Chance me: Rising senior applying ED

Senior2016M
Tue, 11 Jul 2017 12:32:26 +0000

You seem extremely well qualified numerically (save for ACT math, which could hurt you I fear) and your ECs, though not uncommon or unusual, are relatively high level in terms of the awards you’ve received, so I’d say well done there. Your assumption that being a Peabody major will give you an edge is mistaken. Peabody probably does have a higher acceptance rate overall than the college of arts and sciences I would imagine, but it’s the best program for students in education majors in the nation, and houses Vanderbilt’s most popular major (Human and Organizational Development) which makes it far from easy to get into. I think your scores and your future educator leaders speech award will stand you in good stead if you accentuate them properly, but no one’s a shoo-in at Vandy, not even ED.

What did you do in Brazil? Saving up your own babysitting money to travel is a worthwhile thing to do (but certainly won’t get you into an elite school) but doing so for a vacation is, in the eyes of an admissions officer, pretty meaningless. Did you do a service trip or you just visited? I think that’s a rather cliche essay topic too, for what it’s worth. Will that really make you stand out in a pile of thousands of qualified applicants and reveal more to the committee than your application already does? Your trip to Brazil? I rather doubt it, but then again I’ve read good cliche essays and bad ‘unique’ ones, so whatever topic you decide on, just do it right.