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Super Mega Hella-Blizzard 2009

Thom January 20th, 2009

It snowed a lot by Nashville standards yesterday, nearly a complete dusting actually. The more than 500 prospective students and families visiting Vanderbilt for yesterday’s Black & Gold Days got a wonderful show. Nashville doesn’t do snow really. Everyone outside of the South jokes about grocery stores having runs on bread, milk, and candles when it snows and it is absolutely true - Southerners go a little nutty when frozen precip starts swirling, particularly when behind the wheel. Still, I ardently maintain that nobody drives well on snow, Tennesseans are just honest about it.  A blizzard of another kind is winding down at 2305 West End Ave at the Office of Undergraduate Admissions. During the height of the days surrounding our January 3rd application deadlines, our operations staff was handling an avalanche of mail. On January 5th, the first business day after the deadline, we received 30 bins of mail. Each day that following week brought an additional 10 bins of materials to our office. What’s impressive is how our operations staff, running double shifts late into the evening and working Saturdays, was able to keep pace with that kind of inflow, and are now caught up. Somewhere towards the middle of this week, applicants for whom we are still missing some items will get a letter in the mail detailing what we need (we have sent out numerous rounds of emails).
At the height of its volume, our office received 30 full mail bins in one day.

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

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

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Admitted at ED?: advice for approaching the rest of your senior year

Thom January 16th, 2009

Growing up, whenever my brother and I would get to slapping each other in the back of the ‘85 silver family Pontiac on long trips, my dad used to bellow “don’t make me stop this car!!”  Thing was, we knew he would never do it because stopping the car to lay into us meant sacrificing the ever compelling need to make great time.  It was a Captain Ahab-like crusade for maximum interstate efficiency and nothing would deter the man.

So to breach the topic of rescinding offers of admission because an admitted student phoned in the remainder of their senior year, I want to intentionally set a contrast with this allegory.  When we say in the admission letter:  “Please note that your enrollment at Vanderbilt is contingent upon graduating from high school with your class, and maintaining your current level of academic performance and good citizenship” it is another way of saying, “don’t make us stop this car” (and it’s not like it was in the family Pontiac, even though it is rare, it has happened before).

All admitted students to Vanderbilt will be asked to submit a final transcript once it comes available and it never fails that we see a very small handful of students who packed up the intellectual circus a little early that last semester.  At that point our office has a decision to make, and it is a no-one-size-fits-all determination.  My general advice is succinct, if not completely predictable, don’t risk it.  You’re smart people, you’ve been successful in school and in life for a while now, what’s one more semester (plus eight actually, or twelve for a masters, or sixteen for the M.D., or . . . well, you get my point)?

  • If you are applying ED2 or Regular, you are encouraged to send in a mid-year report (you can find on Common App).  Although it is not required, it can be helpful to us in our admissions review.  If you’ve been admitted under ED1, there’s no need to submit a mid-year report.
  • There’s no magic GPA line in the sand. 
  • A common question often revolves around lightening the academic rigor in that last semester.  Again there is no-one-size-fits-all approach but our philosophy centers around the idea that since the rigor of your course schedule plays such an important role in the intial admit decision, we would still like to see you challenging yourself throughout the remainder of high school.  This is more about you being better prepared for the rigors of the Vanderbilt classroom than it is just “getting in.”

Have a great weekend.

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