Hello everyone! I recently got into Vanderbilt and it is as of right now my top choice. However, as I’ve delved into deeper research on the school, I’ve seen tremendous amounts of negative feedback saying Vanderbilt is ‘overated’ and is so frat-oriented that the social life is limited. Of course, I have also read a lot of positive things. Could any current or former Vanderbilt students help provide some perspective on what makes Vanderbilt not only a great university but also a great place? Also if it helps, I would be majoring in engineering.
What most students love about Vanderbilt is its balance. It is a rare combination of excellent academics, social life, sports, and location. There are few universities that can offer all of this.
The Commons experience has been so wonderful…transition to college can be hard but Vandy does a great job at helping you with it (Visions, CommonVU). While this may be true for many other colleges, professors, faculty heads of houses, RAs and upperclassmen go out of their way to make your time at Vandy special…Moreover, we are located very close to downtown and the airport, rather than being in the middle of nowhere. Nashville is such a dynamic city. There are so many different student organizations on campus that help you pursue your passion and even find new ones. We truly do ‘work hard and party hard’ 
And Vandy is not overrated. If anything, it is underrated especially internationally.
-Vandy is underranked but moving up and is a HOT university right now.
-Excellent leadership with vision
-One of the few elite universities where the students report they have a great “quality of life”.
-Ranked # 1 for happiest students by Princeton Review.
-Reasonable weather, much better than most elite U’s.
-Nashville is a HOT city for young adults and provides many social options you can’t find in base cities of other elite U’s
-Located in trendy mid-town
-Do you enjoy music?
-Very good FA
-Great academic community with most students on campus (not scattered all over a large city)
-One of the few elite U’s where the students report the school is well run
-Top 5 in terms of gifted students, top 3 with NMS.
-SEC
I suspect most of the haters comments come from those at elite U’s that have nothing to offer students other than academics. As noted above Vandy has balance. You can receive a great education at hundreds of U’s. Unlike many top 20’s Vandy has happy students who report a high quality of life and they get to live in Nashville.
Also, look up the new engineering building. It will have 230,000 sq. feet, cost 109 million and be “state of the art” for engineering students.
My son is a freshman at Vandy and he tells me that choosing to attend has been the best decision of his life. When I ask him what he likes most about Vandy he tells me that it is the people. He says everyone is so nice; the students, professors, TAs & admin staff. When he came back for spring break I noticed just how much he has matured and how happy he was. He has made really great friends and is enjoying all his classes while still finding the time to be very involved in playing a club sport. I now truly understand what it means when people say that Vandy has a perfect balance of work and play. Imagine having challenging academics, great friends and a wonderful social life in a great city like Nashville. By the way he has bought his tickets for the “Rites of Spring” concert series and cannot wait. Seeing my son so happy and excited about his university is really gratifying.
Thank you all so much for your responses! It really helps. You all mentioned one of the main reasons I applied to Vanderbilt - that it has a great balance between social life and academics.
@Sophie1295, I don’t think Vanderbilt is underrated internationally. Although it has a great medical school and law school, Vanderbilt’s foremost strength is its undergraduate program. International university rankings don’t give this much weight. Most determine rankings by looking at research output, citation impact, graduate programs, etc. For this reason, there’s a difference between schools that are highly regarded for college undergraduates within the US and highly ranked internationally. State schools with high research output (Berkeley, UCLA, Washington, UCSD, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.) regularly break the top ranks of these lists, while schools with strong undergraduate student bodies but lower research output and less emphasis on graduate programs (Vanderbilt, Notre Dame, Dartmouth, etc.) don’t do nearly as well.
Of course, there are schools that perform well in both domestic and international rankings–Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc.
I am talking more about our undergraduate program (from my personal experience) I am an international student from Asia and most high schoolers in my hometown don’t know about Vandy and even if they do, they choose to focus other universities. But, I am glad that Vandy is becoming more popular and the admissions counselors who travel all over the world must be applauded.
There is a lot of greek life, and it can be annoying-- it definitely is a very dominant presence on campus. A lot of the student body is ‘basic’, but this is common at all top universities because a lot of the student body comes from wealth. The Commons isn’t that great. The professors are great, however. ALSO RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES ARE EVERYWHERE. I have been with the same lab since freshman year.
I’m going to toss in a different sort of pro, by saying that I love the size of Vanderbilt! It’s small enough that I do kind of feel like we have a community, but it’s big enough that I always feel like I’m meeting new and interesting people. And, in my experience, it’s also big enough that if you really go looking for things that suit your interests, you’ll find them.
Personally, the Commons experience has been one of my favorite things at Vandy. It truly encourages bonding among freshmen and its physical beauty is an added bonus. There are so many Commons events (my favorite is the Commons Ball) and these help students build friendships and work as a team, while having fun!
My daughter is graduating from Vanderbilt in May, 2015. Mixed feelings… Many classes in sciences are huge… TAs do do all the grading of exams , hard to connect with profs when there are over 100 kids in class. Grading for sciences is absolutely ruthless. If you are a straight A kid with 34 ACT you WILL struggle for Bs in many science classes(chem, BIO ect)…fewer than 30% of kids applying to med school are accepted.due to low GPAs, my daughter got one interview and acceptance to med school( low ranked), all of her(extremely talented in my opinion) roomates struck out. Vanderbilt now wants them to apply for grad school. If you are remotely interested in medicine GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! My daughter loved the non science classes, and did extremely well in English, history, ect… My youngest daughter will go to Carleton in the fall, and yes in certain respects Vanderbilt is overrated.
I totally agree that the GPAs hurt for medical school, considering the way most other top schools inflate GPAs pretty significantly. There are better schools for pre-med
However, where on earth is this 30% stat from?! Vanderbilt’s post-grad report in 2013 stated that 89.6% of those seeking graduate school had been accepted, with medical school being by far the largest destination of these students. It was 85.6% in 2012. Data for 2014 not yet published. Most common for vandy students to go to Vandy Med School which is a fantastic school.
@markinmass S1 is a senior at Cornell and tells us that many of his friends are having the same problems getting accepted to Medical School. I do not think it is an isolated Vandy problem.
Hey, if you want to be an MD, please have the courtesy to have GPA>3.3 and MCAT>30…not much to ask! And with that, 85% of Vanderbilt applicants get in to Medical School. The rest may have done better at a grade inflated school perhaps.
Thanks @sophie1295, didn’t realize Vandy published data specifically for pre-med. Still agree that pre-meds are better elsewhere in terms of their ultimate goal of med-school, but that 30% figure was WAY off!
@sophie1295, thanks for the helpful link. I didn’t know such information exists, either.