Vanderbilt University
Nashville, Tennessee · Founded 1873
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Test-optional
The SAT and ACT are optional for students entering in fall 2027 or fall 2028, and Vanderbilt says in its own words that your choice about submitting scores 'will not advantage or disadvantage the application review'. This is temporary: Vanderbilt announced in July 2026 that scores WILL be required for students entering in fall 2029 and later, so if you are a sophomore or younger, plan to test. Vanderbilt superscores both exams, the ACT Science and Writing sections are not needed, and you may self-report scores. The same policy applies to transfer applicants. Source: admissions.vanderbilt.edu (verified September 2026).
About
Vanderbilt pairs a research university with a teaching-focused undergraduate college, and it is unusually insistent that the two belong together: Immersion Vanderbilt requires every undergraduate to complete a sustained project - research, a creative work, an international experience or civic engagement - with a faculty mentor, and to reflect on it before graduating. The university describes its own culture as collaborative rather than competitive, and its motto is Crescere aude, dare to grow.
History
Cornelius Vanderbilt was in his 79th year when he gave $1 million in the spring of 1873 to endow a university in the South - the only major philanthropy of his life. Methodist Bishop Holland N. McTyeire, who had recovered from illness in the Vanderbilt home in New York, persuaded him that such a university could help strengthen the ties between the sections of a country still recovering from civil war. Vanderbilt never visited the campus that carries his name.
What stands out
- Five undergraduate schools: Arts and Science, Engineering, Peabody College, the Blair School of Music and the College of Connected Computing
- Immersion Vanderbilt - an independent project with a faculty mentor, required of every undergraduate
- A residential college system in which faculty heads live in the buildings with students
- More than 65 undergraduate majors
- The only private university in the Southeastern Conference
Popular majors
Campus life
Every first-year student lives together on The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, and about 75 percent of all undergraduates live on campus. Greek life is a large part of the social scene - roughly a quarter of men and a third of women join - and Vanderbilt is the only private university in the Southeastern Conference, so athletics draw the campus together as well.