<p>NROTC- your information about Vandy is not correct. The student body is actually quite diverse. It is a SEC school, so there is a big focus on sports, but there are plenty of musicians and less conservative students.<br>
Also, occasionally there is a fraternity or sorority event at a football game where the students dress up, but normally they are in shorts and jeans. </p>
<p>The main thing is that you obviously haven’t checked out Vandy’s football record lately. They have gone to bowl games 3 years in a row and beat a lot of SEC schools the past couple of seasons. </p>
<p>@MomofWildChild Thank you for the correction, especially about the attire at football games. Regarding being conservative or not, I was speaking relatively. Yes, there is diversity aplenty, but conservatives are welcome and generally very comfortable at Vanderbilt; which is rare amongst elite universities.</p>
<p>Actually, I am well aware of Vandy’s recent football success and have celebrated it (my grandfather was an alum). However, that success is unlikely to continue because James Franklin, the head coach mostly responsible for their improvement, has moved on to Penn State. Plus, their best record under Franklin was 9 and 4 (twice). I am not optimistic about the future of Vanderbilt football.</p>
<p>Really? Northwestern is politically diverse. Princeton and Dartmouth are fairly conservative. Amherst seems to have a strong (and growing) conservative presence. Business schools at many top universities skew conservative. I am sure there are many other examples.</p>
<p>Personally, I always exclude business schools because most are right of center and hardly need mentioning. I have never heard of a left of center business school, although perhaps some exist. </p>
<p>Of the schools listed, I have only heard about Princeton being on the conservative side, and my assumption was that this was only relative to the rest of the Ivy League. I would suspect that Vandy is more conservative than any of those listed by sally305. None of this can be proven, of course, and often all we can do is make an educated guess.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say very few colleges have conservative professors. I think it depends on the field you’r e studying. English professors and communications are usually more liberal along with philosophy and history. However, engineering, math, and the sciences generally have more conservative leadership. </p>
<p>NROTC- You are so wrong I don’t know where to begin. James Franklin (known around here as “Poach”) was successful and we thank him. However, he was successful mainly with his predecessor’s recruits, once of whom will be very successful with the Philadelphia Eagles. Franklin turned out to be a two-faced fraud in many respects, and Penn State is welcome to him! We are thrilled with the new coach, Derek Mason, and regard it as a real upgrade. Time will tell, but after a brief period recovering from the sucker punch Poach administered, we didn’t miss a beat. Great new coach and assistants and good talent coming in!</p>
<p>I don’t know that Vanderbilt is the right choice for a student of any political persuasion who prioritizes attending a school where the students are very politically engaged. I hope current students will correct me if I’m wrong, but as the parent of an east-coast Vandy student the impression I get is that in general the students are not particularly passionate about politics and have a “live and let live” attitude. Probably an equal number of Reps and Dems. The focus seems much more on balancing social life with very intense academics and pre-professionalism, with an eye to future employment. The general tone of the campus is friendly and welcoming. As to the administration, I’d say they lean liberal. Also, not sure I’d still characterize Vandy as a “Southern School.” If you check out the most recent statistics only about a third of this year’s freshmen came from the south—albeit that was the largest bloc. The rest came from all over. (My son’s three closest friends are from Chicago, LA and Atlanta. His roommate was from DC.) So I’d say it’s more “Southern-flavored” than strongly Southern at this point.</p>
<p>@sally305 - It is disproportionate, I didn’t say it wasn’t. I said it wasn’t a majority, which is quite a different thing and was responsive to what Pennylane said. As @jym626 shows in her link, it would appear I am correct. And that was 2010. The trend for all private schools to get more geographically diverse continues as application numbers rise.</p>
<p>For 2010, the year showcased in jym’s link, more than 38% of Harvard’s entering class were from the Northeast (New England/mid-Atlantic). If you take out the 12% that come from outside the 50 states, it’s over 43%. I wouldn’t say the difference between a “majority” and 43% is “quite a different thing” or even palpable to students in that environment.</p>
