<p>I say all this to basically say that, despite what many believe going or applying to these schools they are not “the same except Vandy is funner”. They are completely different though they are regarded at similar levels of prestige. It has less to do with the students that matriculate (okay, that has an effect because Emory is far more diverse demographically) and more to do with how they are structured. For example, we only have ECAS, Oxford, business, and nursing with Oxford and ECAS having an overwhelming majority of the students. Vanderbilt has much larger chunks in engineering and Peabody (they have a music school as well) than we have in business and nursing (so we have a larger percentage than they do pursuing “liberal arts” as opposed to UG professional degrees). I worry that you came with the false assumption that they were similar academically, but one was more fun. It isn’t the case, however, the fact that it is false can actually serve as an advantage as I already explained (did I mention the rise of interdisciplinary majors and the tons of joint majors and concentrations which are much more common at Emory). Just get involved (and no, it is not hard for transfers to do so). Whatever reason you initially chose Emory for, make it come to life once you get there. Feel free to second guess, but don’t dwell too much. Also notice how Vanderbilt only ranks marginally higher despite having SAT’s dramatically higher (many schools with lower SAT’s have higher ranks), so I would kind of ignore things like that because they don’t matter that much. Vanderbilt has always had higher SAT’s than Emory for well over 5 years now (maybe 10ish or more to be honest) even when Emory admissions folks were misreporting. To me that implies that selectivity and the graduation rate (which can also affect peer and counselor scores I guess) are the main things holding Emory’s rank back. I don’t know about theirs (maybe endowment). But regardless, I find those rankings don’t match academic rigor and quality but so well (many schools between 15 and 20, including Emory and Vanderbilt, would not be ranked as such if it did, and would instead be ranked lower). </p>