<p>you werent a really pretty girl? everyone keeps saying that vandy girls are hot and have eating disorders etc. but what if you arent gorgeous? does that alienate you in any way? purely curious</p>
<p>Yes</p>
<p>If someone tells you otherwise, they are lying their faces off</p>
<p>At the same time, worrying about these sorts of things should never be at the top of your priority list, but that doesn't change the fact that this is not a school where walking to your morning class in sweats without fixing yourself up is condoned.</p>
<p>Only if you care about what guys like the one who posted above think.</p>
<p>You need to have high self-confidence to be a student at Vanderbilt. If you are insecure about your looks, you will not be happy here. Lots of girls come here used to being the best-looking/smartest/most popular girl in their HS, and there is usually a shock when they realize they are just middle-of-the-pack here.</p>
<p>I think that insecurity about your looks is a bit of a freshman experience at VU and by the time you are an upperclassmen, you kind of find your groove at VU and associate with like-minded people. you find out real quick who the vain ones are, the greek system certainly helps that cause so you know who to avoid.</p>
<p>My D is a rising junior and goes to many classes fresh from bed in her shorts and t-shirt with hair in a pony-tail. Just like any school there are many different types of people...</p>
<p>I did have to ask my D a question when we moved her in this past weekend. This was probably my 15th visit to campus (beautiful by the way) and I finally had to ask her if there were any obese or ugly people on campus. I swear every time I am there the girls are amazing and the guys are actually pretty for the most part. I knew of course that it wasn't all like that but it is pretty overwhelming. She of course talk me I was an idiot for asking... Sometimes appearances are more than they seem.</p>
<p>
[quote]
At the same time, worrying about these sorts of things should never be at the top of your priority list, but that doesn't change the fact that this is not a school where walking to your morning class in sweats without fixing yourself up is condoned.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Are there girls who get dressed up for class? Yes. Are there just as many girls who go to class in athletic shorts and a t-shirt? Yes.</p>
<p>
[quote]
You need to have high self-confidence to be a student at Vanderbilt. If you are insecure about your looks, you will not be happy here.
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</p>
<p>I agree with this. Especially for girls, Vanderbilt can – at least initially – be an intimidating place. This isn’t to say, though, that there aren’t a tremendous number of resources that you can turn to once you’re on campus if you find yourself not meshing as you expected. </p>
<p>
[quote]
you find out real quick who the vain ones are, the greek system certainly helps that cause so you know who to avoid.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think this is a grossly inaccurate statement. Yes, there are vain sorority girls. Yes, there are vain independent girls. But I think that taking care of your appearance doesn’t necessarily translate to vanity. To say that all Greeks are vain is simply a misguided stereotype.</p>
<p>Reading this, I wonder how much a person has to be self-confident about her looks to be a student at Vanderbilt - especially because even very attractive young women are often insecure about their appearance. (This is why the cosmetics, apparel, and plastic surgery industries make big bucks.) Wouldn't you be a successful student at Vanderbilt if you were confident in your intellectual ability? It seems to me that a truly confident person could roll out of bed in sweats and go to class without caring whether half the people there would see her in a negative light.
[quote]
But I think that taking care of your appearance doesn’t necessarily translate to vanity.
[/quote]
It's a component of success in many fields to be well turned out, and it's smart to realize that. If the OP was wondering if a student has to be a Miss America contestant-type at Vandy, I'd say definitely not, though there are such students there.</p>
<p>I have a daughter at Vandy, but a conversation with two male Vandy students this summer about this topic was pretty revealing. They are both handsome frat boys who take academics seriously. They love Vandy. They seem to have an extremely low opinion of Peabody girls (and boys), describing them as vain and stupid. They respect their A & S female classmates, the ones in their demanding courses. Yet they took great exception to any criticism of the fraternity-sorority world where, they admit, that looks and money matter a lot, and where Peabody students are well-represented "in order to raise GPA levels" (the idea being that it's easy to have a high GPA in Peabody). When asked whether they were expecting too much of girls -- they have to be great students (which takes a lot of time and energy) and have to be great looking (which takes a lot of time an energy and money) they just laughed and the conversation sort of petered out.</p>
<p>sounds about right mirimom</p>
<p>NYfrazzled:
It seems to me that a truly confident person could roll out of bed in sweats and go to class without caring whether half the people there would see her in a negative light.</p>
<p>Honestly, I tried, but I just don't understand how it can be so hard to grasp? Well bred Southerners are not about "I'll wear a sundress and do my hair because Susie Q will care". It's about being born into class, being raised with class, and having full and absolute confidence in yourself and knowing the importance of proper presentation in life.</p>
<p>Good golly miss molly figure it out</p>
<p>PalmettoTree, you sure spend a lot of time trying to convince the rest of us about the inbred southern class you & your social circle possess. The truly classy people I know don't need to tell anyone how classy they are. That's the point.</p>
<p>Good golly, palmetto, didn't mean to try your patience. Apologies for failing to properly appreciate all that "class."</p>
<p>I am more convinced than ever now that Mr. Pmtto is a high school girl (or boy) who likes to dream of attending Vandy and has adopted a pose on cc.
