Do not apply ED to Vandy. The Vandy rep at our session said their Net Price Calculator is very accurate - within a few percent of what you’ll get from them. I believe him as their NPC is very detailed (as opposed to some schools completely horrible NPCs with one category for income “over $99,000” a year (American, I’m looking at you)). If you’ve run the NPC for Vandy and you’re not comfortable with the NPC, walk away from ED. Frankly, I’d say to walk away from RD as well unless you think your odds of merit are that good - merit is more likely if you’re in the top quartile of applicants which you can tell from Vandy’s data, or possibly if you have some hooks.
You’ll hurt yourself by applying ED to Vandy because: (1) you can only apply ED to one school and maybe there’s an affordable school you’d like to apply ED to; (2) you might allocate your application time too much to Vandy as an ED when you could be focusing on other affordable school’s with EA (or ED); (4) if you get in ED at Vandy, you’re supposed to withdraw ALL other pending applications; (3) Don’t give them your $50 if you can’t afford to attend.
DD2 had Vandy as a her top choice after we toured. While she would probably get accepted, we are not comfortable with the amount of debt we’d incur for her to attend (different from what they think you can “afford”), and she would not likely get the big merit awards. After some discussions, Vandy is simply off DD2’s application list.