The Vandy Admissions Blog

Thom May 7th, 2009

We will start making offers of admission from our waitlist and we will begin doing so starting this evening and tomorrow.  A review of our deposits reveals that we are exactly where we had hoped to be, that is, to be able to admit from the waitlist.  I do not know how many offers we will ultimately make as it will depend on how many students accept our offers.  Here’s how this process will work:

• Students selected to be admitted from the waitlist will be called on the phone by their assigned admissions officer.  We call using the phone numbers provided on the student’s application, and we will continue calling until we can reach the student.
• Once we have the student on the phone, we will indicate that we would like to offer him or her admission to the Vanderbilt 2013 class and will ask if he or she is still interested in being offered admission.
• If the student says yes, an emailed offer of admission will be sent to the student within 24 hours. 
• If the student applied for need-based financial aid (and the Office of Student Financial Aid and Undergraduate Scholarships has received all necessary application materials) the student will be emailed an estimated financial aid offer.  The emailed offer of admission and financial aid offer should arrive on the same day.  We will also mail hard copies of everything to the student.
• Once we email you all your admission materials, you must respond within 7 days.  If you wish to accept our offer of admission, we must receive your reply form and matriculation deposit within 7 days of the receipt of your emailed offer of admission. 

Students who either did not apply for need-based financial aid, or did not have a complete financial aid application, will not receive the financial aid offer email.  If you are admitted and do not receive an offer of need-based financial aid, and you thought you had applied, contact the financial aid office.

Like last year, we will make offers in small waves, which allows us to observe our yield and avoid over-enrolling the class.  That means that we will be making these calls over the next several weeks and months.

Congratulations to the latest group of admitted students to Vanderbilt.

• Waitlist
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Thom May 1st, 2009

Greetings from rainy Nashville.  Today marks the National Candidate Reply deadline. At Vanderbilt, the May 1st deadline is a postmarked deadline so for those accepted students waiting until the last minute, your reply to us MUST get in the mail today. How you send it doesn’t really matter (i.e.,you don’t have to overnight it or anything).

For everyone on the waitlist, you’ve waited patiently to hear if we will be making offers from the waitlist. As it looks today, it does appear that we will be able to make some offers of admission from the waitlist. When we will be able to start making those offers, and how many we will be able to make are not yet known. Since our deadline is a postmarked deadline, we’ll have to watch how things roll in this weekend and early next week. I would anticipate knowing more towards the middle of next week.   Again, stay tuned.

• I've been admitted - now what? , Waitlist
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Thom April 2nd, 2009

This year, Vanderbilt’s pool of applicants was so strong that many students who may have been admitted even a year ago were offered a spot on our waitlist.  Keep in mind that it was equally difficult to be offered a spot on our waitlist as it was to be admitted.  Still, I know that many students and families are unclear about what being on a waitlist means, and as such, I hope this post provides some insight into Vanderbilt’s waitlist process.

The good news is that we model our class with the goal of enrolling students from the waitlist.  Before The Commons, Vanderbilt’s incoming class size could fluctuate with any additional students being housed across campus.  With the advent of The Commons we are committed to housing all first-year students together.  We use the waitlist to round out the class, in whatever way it needs rounding out. 

First off, we do not rank order our waitlist.  We approach it by school (A&S, Engineering, Peabody, and Blair).  It is almost like having 4 different waitlists.  Due to the segmented nature of the list, we do not comment on how many students are active on our waitlist — it is our belief that the overall number is misleading as a gauge of a student’s chances of coming off the waitlist.    It is important to note that while we plan to make offers from our waitlist, we cannot predict our yield (% of students offered admission who accept), and therefore we do not know if we will be making offers from the list, and in what quantities.

We know that students’ reactions to being offered a spot on the waitlist will differ - some will say no thanks to the entire thing, some will accept a spot on the waitlist just to see what happens, and some will accept a spot on our list because we remain their top choice.  It is identifying that third group of students that is of primary interest to us. 

So how do you demonstrate your interest to us?  You do not have to visit, or write another essay, or tattoo Mr. C’s mug on your forearm.  You just need to do the following:  1) return the yellow waitlist reply form indicating you wish to be active on our waitlist, 2) contact your admissions officer and let him/her know you remain interested, 3)  respond to our waitlist check-in emails when they come (see below for more on this), and 4) consider submitting any substantially relevant new information (e.g., new grades that might be available).

