The Vandy Admissions Blog

Thom November 24th, 2009

You know how people talk about made up Hallmark holidays?  You know like Sweetest Day or Talk Like a Pirate Day, and who can forget the parades during NoSHAVEmber (i.e., national beard month).  If this admissions thing doesn’t pan out and I become Chief Holiday Maker and Thanksgiving doesn’t already exist in said parallel universe, that will be my first act on the job.  An autumn day devoted to hanging out with family, eating, and football.  Perfection defined.

If you’re a college applying senior though the gathering of uncle Sid and aunt Colleen over the holiday means one thing, you better have an answer for those inevitable two questions you’ll be getting:  “Where do you want to go to school next year?”  and “What do you want to major in?”  My advice: make something up and make it awkwardly funny, if for no one else but for you.  Things like “I plan to attend carnie school to learn the ancient art of weight guessing.”  Or “Currently I’m searching for a school with a very lenient dorm pet policy as I have recently taken to indoor alpaca herding.”

In Vandy OUA, we have a security policy that an applicant’s file cannot leave the greater Nashville area (no taking files on the road, etc).  A nice by-product of this policy is some mandated down-time over the Thanksgiving break since most of our staff fan out across the country for some homemade pumpkin pie.  The Vandy students are already gone for break as Dean Wcislo mentioned but the University officially closes on Thursday and Friday.  When we all return, we will have one more week of reading before ED I admissions committee starts a week from this Friday.

By the way, today is Celebrate Your Unique Talent Day.  Thanks Hallmark, you’re the awesomeist.

New Voices on the Admissions Blog

As you have already noticed, we’ve added some additional perspectives to the blog.  Kylie’s made her first post - you’ll be hearing more from her as the year goes on.  Plus, we’ll be having many more guest blogs from across the University.  If there is a topic or a particular person you’d like to hear from, post a comment or send us an email.

• Admissions Committee , Early Decision
• Comments(0)

Thom November 3rd, 2009

We’re still processing the some 900 ED applications submitted over the weekend, and the 10+ buckets of mail we received yesterday.  It will take a few days to get everything opened/imported/tracked/filed.  We will be performing an incomplete check of all ED1 files on Friday of this week, with an email to go out on Monday the 9th to all students who are still missing items in their application. If your application is complete, you will get an email as well, but it could be earlier than Monday (it will be sent whenever all your pieces are pulled together).

For your Autumnal enjoyment, I snapped a few shots of the Vanderbilt grounds ablaze in color while walking to the office this morning.  Such a wonderful time of year . . .

Vanderbilt Walkways Along Alumni Lawn in Fall

Vanderbilt's Fall Colors on Curry Field

• Application Process , Early Decision
• Comments(0)

Thom October 31st, 2009

Happy Halloween!  For those of you applying for early decision round 1 you know that November 1st is the application deadline.  Here are a couple of quick reminders:

• Yes we are aware that 11/1 falls on a Sunday, which means that the following business day will be the de facto deadline.  In this case, Monday November 2nd is the deadline.
• It is a postmarked deadline for your application.  Not all of your materials need to be sent together, nor do they all have the be received by Monday.  Your application needs to be submitted on the Common App’s website or postmarked in the mail by Monday.
• Remember that once you submit your common application online to Vanderbilt, your app for Vanderbilt is locked and cannot be changed.  Take your time and make sure everything is correct.  My advice - print the sucker out and proof it.  You read words on paper slower than you read on a computer screen.  Which is why someone once turned in an essay that mentioned that the applicant was “the writting editor for the school newspaper.”  Slow down there speedy.

Our officers are already off and reading applications this weekend, and we’re collectively excited to get off the road.  Good luck to everybody! 

P.S. Be sure to check out our Admissions website’s brand new look to be unveiled later this coming week!

• Early Decision
• Comments(0)

Thom February 16th, 2009

Student workers sorting files before regular decision committee. (And yes, that is a signed picture of Chuck Norris in the background - You want to make something of it?)

