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ED 1 Letters for Class of 2013 are in the Mail

Posted by Thom on Saturday, December 13, 2008

Happy December,

The Early Decision letters have officially left 2305 West End Avenue as of noon today. I speak for our whole office when I say that this was a very impressive pool both academically and personally.

Overall, the ED 1 pool was larger (albeit slightly) than in years past and while we were excited to see the pool grow in numbers, we were even more thrilled to see an increase in both depth and talent. Indeed, this was the largest, most talented, and most diverse Early Decision group in Vanderbilt’s history. Regarding diversity, Vanderbilt had significant increases in ED apps from African Americans (up 62%) and Asians or Asian Americans (up 72%). Applications were stable among Latino and American Indian populations. Keep in mind that it is generally our practice to not publish academic quality statistics until the entire admitted class is complete (at the end of regular decision).

Consequently, we had some very interesting and difficult discussions. Ultimately, we admitted slightly more than 45% of Early Decision 1 applicants.

Please remember that we always have, and always will conduct a holistic, need-blind admissions process. So many students augmented their academic performance with co-curricular involvement, leadership, commitment to diversity, intellectualism, creativity, musical talent, and service. We value these, and many other attributes when building a class.

All letters are sent in regular envelopes (i.e., the small ones) with first class postage. Weather, distance from Nashville, and holiday mailing volume all affect arrival times. Our office will release decisions by phone starting next Wednesday.

Congratulations to the newest Commodores, we are delighted that you chose to apply to Vanderbilt.

Posted in Application Process, Diversity at Vanderbilt, Early Decision, VU Admissions Statistics and tagged: , ,

  • Miriam

    this is great news for the ones who are applying EDI! However, will Vandy accept less for the people applying for EDII?

  • Miriam

    *less of :p sorry

  • http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions Thom

    Hi Miriam,

    Thanks for your question. I’ve noticed similar questions about EDII on CC, so I’m glad you asked about it here. While the EDII pool is still taking shape (the postmark deadline is Jan 3 along with RD), we’ve made our EDI admit decisions and overall enrollment plan to make sure to leave room for EDII. Unfortunately, I can’t give you an exact number of potential admits, and I don’t know if it ultimately will be more or less than last year (it always depends on the quality of pool), I can assure you that there is room for EDII students in the incoming class, just like there has been in past years.

    Thom

  • Missy

    Suppose you think you are the ideal Vandy candidate but are unfortunately deferred or waitlisted. You rack your brain trying to figure out what went wrong. Perhaps your resume or an important letter of recommendation sent via email never arrived, or even worse, got lost at the Vandy Admissions Office. Is there a way to track or confirm what records you have on file per applicant, outside of your basic admissions requirements? I realize you would need a full-time researcher to field all these inquiries.

  • http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions Thom

    Missy,

    The first thing I would say for you to do in this case is to call us and one of our Admissions Officers can tell you what is in your file (800-288-0432). If our admission decision was not what you were hoping it would be, that officer can try and explain the decision. Keep in mind that this is often a tougher task than one would first assume. The non-formulaic and holistic evaluation process is sometimes hard to unpack for students and families who call us after decisions are received, but we try nonetheless.

    Keep a couple of things in mind: 1) we rarely defer students from ED to Regular, and 2) there is always an appeal process that is in place that starts with the student writing our Dean of Admissions formally requesting another review. In those cases it is always helpful to provide additional information that may be used in the appeal.

    Thom

  • Drew

    About what percentage of applicants who appeal are reconsidered and accepted into Vanderbilt?

  • http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions Thom

    Drew,

    All of the students who formally request a reconsideration (see below for how this is done) receive that reconsideration. I do not keep a statistic on how many of those decisions are reversed, but I can tell you that it is not many. The appeal/reconsideration process works like this: If a student wishes to appeal their admissions decision, they must write a formal letter (not an email) to our Dean of Admissions, Douglas Christiansen, requesting a reconsideration. In that reconsideration, we strongly encourage applicants to submit any NEW information that may be available (new grades, new testing, etc). An independent committee is then chaired by the Dean to decide these reconsiderations and a final decision is returned to the applicant.

    I mentioned that few reconsiderations result in a reversal of the decision. It is important to note that this is not due to some internal “stacking of the deck” or “one strike already against you” thing, just that it is rare that the new information a student submits dramatically changes things.

    Thanks for the question,
    T

  • Jessie

    How many students applied and were admitted under the Early Decision option?

  • http://www.vanderbilt.edu/admissions Thom

    As I mentioned, until the entire ED and RD pools are complete, we generally don’t release formal application figures beyond what was in the post.

    Thanks for reading the blog and posting though.

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