What’s Missing at Vandy? . . . Nothing!
A popular computer game format is to create your “perfect” world. Programs like “Zoo Tycoon” and others have made a fortune by allowing individuals to create their ideal vision of some part of the world. Vanderbilt often feels as if it has been created by some sort of galactic college version of these games. Imagine a feature you’d like to include in your version of the ideal college and it probably exists on the Vanderbilt campus.
Let’s play for a minute. Create whatever you want in a college and don’t worry about obvious contradictions because after all this is just a game. Begin with the campus. We want a beautiful campus with broad, sloping green lawns dotted by towering trees and of course we want it right smack in the middle of a city . . . yup, got it. We’d like the school to be a top 20 academic powerhouse but feature big time nationally recognized athletics. Uh huh, got that too. We want a pleasant four season climate but nothing too hot in the summer or too cold in the winter. Naturally. We’d like the school to be in a major city, a business center but with a fun, crazy, youth oriented culture. Of course.
We could go on for quite a while playing this game but in the end, your finished product would look a lot like Vanderbilt. It’s difficult to think of another campus that features so many items on a student’s “wish list” in one place. Because it’s not in the Northeast, many students and many media outlets seem to overlook Vanderbilt when casually reviewing America’s great universities. That’s their mistake!
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