Think you’re the only one that gets stressed meeting admissions deadlines?  Our officers are reading their eyeballs out right now, poring over applications trying to meet our own internal priority deadlines.  In our office, we set goals as to when all applications should be first read, second read, and decisioned (more on this term and a minute), etc.  One such priority deadline is coming up this week.  You know how I can tell?  Two things: the accumulation of pizza boxes in the breakroom trash (from after hours dinner breaks from reading) and the copious coffee drinking in the AM from those late night reading sessions.  The reason for these deadlines, what we refer to internally as “pushes,” is so that we can be as informed about the total pool of candidates for each decision round (ED1, ED2, and Regular) before we begin committee.  Vanderbilt has a much bigger Admissions staff than many other schools like us (23 officers that read files), and our officers read considerably less files per officer than many of our peers (sometimes by as much as half).   These elements are by design, as they are intended to increase the depth of our reviews.  However, even with these efforts in place, under the premises of a Gregorian calendar, where time is arithmetically measured and finite, we have to channel our resources to get these letters out the door on time.  At a very high level, our process is built to direct more of these resources (i.e., reading/committee time) to the students who need it most, that being students in the muddy middle of our pool.  

If our applicant pool is a bell curve where there is a small number of students at the very top (the wicked smaaart for you New Englanders & Good Will Hunting fans)  and the very bottom, the majority will fall in the middle, which for Vanderbilt is still is pretty bright, but I digress.  There is a whole group of applicants who on the surface look alike (testing, gpa, class rigor, etc) for whom we spend more time in reviewing their unique qualities (found in their leadership, writing, recs, etc).  Every student who applies to Vanderbilt has their file reviewed (yes, even the non-numeric stuff) by an admissions officer, even the applicant who is clearly not competitive.  But we do reserve our committee time to discussing the students in the middle of our pool. 

To get through all 19,000+ apps, we have to start early.  Which means we may have already read your app some two months ago and it is currently in a “decisioned” status right now.  That means that in our internal system, your application may be flagged as a “hold,” an “admit” or a “deny.”  In a lot of ways, the term “decisioned” is a misnomer.  These are NOT permanent statuses, as they can and routinely do change.  We often relook at these decisions once the pool completes, and we look at new information that arrives from you.  Your officer may have read your file in December, and then you sent in something new, the officer will catch that and look at it to see if this new information changes anything.  This is the primary benefit of a pooled admissions evaluation process (such as what Vanderbilt has), where we try and contextualize each application in the totality of the pool, rather than rolling admissions processes that maintain established admit guidelines (even if only known internally) that adjust as more of the pool becomes known.

Now back to reading.

• Admissions Committee , Application Process , Early Decision , Standardized Testing
• Comments(0)

Thom January 20th, 2009

Here’s some calendar items that are going on behind the scenes in our office and at VU:

• Today several of us will meet to discuss the upcoming Early Decision II committee, and get an early aggregate look at the pool.  Based on this we will set our committee schedule (how often we will meet and when . . . it’s really not that exciting). 
• Also today, The Commons Center and the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center will be having public viewings and discussions of Barack Obama’s historic inauguration.
• This weekend is the first of several Blair School of Music audition weekends - good luck to all who are participating.
• Early Decision II committees start a week from this Thursday and will run through that following weekend.

The essential cool things you need to know about the famed music scene in Nashville:

• You can keep up with the newest artists from Nashville and around the U.S. through  The Nashville Scene’s Digital Jukebox. 
• You can literally hear great live music every night in Nashville, and for pretty cheap when you do.
• The Anne Potter Wilson Music Library, in addition to possessing a staggering classical composer and symphonic collection also maintains a large rock, blues, and pop music collection.  From the Beatles, to Radiohead, Chuck Berry to The Shins, it’s all yours for checking out free if you’re a Vandy student, faculty member, alum, or VU staff member (score).

• Admissions Committee , Application Process , Balance , Blair School of Music , Commons , Early Decision , Freshman Commons , Music , Nashville
• Comments(4)