Wondering about political/cultural vibe on Vanderbilt's campus...?

Hi guys! I hope that this message finds you well! I’m a senior this year and I’m really interested in applying to Vanderbilt because it seems like a really awesome place to study and has programs in all of the areas that I’m interested in, but I just had a couple of questions I was hoping that you could answer for me…?

From some of the stuff that I’ve heard, people have told be that Vandy’s social culture is a fairly conservative atmosphere and I was wondering if that is the case…? When I looked it up, I found some accounts saying that there isn’t a lot of racial and socieconomical mixtures within friend groups at the school, and so I was wondering if that is true and/or what your experience regarding that was like…?

Thank you so much for your honest feedback, I really appreciate it and find it extremely helpful during the college application process!

Best,

ChiliEnchiladas

Just back from parents weekend.

To me, the kids looked and sounded and acted exactly the same as the kids at Penn, JHU, WashU etc. Vandy’s days as a southern country club appear to me to be pretty much over. Asian biomed engineering majors seem to greatly out number the southern belles.

You could call it “fairly conservative” relative to other top 20 schools (i.e., there is an identifiable minority of politically conservative students). But it’s by no means “fairly conservative” in a general sense of the phrase; the large majority of the student body has the opposite set of beliefs.

In some social circles, greek life is fairly predominant, which inherently involves some degree of self-selection and clique forming making things a little bit more homogenous (who’s more likely to want to be in a frat, a white kid with lawyer parents who were also greek in college, or the kid whose parents immigrated from Asia?). But even if you’re a part of the greek system you can still definitely have diverse friend groups. Also, If you’re not interested in that scene, there’s no reason you have to be involved with it at all, and can easily live your life as if it doesn’t even exist.

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@fdgjfg and @northwesty thank you guys so much for your responses! I really appreciate it! Just a follow up, @fdgjfg would you say that most people at the school participate in greek life or it’s more 50-50? Thanks!

Something like 35% guys, 50% girls.

While those are reasonably high numbers, greek stuff at Vandy is toned down a bit by the fact that the houses at Vandy are non-residential. Kids typically live in dorms for at least 3 and often all 4 years. Also all freshmen live on the Commons and get assigned to a “house” for freshman year.

The Commons was the first phase of Vandy’s master plan to replace dorms with upper class residential colleges, which would further cut into the greek’s turf. One new residential college will open up next fall, but it will take many years for that plan to be fully built out.

@ChiliEnchiladas What do you love about Vanderbilt specifically? What do you plan to study at Vandy? If you are agonizing over whether Vandy is too conservative for you or whether there is not enough racial and social-economical mixing, then Vandy may not be a strong draw to you.

Vandy is definitely more conservative than a lot of other elite schools. If you are a liberal, you may have some of your views challenged, or you may have solidified your beliefs, either way, you grow as a person.

Regarding racial and social-economical mixing, Vandy is doing something very special in having all the freshmen live in the Commons, where there are multitude of programs designed to create an environment for students of all races and social-economical backgrounds to interact with each other. Google “the Commons at Vanderbilt” to read about some of the wonderful programs at the ten houses.

My son is a freshman at Vandy. He loves it there! He said the campus is beautiful, the freshmen seminars are fun and challenging, the profs are caring, and the fellow students are nice and friendly. He’s signed up for a few clubs and volunteers teaching little kids science. He is as busy as a bee, no complaining about the social aspects of his life yet.

If all possible, visit the school to get the first hand experience.

Good luck to you in finding the perfect school!

Lot of discussions about lack of diversity and conservative culture at Vandy. My S is also a freshman and joined mainly due to CV scholarship. So far he has no complaints and he made his own group of friends with kids representing different ethnicities (we are from India) . He is not planning to involve in greek life and there are so many other organizations he can involve. It all comes down to how you approach college life.

@TimeUpJunior : Uhmm, I don’t think merely it being the Commons does that. I think when you throw a diverse crowd of freshmen together in a single cohort, that is what happens. Only in later years may some self-segregation develop as cliques and friend groups are somewhat solidified. That sort of living situation or different variations of it is very common at private colleges (especially elite privates) now. What matters more than the robustness of the programs is the buy in to said programs and what students choose to do with their time. Any student at these selective schools who wants a diverse group of friends will easily find it regardless of the housing situation. I feel as though a lot of the connections start to form during the orientation programs which can sometimes function independently of reshalls.

