<p>Hey, alright I promised I’d come back and tell you what I thought, so here it goes:</p>
<p>First, to give you some perspective:
I’m a guy from Chicago, Illinois (or a suburb thereof) and was (I love using the past tense when referring to college decisions) deciding between Vanderbilt and WashU. I’m in the school of engineering at both universities and will probably be majoring in something like Computer Science and then doing pre-law (which may include a couple other majors/minors). You probably don’t need any test stats or whatever, but let me know if you want them.</p>
<p>I could go through and detail what makes each school spectacular, but you already know those; you want to know what makes them different, I’d suppose.
First of all, the campus. WashU’s campus is methodical and well organized. There isn’t much in terms of arbor aside from a couple seemingly designated areas. The buildings are beautiful, though. As for me, though, Vandy was the clear winner in this regard. The paths of Vandy wind through ancient trees and seem to just happen upon classrooms. The campus is a state arboretum which may give you some idea. The campus is far more scenic and has many quads you can hang out on, which I can’t really envision happening as much on WashU’s campus.
Secondly, is the Co-Op program (or lack thereof). WashU has a co-op program in which a student will go and work full time for a company for 8 or 9 months (I’m summarizing from what I remember from a week ago, so don’t hate if I’m wrong…). The program provides an in depth idea of what the job and life would be like with that as a career which can help you to determine what you do, as well as don’t, like. On the other hand, Vandy does not offer a co-op program, but instead stresses internships (which WashU offers too by the way). At first I was skeptical of this, but their philosophy is that in college it is best to get the “breadth” of life and education rather than the “depth” in a particular subject which a co-op would lend itself to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Vandy classes are general glazes of the actual subject, I’m just saying that they encourage or even expect you to reach out beyond your own major or narrow interests. I agree that this one is entirely a matter of personal opinion, but I agreed more with Vanderbilt on this one and I probably wouldn’t have done a co-op anyways at WashU, so not a big deal.
Third, (Don’t worry, there’s only four that I can currently think of so I’m almost done ranting) is the flexibility the campus offers in terms of choosing your majors, double majoring, and interdisciplinary classes. I don’t think it’s possible to sit through a WashU information session without hearing the word “flexibility” thrown at you at least ten different times, and this is not without good reason. WashU encourages people to major or minor in anything that interests them, no matter the seeming difference between the two. They stressed how it was possible to major in things of seemingly arbitrary relation (I’d give an example here, but I’d probably be proven wrong that they are very related by somebody else). On the other hand, Vandy seemed a bit more strict in these terms and the first teacher I talked to seemed very hesitant in saying that I’d be able to double major, but it seemed to be because he wanted it known that it is not just a “credential” which you cannot obtain like any old merit badge (To which I took offense, as an Eagle scout and somebody who worked damn hard on some of those merit badges!). The student needs an invested interest in order to pull off a double major. However, there was another teacher who thought it was a great idea to major in anything that interested you, and said he vehemently encouraged it. Yet, in the end I think that WashU’s repetitious tactics worked off as I felt it was more open to flexibility, even though Vandy didn’t seem entirely opposed to it.
Finally, the people on the campus. WashU means business. Vandy means business. At neither of these schools will you find people who coast by and don’t do any work (at least not successfully). WashU classes were intense as well as the people in them with the same for Vandy. However, while I realize there is a very good chance this is just particular to the group of people I stayed with at each school, I felt as if Vandy’s students were more alive. Not only enjoying parties on frat row (which looks amazing to walk through on a weekend afternoon) but also they seemed pretty chill with each other and able and willing to go out and just have a good time, something I didn’t see to the same extent at WashU.</p>
<p>So, to end my spiel, I’ll leave you with my overall decision. As you may have guessed from reading my interpretation of my visits, I will be attending Vanderbilt next Fall. Once I saw the campus and the community which exists upon it, I couldn’t NOT imagine myself as a student there. Well, there is what I’ve gleaned from my trips in the past week and a half. Let me know what you think, and pm me if you have any more questions or post them here.</p>