14 and Illinois-- outside top 25.
Nobel prizes UW 19
Vanderbilt 7 incl Al Gore</p>
<p>Pulitzer Prizes UW 33
Vandy 3</p>
<p>All among tops for US Publics. And real numbersânot some survey that is not even verified.</p>
<p>Also most studies show for comparable students, school attended has little to no impact on future earnings.</p>
<p>âOutside of the state of Wisconsin, a UW degree has no marketability.â</p>
<p>This is just plain wrong. Madison gets major respect in Chicago. People know it in New York and California, too. You might be right if we were talking about one of the satellite campuses, but weâre not.</p>
<p>I doubt the nature of this discussion will help the OP. Discussing the weather and the music scene is all find and dandy, but nothing is known about this candidate. After all, Vandy could be a super reach and UW a safety, or anything in between. </p>
<p>This âlostâ OP should build a better list that starts from the bottom and move up in selectivity level. At least, he does have a good start with schools that could not be more different in expected experience, selectivity, and more than anything else, in the student body as overlaps between those two schools are probably purely accidental.</p>