@srk2017 : “It all comes down to how you approach college life”

This…is very important. Yes, there are definitely factions/clubs (w/e) that could play a large role on a campus that are not particularly diverse in demographics/ideas, but you don’t have to be a part of them, and if you are, you can do things differently. No one can stop you. It is the students life and happiness.

I think all this concern over “culture being different” and stuff is too prevalent and overblown and people should start looking into other reasons that they may select one school over another. While there are some cultural differences among these selective schools (that may be governed by: Are there D-1 sports? Are they important to the student body? is it a super STEM heavy or engineering school?), they are actually alike in many ways. But generally “extremely beautiful campus and politically liberal” will not do much to narrow things down. Basically all of them meet such a criteria

@northwesty : While not a “southern” country club, let us keep it real and recognize that most of these top public and private schools are very much like country club like regardless of all of the SES diversity they market. All the money spent on landscaping, new buildings, and amenities are students’ and parents’ monies going towards living a very comfortable lifestyle while there (slightly understandable given their costs). When new buildings are constructed outside of dorms (some schools will claim re-organization of reshalls and new construction here is supposed to impact educational mission, and it may. But let us be honest and recognize that one of the main reasons is to simply have shinier accommodations for marketing purposes), stadiums, gymnasiums, and dining halls, they hardly have much different in store for undergraduate education. For that reason and my own experience with one, I get a largely country club vibe from virtually all of these places. Do they value UG education more than most places? Of course. Can most do much better? Yes. It is just more convenient and easier to focus on the comfort and happiness of students in other areas and it has a much bigger return in things like rankings USNWR as well (like you don’t have to change or improve academic programming to move up or down in those rankings. If you focus on brand and comfort building, this will positively impact most of the scoring criteria more than other things that I find important)

I feel as if every student at these very expensive privates and publics should be writing articles or reflecting like this:
http://vanderbilthustler.com/featured/looking-inwards.html

It is nice to have a great time and “love” a place, but sometimes, students and parents can afford to set the bar a little higher for the institutions in terms of the product provided and produced. As far as I am concerned VU’s culture looks pretty much like everywhere else’s (its peers that is).

The only annoying part of that article to me is this strange talk about a lack of competition and abundance of cooperation comes up when students at elite schools are bragging about or trying to sell their school as if it is an exceptional characteristic. This is not uncommon. In fact, it seems that schools known to be overly competitive are exceptional. I feel as if he did a good job except for that cliche.

The OP should really find alternative criteria and stop worrying about this stuff which I find a little petty considering the commonalities among high ranked privates. There will be many weaknesses and strengths that they pretty much all share IMHO.

@ChiliEnchiladas “Vanderbilt because it seems like a really awesome place to study and has programs in all of the areas that I’m interested in…”

Go a little deeper and instead explore if these are areas of strength for VU undergraduate education. Many places will be great places to study that “have” your programs of interests, but do they have programs within those programs that draw you or set them apart from similar programs. You want to look for such places. Set the bar higher and go back and research what the departments of interest offer.

Also, OP, not sure of your gender, but if the heavy Greek presence makes you worried the school might be too conservative, know that at least in sororities (idk about frats), almost everyone is relatively liberal, and Greek women have recently been presidents of Vandy Democrats, Vandy Feminists, and Students for Choice.

Wow! Thank you @northwesty @TimeUpJunior @srk2017 @bernie12 and @scover17 so much for this information I find it very helpful! It’s nice to know that Vandy has a diverse student body politically, social-economically, and racially. @TimeUpJunior and @bernie12 I’m interested in studying either medicine or sports broadcasting in college and I feel like Vanderbilt would be a really good place for both because it has a medical center and a communications program (not to mention its awesome sports program). I have also been looking into Vandy’s scholarships and there appears to be a lot of options (one in particular for students interested in pursuing sports journalism, which suggests to me that Vandy would have a good program for the field). Sorry for all of the questions, but I just have one more regarding pre-med: do you know if there are a lot of interactive (such as working in the sim lab, etc.) undergraduate medical classes at Vanderbilt? Thank you so much again for all of your help and input!

