Vanderbilt and Nashville

Vanderbilt University

Founded in 1873, Vanderbilt is a private university with a strong tradition of graduate and professional training. The spacious 305-acre campus is located about a mile from the downtown business and entertainment district of Nashville. The University includes the College of Arts and Science, Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Blair School of Music, the Divinity School, the School of Engineering, the Law School, the School of Medicine, the School of Nursing, and the Owen Graduate School of Management. Of the 9,500 students typically enrolled each year, almost half are in graduate or professional programs.

The Nashville Community

Vanderbilt University is located in Nashville, Tennessee, the state capital and the educational and cultural center of the region. A cosmopolitan city with a population of more than one million, Nashville is internationally known as home to American music and related entertainment industries – so much so that Nashville is sometimes called the Third Coast. The city offers you much in the way of music, art, and recreation. Nashville receives high ratings on "quality of life" surveys and is a very attractive place to live. As is the case with most sunbelt cities, living costs are still relatively low. 

Year-round, you will have access to more than 100 clubs and larger venues presenting musicians, bands, and songwriters both known and unknown. In the summer, you will enjoy free weekly concerts – from blues to indie rock – performed by nationally known artists on the nightclub-studded downtown riverfront. You can also relax at jazz concerts held on the lawn of the historic Belle Meade Mansion. 

You will have access to world-class classical and contemporary music performed by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra. The Symphony gives free summer concerts outdoors in addition to its regular performances at the new Schermerhorn Symphony Center, while the Chamber Orchestra regularly premieres commissioned works and, like the Symphony, offers recordings of its performances. The Tennessee Performing Arts Center (TPAC) is home to two theatre companies, a ballet company, and an opera company, and hosts traveling productions of Broadway musicals and plays. 

The Great Performances series at Vanderbilt brings the best in chamber music, new music, theater, and all forms of dance to the Vanderbilt campus, with discounted ticket prices for you as a student. In addition to galleries at Vanderbilt and other universities in the area, you will be able to see outstanding exhibitions of fine art at the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, located downtown in a beautifully restored art deco post office, and at Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art, in a historical mansion set among 55 acres of gardens.

On the sports front, in addition to the varsity, intramural, and clubs sports sponsored by Vanderbilt, Nashville is home to the Tennessee Titans NFL team and the NHL’s Nashville Predators. Our AAA Nashville Sounds will be moving to a new downtown stadium in a year. For your own physical recreation, you will find a wealth of amateur sports leagues around the city. The Nashville Kangaroos, Nashville’s own Aussie Rules football team, even has a club chapter at Vanderbilt.

With more than 6,000 acres, metropolitan parks and recreation areas in Nashville are an exceptional resource you can enjoy year-round. The surrounding region of rolling hills and lakes is dotted with state parks and recreation areas. The Harpeth River is great for canoeing close to home. Farther afield is camping in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park and whitewater rafting on the Ocoee River, one of the sites of the 1996 Summer Olympics.

There are 11 public school systems in and around Nashville. There also are a number of private schools, each with its own curriculum, environment, and emphases. A good place to learn more about Nashville is the web site of the Nashville Chamber of Commerce.