If he were the frat boy he pretends to be, he would have been busy with early tailgating today, not rhapsodizing about inbred traits of the Southern gentry on this website. Turn off your computer and try to enjoy your real life Pmtto. Maybe you should spend some time on your school work so that someday you might actually become a real Vanderbilt student.</p>
<p>allyylla
please do not listen to some of the people on this board. I will not name names, but it's obvious who I am talking about</p>
<p>It is a great shame that great candidates for the school, such as yourself, have to ask themselves this question. Yes, Vanderbilt has better-looking people than most places. But there is only pressure to look good if you are susceptible to it. There are many reasons to come to Vanderbilt, especially as the univeristy is going through large changes in the student body, such as more diversity. Come and be a part of this change.</p>
<p>i agree with johnC</p>
<p>essentially, when you get down to the person/individual, all bets are off. you can't possibly know where they came from or if they have had a positive or negative background. you can't know if their parents beat them or spoiled them, or if they are brilliant and come off slow or are contrastingly dumb and are perceived as brilliant! </p>
<p>this is the way of the world, and a reality check would do some good to palmettotree;you need to stop talking like a bigoted idiot so that our prospects will know that not everyone here is like you. </p>
<p>there is a place for everyone at vanderbilt. EVERYONE.</p>
<p>i personally study engineering, but i enjoy the liberal arts classes that i take (a distinct vanderbilt opportunity is that you have the ability to study ANYTHING). </p>
<p>if you are nerdy (like myself), there's lots of stuff to do that's academic, but you can also join clubs. people like palmettotree turned me off of vanderbilt and made my first year here miserable. but then i realized: it's all what you make it. opportunities for growth at vanderbilt are second to none. whether it is in the social arena (not necessarily mindless drowning of one's sorrows in a bottle with others...), academic (research, excellent professors who are very easily accessible and personable for the most part...except for the math department), and extracurricular (honing other skills, like debate, or becoming involved in the community).</p>
<p>i WOULD like to echo the fact that because there are a number of people who display themselves as narrow-minded, and therefore extremely judgmental, it does require that you are either very strongly independent coming to school, or you learn to be that way while you're here, quickly. it is a very nice addendum to the typical learning experience, that you can be educated and experienced in the art of truly learning about yourself, and what you allow to take priority in your life. i transferred from a school that was all about engineering and had the typical sense of nerdiness about everyone, and everyone was accepting of others (almost no exaggeration, seriously). so, needless to say, vanderbilt was very much a shocking experience. i now value the idea that vanderbilt holds people who don't like me, or don't care about learning who i am because it fundamentally allows me/us to begin to understand the way people operate in the "real world," as people like to say.</p>
<p>i'm sorry for making this so long, but it is IMPERATIVE that people understand that you don't have to fit in to have fun; after all, who do you want to fit in with? </p>
<p>do what you like, like what you do, and you'll be good. vanderbilt is a great place to do it, too. just try to ignore the ignorant and bigoted, they're everywhere.</p>
<p>Excellent post, Cowboy.ed. My D is also a transfer, and she did go in with her eyes open to what you describe. She is far less worried about "fitting in" than she is about figuring out what to do with the rest of her life. As you say, there are many opportunities for her to take advantage of as she tries to figure that out. It's a terrific school with so many possibilities for students.</p>
<p>I also attended an engineering school, so I understand what you mean about people accepting you for who you were at your previous school. What a great attitude you have about the positive side of some of the social things going on at VU ... you sound very mature. If you haven't read Evil Robot's summary of his VU experience & new career, please do so. It is a terrific read for anyone interested in or attending Vanderbilt:</p>
<p>thank you, kelsmom, i really appreciate that. i did, in fact read evil robot's anecdote; it really solidified my mindset here at vandy for this year. i suggest that whoever else is interested in vandy (or any other school for that matter), read that article</p>
<p>I've been on these boards for awhile, adn stories like ER's are really inspiring. But kids like ER and others that earn the full rides to highly selective colleges are extremely special to begin with; for one, they'll have top test scores and grades, not too mention an impressive resume. Thus, I've always wondered about the "regular" kids and how they fare. ("Regular" is just the average kid at Vandy who was a star in HS.) Kids on the full ride have automatic entre into research, but what about the regular kids? </p>
<p>Vandy's population is nearly 50% grad students on campus; contrast to Cornell, a major research Uni, which has <33% grad students. How can/do undergrads compete for a prof's time? How can do "regular" kids compete for research opportunities?</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity where is palmetto tree from? My dad was born and raised in Winter Park, Florida where his brother (my uncle) still lives and my dad's other brother lives in the Buck Head area of Atlanta. Anyone from the south would know that these are two of the places in the south where citizens are typically "southern gentry" as an earlier poster I think effectively described. Yet, the patri-linear portion of my family would think that anyone that holds the belief that being born beneath the 37th north would give you some sort of inherent sophistication, is a posing idiot that in all likelihood is from a middle class family- probably from 19th century immigrants that had some sort of relative who may have fought for the CSA and then made there living as a sharecropper- which gave this person the idea that they were some sort of southern aristocrat and valued traits of this social class were inherited by them, which they in fact, are not. Not to say that being a member or descendant of a member of a long dead level of a social hiearchy is a positive or negative thing, but it DEFINITELY is neither a physcial or personality trait.</p>
<p>I think I recall PT remarking that it was great for Westminster Schools when one of the Vandy adcoms recently was hired by that school. I wondered then if PT was from Atlanta. Not sure, though. </p>
<p>Bluebayou, Vandy's undergrad profs teach undergrad classes. The number of grad students on campus doesn't impact undergrad opportunities. There are lots of opportunities to get to know & do work for profs - even for "regular" kids. Of course, students have to seek it, but it's there for them.</p>