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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There are 3 relatively recent threads asking about Vanderbilt. What’s up with that? [/quote]

Honest, non-snark answer: "what is up with that" is that high-achieving kids want to go there and say as much. Their parents -- ages 45-60 and living in New Jersey and from New Jersey or living in Bethesda and from Westchester County --  reflexively deflect this proposal from their high-achieving teens. They went to _____prestigious school in the Amtrak corridor themselves, before achieving many things on Wall St, the media, or DC, and they assumed that their kids would also target Penn.

When pressed to name excellence anywhere south of Georgetown's latitude, they can cite only Duke. They are skeptical about endorsing something they vaguely associate with Deliverance, the Dukes of Hazard or Gone With the Wind. Still, their high achieving teens persist in keeping Vandy on their short list. Thus, mom and dad post here for elucidation. [/quote]

PP. Thanks for the insight.

I’m a parent in the age range you mentioned, and I grew up in the Midwest. People there (I’m now in DC) think about Vanderbilt, Northwestern, UChicago, and WashU the same way that people on the East Coast think about the Ivies. And, ditto for their LACs. Midwesterners think Carlton, Grinnell, Oberlin, and Kenyon are pretty great schools and comparable to the range of LACs on the East Coast.

I attended one of these schools and my sibling attended an Ivy. In chatting about our experiences, the primary difference seemed to be cultural, not academic.

Students from the NE who attended my Midwestern school tended to be kids who wanted a rigorous education, but wanted out (at least for four years) of the hyper-competitive, cutthroat, money-obsessed, prestige game that is pervasive from Boston to DC.

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