@ChiliEnchiladas : That isn’t a particularly strong reason for wanting to be pre-med at a particular school (it should really just be a small bonus due to how common medical centers are at large publics and selective private research 1 universities). Many schools, publics and privates of varying selectivity levels have medical centers. What you need to do is figure out if you plan to major in STEM and pre-med while also doing communications. This way, you can investigate the actual STEM department. You can also expand your list based upon this. For example, Cornell should perhaps be an option along with several public schools (who knows you may land in a very strong honors program and also be well funded/have a scholarship. Some of these would have very strong communication programs as well as being on the up and up in STEM education in case you plan to go the pre-med route). VU and these medium sized and small privates are not too predictable in terms of admissions, so keep an open mind, and do research on other places that will fit well.

You need not chase prestige for these schools. One area of interest (pre-med) is largely based upon performance and access to strong STEM courses which an honor student at any public or private school would have and communications and career development in those sorts of fields are based upon experience, so many places would provide great oppurtunities in that area, especially schools with large and extremely high performing big money sports. Definitely look around at publics in the top 60 or so as most will be solidly selective (do not pay attention to admit rate, notice that many of these schools have very good stats despite being huge) and have great honors programs if you can gain admission to them (and often it is stats based admissions to said programs. If selected as an OOS student AND you meet the statistical threshold, you will probably be placed into the honors programs. Also, I would argue that this particular tier of non-STEM publics are vastly under-rated for their non-honors level academics. I believe this is true regardless of how much some going to “elite” schools on CC on like to highlight the difference. What may differ most is class size and competition levels in some fields, especially in early years. But this is often mitigated when a student is placed in or selects honors courses)

As far as interactive, I feel like you would best access those types of opportunities either through research or other opps on the campus considering that it has a medical center. I imagine that undergraduates wouldn’t have specific courses for credit that would allow for or directly incorporate that. However, I could be wrong as perhaps a biomedical engineering degree there may have classes that engage that sort of thing. Either way, I imagine there to be access even if not through coursework.

Thank you so much @bernie12 for your input! I really appreciate it!

Thank you so much @bernie12 for your input! I really appreciate it!

@ChiliEnchiladas - My freshman DS is also a premed and he already found research and medical school was willing to let him shadow doctors as a freshman.

@srk2017 thank you! And that’s really cool!

@ChiliEnchiladas My S is a Freshman, and coming from a conservative background, would say that the campus is very balanced politically - whatever your views are may be challenged, but everyone seems open to the discussion, which is the point! Vandy admins seem to foster this, and the Commons Freshman housing is an important part.

I can tell from move in and parents weekend, as well as my son’s feedback, the housing is very deliberately mixed - and the Chancellor even talked about it. They can’t force students to “mix” but they can create a situation where mixing happens. Our student came from a pretty homogeneous school - and has really loved making friends of all backgrounds and cultures!

Regarding premed and the med center - this was focus he had looking at his choices, and while many schools are “connected” to a med center, we didn’t see many as integrated into the campus (others would be Emory, Duke, and Rice - sort of).

He has secured a lab position in the medical center that is a 5 min walk from his dorm, which is really nice. The med center sits across from the Commons. There are not courses that tie into the Medical School for freshman, but after some pre-reqs you can sometimes get credit (or paid, but not both). At this point have you applied? And if so are you ED accepted? Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get it, as there are many qualified applicants and it’s tough. If you have the numbers, then I would say that the letters of rec, and most important are your essays - they have to reflect who you are, and then let the chips fall as they may.

Good luck in college!

Is it just me or does Vanderbilt Christmas break seem a lot shorter than other schools. They go back January 8??? Most other schools go back at the end of the month… or am I incorrect

  1. You will find many students who agree with you and many to debate with. Most are more interested in their class.
  2. VU does a nice job of integrating students from different backgrounds. Like most top 20 U's most of the students accepted come the least diversified high schools and there is a bimodal distribution of full pay and full need.
  3. There are many options to work and shadow physicians at the hospital. Talk to the SIM lab director. I suspect they would be happy to have you involved with their training sessions. They get excited when others share their interest in the SIM lab and enjoy the company.

Vandy does go back earlier from winter break (which I don’t necessarily see as a bad thing), but if you look at their schedule, you’ll see that they also finish their spring semester long before other schools do (Vandy finishes class at the end of APRIL, and then they have exam week, whereas most other schools finish about two weeks later). So, you get a much longer summer instead of a long winter break.

Trust me, that’s actually a really nice part of their schedule. While winter break is great, you start to really miss your friends and school in general. A long summer break is easier because you can go on trips abroad, visit your friends, do internships, research, all that jazz.

Hope this helps!

Michigan went back on January 2.