Last Wednesday marked the final day of classes at Vanderbilt University. At most prestigious colleges around this time, you would expect to find stressed undergraduates huddled over books, cramming for exams and fighting for space in the library.
But at Vanderbilt, the university founded in 1873 in Nashville, Tennessee, the students were partying.
On Alumni Lawn, a large green space tucked between the college’s classic red-brick buildings, a dozen students in bikinis and swim shorts screamed with delight as they skidded across a 20-foot-long Slip ‘N Slide. Some threw a football. Others read in hammocks.
This relaxed atmosphere, where leisure mixes easily with learning, could be one reason why the school just posted an acceptance rate on par with the most exclusive colleges in the Ivy League. Just 1,382 out of Vanderbilt’s 48,720 regular decision applicants — 2.8 per cent — were accepted to the Class of 2030, marking the most selective acceptance rate in its history.
What’s more, Vanderbilt is projecting an overall admissions rate of 4.8 per cent, which combines both early decision and regular decision admits. This is almost equivalent to the 4.2 per cent admission rates at Columbia and Yale for the Class of 2030. (Harvard will not release its admissions numbers until the fall.)
The southern school’s surge has prompted cheers from its alumni. The radio presenter Clay Travis, a 2004 graduate of Vanderbilt law school, posted on X that his alma mater is “white hot when it comes to nationwide desirability”. When The Times visited last week, at least a dozen students said their school was even hotter than Harvard.
“Vanderbilt is better because we have it all,” said a 22-year-old senior, Tatiana Gudegast. “It’s the perfect blend of an academic institution, incredible city and people who are equal parts driven and social.”
Vanderbilt’s 340-acre campus is located within walking distance of Nashville’s bustling Music Row, but its smattering of century-old buildings, arboretum and 7,300-strong undergraduate population could be a city all on its own. While several students told The Times they love the great weather, supportive student body and competitive sports, they also said they appreciate its rigorous academic environment and embracing of free speech.
That last quality is a big reason for Vanderbilt’s growing appeal, argues Daniel Diermeier, who has served as Vanderbilt’s chancellor since July 2020. Sporting a polka dot tie and a dark tweed suit, the German-born academic said that “core academic standards and values” across US colleges “are being subordinated to political agendas”.
“That is a serious charge and really needs to be addressed,” he added. “We believe that universities’ purpose is to encourage debates, not to settle them.”
A 2025 Pew report showed that 70 per cent of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction, up from 56 per cent who said the same five years earlier. And a Yale report, by a committee with ten professors, found that “no sector of higher education faces greater public scepticism than the Ivy League”.
The committee pinpointed three main reasons for this: rising costs, opaque admissions processes and concerns about free speech on campus. Last year, nearly every college in the Ivy League reported a drop in applications.
Diermeier said Vanderbilt has adopted a position of “institutional neutrality” since the 1960s — which means the school will not take a stance on political issues that are not directly connected to its core functioning.
That position was tested after October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, and Israel responded with a ground and air offensive in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian protests exploded at Vanderbilt and other colleges nationwide, creating a climate that many Jewish students said made them feel unsafe. While certain colleges were criticised for caving to campus radicalism, Diermeier took a hardline approach. As Vanderbilt students called on the college to boycott and divest from Israeli ties, he refused to budge.
He now believes that no-tolerance response has helped boost the school’s national standing. “What October 7 has brought into sharp relief is that there have been various problems at other universities, so we’re now seen as a distinct alternative to many of the Ivies,” he said. “That’s really what’s driving the tremendous rise,” Diermeier said. (Ten years ago, Vanderbilt’s acceptance rate for the Class of 2020 was a less exclusive 10.7 per cent.)
Candice Storey Lee sits on a couch, wearing a bright teal suit, surrounded by awards, books and basketballs emblazoned with the golden logo “V”.
