Nashville

Some of our students' favorite Nashville locales:

VANDERBILT'S HOMETOWN of Nashville is a vibrant, engaging city known proudly as "Music City, U.S.A." Located a little more than a mile from downtown, the university’s students, faculty, staff and visitors frequently cite Nashville as one of the perks of Vanderbilt.

From serving as home to the nation’s largest Kurdish population to being named America’s friendliest city for three years in a row, Nashville is a metropolitan place that proudly exudes all of the charm and hospitality one expects from a Southern capital.

The city was settled in 1779 and permanently became state capital in 1843. The city proper is 533 square miles with a population of nearly 570,000. The Metropolitan Statistical Area encompasses eight counties — Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Robertson, Rutherford, Sumner, Williamson and Wilson — and has a population of 1.23 million.

Nashville typically enjoys a mild and pleasant climate with only a few days of the year having either very hot or very cold conditions. Most of the city's rain is confined to the spring months, but a shower throughout the year is not unusual. Fall is a celebrated time throughout Tennessee. Visitors come from all over to see the annual changing of the leaves in mid-October. Nashville really shines throughout the winter. Although the climate is mild, winter temperatures do range from cool to cold. If a snowfall occurs, it is usually in January or February, and is seldom heavy.

Major industries include tourism, printing and publishing, technology manufacturing, music production, higher education, finance, insurance, automobile production and health care management. Nashville has been named one of the 15 best U.S. cities for work and family by Fortune magazine, was ranked as the number one most popular U.S. city for corporate relocations by Expansion Management magazine, and was named by Forbes magazine as one of the 25 cities most likely to have the country's highest job growth over the coming five years.