<p>@sally305 - Please, read what I said. I said, first, within the state itself, and then I said probably even the state plus the bordering states. Bordering means exactly that, sharing a border. Not extending way down to New Jersey, PA, and beyond in the case of Harvard. None of the 22% that they are calling mid-Atlantic states would count, I don’t think, unless they include NY in that. But by all means include NY, since it is a bordering state anyway. Sneaks in on that western edge of Mass. Of course as you take in more and more states, especially along the coast, you will get a higher percentage. I’m sorry, but it really bugs me when people respond to something different than what I said and then act like it is a refutation. And I would also mention that taking out the 12% that are international is quite arbitrary. What justifies that as an answer to the question? They aren’t from Massachusetts, are they?</p>
<p>So yes, the difference between the majority and disproportionate would indeed seem to be quite significant.</p>
<p>fallenchemist, you are being incredibly literal. I did read (and do understand) what you said. The point is that the culture of Harvard is very east-coast dominated, just as the culture of Duke is fairly southern.</p>
<p>The reason I took out internationals is that we are talking here about American politics and the influence of geography on the political climate of various colleges. In my experience international students don’t tend to have the ideological positions about the U.S. government that they might about their home countries.</p>
<p>I would also like to add that I think some of the scrutiny of geographic origins is misguided (and I am not talking about you here). When I attended a geographically diverse elite college, I was struck by how similar a lot of the kids were. They had largely grown up in affluent suburbs of major American cities, and apart from accents and food preferences (and occasionally political leanings) they were all pretty much the same.</p>
<p>@sally305 - I am being literal by expecting someone to respond to what I actually say. OK, then yes I am being literal. I was, after all, responding to a very specific statement about students being from one state more than all the rest. Not regional, not USA only. I thought that was clear since I directed my response at the person that made the statement, even quoting exactly what I was responding to. If you were going to expand the parameters beyond that you should have made it clear that you weren’t really responding to the issue raised.</p>
<p>But oh, wait, you must have thought you were since you directed your response to me and essentially said I was wrong. I think you can see why you thinking I was being too literal doesn’t really fly for me. Fine, make your point about the regional attendance being more important than just the state attendance, or even the state plus the surrounding (read bordering) states . But don’t then use that changing of the question being discussed to say I am wrong in what I said. I would appreciate it. As you can tell, this is a pet peeve of mine. I don’t mind being wrong, I own up to that all too often. But I won’t tolerate being told I was wrong about an issue that I wasn’t discussing or referring to.</p>
<p>Nope. I only meant in terms of where people come from…not their mindset (which zip codes couldn’t tell us anyway). About a third of the students at Duke are from the southeast.</p>
<p>I think defining conservative is also a bit relative to location. Duke may be more conservative compared to UC Berkeley, or some colleges in the NE, but it is more liberal when compared to other schools in the region. I think we can make suggestions on this thread, but it would be up to the individual student to decide how conservative a college he or she wishes to attend. </p>
<p>I think that a lot does have to do with geography and student culture. Most websites that rank this stuff have Vanderbilt as the most Conservative of the top 20 universities (and some have it as such by a large margin). I will be a Freshman at Vanderbilt this year and am incredibly Conservative and feel that there are a lot of Conservatives (as much as I have been able to gauge), probably a slight majority. There are also a fair number of Conservative professors, at least according to Rate My Professor. As of 2010, when the map was last updated, about 42% of Vanderbilt students came from the South, which is by far the most of any reason, and many of the rest of them (myself included) wanted to be in the South.</p>
<p>By the way, Derek Mason is going to be a great coach. With a manageable schedule this year, I think that another 9-4 season is possible. Next year’s schedule is even easier (TAMU, replacing Miss. St., will be a joke by then). By 2016, he will have had the opportunity to implement his own system, but the schedule gets much harder (with Auburn as the crossover game and Georgia Tech on the non-conference schedule).</p>
<p>@fallenchemist What’s the problem with talking about politics not really related to college? This is the College Confidential Café, described as place for “Off-topic and General Discussion”.</p>
<p>But anyways, how does Duke compare to Vandy and Dartmouth?
Can Dartmouth really be considered conservative or only when compared to the other Ivies?</p>
<p>I too am having a hard time understanding how a thread called “The Conservative Alternative” can cover anything other than “political generalizations.” </p>