As Vanderbilt’s athletic director since May 2020, Lee said a vibrant sports department is another reason for the school’s recent renown. Although it’s been a member of the powerhouse Southeastern Conference since 1932, Lee said the athletics program “had not been invested in for decades”. But in 2023, the school reached a goal to raise $300 million for sports, using the money to build and renovate its athletics facilities.
Then, in October 2024, Vanderbilt’s football team beat the No 1 ranked Alabama — a shock win that led students to storm the field, topple a goalpost and march it out of the stadium, carrying it 25 blocks through downtown Nashville before dropping it into the city’s Cumberland River.
A piece of the yellow goalpost still sits like a trophy inside Lee’s office.
“Coming to Vanderbilt, you can actually have it all,” she told The Times. “You can have great sports — sports at the highest level in this country — great academics, a great city. The city, the degree, the SEC,” said Lee, who herself is a triple alumna of Vanderbilt, with a bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degree under her belt.
For Evan Goldberg, a 21-year-old senior, Vanderbilt’s investment in sports has been worth it. As he threw a football on Alumni Lawn, Goldberg said he and his friends attended every football game this season. “Our sports teams are getting better … now we’re competitive with everything. Academically, we may not be an Ivy, but we’re right below,” he said, “and we have way more fun.”
On the patio of Rand Hall, Vanderbilt’s student centre, the gardening club is wrapping pink roses in bouquets in honor of Earth Day. As students hand out free flowers in the sun, they chat about their upcoming finals and summer plans.
This kind of idyllic scene is what struck Susan Yao when she first toured the campus, she said. “It felt like what college was meant to be: community and excitement,” said Yao, a junior studying medical, health and society.
Nathan Widjaja, a violinist and food lover from Sarasota, Florida, said he also fell in love with Nashville’s warm weather, concerts and vibrant food scene. Back in high school, he was torn between Vanderbilt and Cornell, an Ivy League institution in upstate New York. But after touring the southern school, the 21-year-old junior realized “the Ivy League brand wasn’t so important to me”.
Several students told me there was no reason to compare Vanderbilt to Harvard. (Harvard declined to comment on any comparisons to Vanderbilt.)
“My dad said I should go here because it’s the ‘Harvard of the South,’” said Armani Dill, a 21-year-old senior double majoring in law history society and French. “But I think we should lean into Vanderbilt, I don’t know that we need to be Harvard.”
Tensions between the White House and elite academia have been raging of late, with Harvard most squarely in the president’s sights. Last year, President Trump’s administration froze $3 billion in federal funds to the elite college as punishment for allegedly failing to address antisemitism on campus. Harvard successfully sued the administration in one case and is now fighting other lawsuits.
At the same time, Trump sent a “compact” to Vanderbilt and nine other top colleges, demanding they support certain goals, such as combatting antisemitism, in return for federal funds. Seven of the nine colleges have pushed back on the compact, but Diermeier has taken a different approach.
In an email to the school newspaper last October, he wrote that he has been in talks with the Trump administration. “We look forward to continuing the conversation — on our campus and with leaders in government and higher education — as we work toward our shared goal of restoring public trust in higher education and ensuring that America’s universities remain the best in the world,” he wrote.
Matt Baker, a college preparation consultant at Riley Baker Education Consulting who has worked with more than 1,000 students, said this more moderate strategy has been a big attraction for many of the students he advises.
He said Vanderbilt, along with many other southern schools like Southern Methodist University (SMU), Clemson University and Wake Forest University, have become popular in the northern suburbs of Chicago where he works because “they’re more moderate in their social and political beliefs. Some of our students just are sick and tired of all of the antisemitic rhetoric”.
But Reese Evans, who is one of the lucky few to be accepted to Vanderbilt’s Class of 2030, said politics had nothing to do with her decision to attend. A native of Tampa, Florida, Evans said she had dreamt of going to Harvard since she was six. Then, last summer, she attended a two-week program at the elite university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and felt intimidated.
Soon after, she visited her second choice: Vanderbilt, and adored it.
“It felt less scary,” Evans said. “Like you’re accepted for who you are.”
“It was like a home to me.”
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