Decisions Help!-- full ride Vanderbilt vs. Columbia?

speechie92
Sat, 21 Apr 2012 03:03:14 +0000

Everyone has already said what I would want to say, but I’ll add one small thing: I’m a CV scholar (one of the full-tuition scholarships, not sure if it’s the one you have) and I can tell you that virtually every other CV/Chancellors/Ingram scholar you meet will have been in exactly your shoes, turning down a top school of some kind for Vanderbilt. My next door neighbor turned down Cornell, a girl in my freshman bio class turned down Stanford, and we had a well-publicized series of articles in the New York Times (google “Michael Greshko”) about a student who turned down both Yale and Harvard for the scholarship. I also did not consider myself a great fit for the school, but attended because I literally could not afford not to (and I am from the Northeast, had never been to the south, hate country music, am not white, etc) and absolutely love it. I’m having the time of my life both in the classroom and outside of it, and I’m super excited to go onto law school or business school down the lane completely debt free. Also, I’m not sure if you’re thinking about wall street (since financial engineering grads tend to go in that direction, but you seemed more interested in BME at Vanderbilt) but I can tell you that I am interning with a bulge bracket investment bank this summer, and know several others who are as well. Vanderbilt will not close any doors for you, but I feel as though significant debt might. Good luck with your decision!