If you accept a spot on our waitlist, you will be asked to provide an email address because we will be communicating periodically with you via email.  It is vital that your email address is one that you check often and is one that will not block our emails in a spam filter.  The emails we send will try to keep you informed about what’s going on at Vanderbilt and (most importantly) ask you if you remain interested in Vanderbilt.  We will ask you to respond to these emails by submitting an online Wait List Update form indicating that you remain interested in VU. 

This information, along with all of the other information you already provided with your application, will be used by our staff to make offers from our waitlist, if we are able to do so.  Students admitted and enrolling from the waitlist are still able to receive financial aid (if they qualify), get housing, and register for their classes, just like students admitted under ED or RD.

For now, you need to begin sorting your offers of admission and decide if you want to accept a spot on our waitlist.  If we are able to make offers from the waitlist, we  will not do so until May, so you will need to accept another school’s offer of admission by their reply deadline.  Starting the first week in May (after all of the deposits have been received) we analyze our class and begin making offers of admission from our waitlist.  We will try and provide regular updates on this blog about the waitlist, including more information about whether we’ll be making offers, and how that process will work.

• Application Process , Waitlist
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Thom December 19th, 2008

Q&A Time:

Q - How do I check the completeness of my application (i.e., do you have my stuff)? 

A - Call 800-288-0432 between 8am-5pm CST or email us at admissions@vanderbilt.edu.  We started running double shifts with our processing staff a couple weeks ago to be able to handle the mountain of paper (remember last year?).  Postmarked deadline for both ED2 and RD is Jan 3 (and yes, we know that’s a Saturday).

Q - What about merit scholarships and financial aid, when are the applications for them due?

A - The postmark deadline for both the Cornelius Vanderbilt and the Chancellor’s Merit Scholarships are also Jan 3.  For our need-based aid we use both the CSS PROFILE, which is available now and the FAFSA which goes live on Jan 1st.  The preferential deadline for Vanderbilt receiving both of those is Feb 1 for RD.

Q - Several months ago VU announced a big enhancement to student aid where need-based student loans in financial award packages will be replaced with gift aid starting with the next incoming class (2009).  With the worsening economy, are you still going through with that?

A - Yes, absolutely.  [We have actually heard this question a handful of times and we're proud to give the answer]

Q - I was just admitted at ED1.  What’s my next step? 

A - Well, I suppose you join the VU 2013 facebook group and write “I’m so stoked!” on the message board, thank your mom and dad for all their sacrifice and toil in raising you, enjoy the holidays, keep your grades up (seriously, its called a contingent offer of admission for a reason), cheer on the ‘Dores in the Music City Bowl on Dec 31, and look for the bigger admit packet to be sent around April 1 when it goes out to the entire admitted class (but maybe not in that order).

Stats you can’t use - even if you tried:

According to the Social Security Adminstration, the most popular baby names for the years of 1990 and 1991 (the years when most of the newly minted incoming ED1 class of 2013 were born) were the following:

1990 & 1991:

The top names of the 2009 VU ED1 admitted class?

There are 160 different female names and 130 unique male names in the incoming ED1 class. 

• Application Process , Early Decision , File Reading Explained , VU Admissions Statistics , Vandy Athletics
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Thom October 31st, 2008

There’s a great line from an Arrested Development episode, spoken as a teaser by a TV news anchor, “Packs of wolves loose on the streets of Orange County - we’ll tell you what it means for your weekend when we come back.”  Just thought of it when I was writing the title for this post.  I digress.

1) If you are applying Early Decision 1, and have yet to submit your application, the due date is November 1st.  We get asked sometimes if everything must be received by November 1 (or January 3 for ED2 and RD): the answer is no.  Focus on getting the application submitted/postmarked (if you are snail-mailing it), and then you can work with your school,  recommendation letter writers, and testing organizations to complete your application.  Once the application is received we (of course) allow students to complete the application. 

2) Vote early, if you can. 

3) Dress up for Halloween.  For example, today I am dressed as an early middle-aged admissions officer.  I went all out too, V-neck sweater, Dockers khakis, the whole bit.  Awesome.

• Advice for Parents , Application Process , Early Decision , File Reading Explained , Political Life at Vanderbilt
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