I never saw that article, but I don't doubt it. It's been more than a few years since I was a student there. Vandy has always been "more Southern" than, say, Dook, but it has always attracted a substantial number of students from Northern states -- more likely to be from the Midwest (Illinois, Ohio, Indiana) than from the Northeast (Dook seems to draw heavily from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey).
Its student body, then and now, skews toward preppy and rich, but there was/is a fair amount of diversity. More Oriental students than blacks when I was there. No idea what the Jewish percentage was -- not a lot, but enough to support one frat and one sorority which were each supposedly Jewish. Intellectuals? Sure, there were some. I avoided them. :-)