Founded in 1861, Vassar College. is a Private college. Located in New York, which is a city setting in New York, the campus itself is Suburban. The campus is home to 2,424 full time undergraduate students, and 0 full time graduate students.
The Vassar College Academic calendar runs on a Semester basis. In the school year the student to faculty ratio was 8:1. There are 281 full time instructional teachers. Degrees awarded at Vassar College include: Bachelor's Degree, Masters Degree, Post-master's certificate, Doctor's degree.
Quick Facts
Acceptance Rate
26%
Application Deadline
15-Nov
Application Fee
70
SAT Range
1330-1500
ACT Range
30-33
Admissions at are considered More Selective, with ,30% of all applicants being admitted.
In the school year, of the students who applied to the school, only 9 of those who were admitted eventually ended up enrolling.
100% of incoming freshmen are in the top half of their high school class. 95% were in the top quarter, and 70% were in the top tenth. You can apply online.
STUDENT LIFE Reviews
We asked, and students answered these important questions about student life at Vassar College.
4%
“We”re apathetic”
17%
“We know about current events and vote”
60%
“We participate and encourage others to get involved”
19%
“There”s nothing we won”t protest”
0%
“We save it for the classroom”
5%
“Sometimes, but not often”
39%
“There”s usually intelligent conversation to be found”
56%
“All the time, including weekends”
1%
“I”m always terrified”
2%
“I only go out in groups”
36%
“I usually let someone know where I”m going”
62%
“I feel extremely safe”
76%
“We don”t play sports”
0%
“We play recreationally”
23%
“We bought the gear”
1%
“We live for the big game”
1%
“It”s not really our thing”
3%
“Occasinally we gallery crawl”
48%
“There are a variety of opportunities”
49%
“We”re a very artistic group”
2%
“Haven”t met them”
2%
“Available in class”
45%
“They keep regular office hours”
52%
“They”re always available”
99%
“No greek life, but other groups to join”
0%
“There is some involvement, but not a lot”
0%
“Plenty of people join a sorority or fraternity”
1%
“It”s everything. If you”re not greek, you”re a geek”
0%
“We”re not into drinking at all”
10%
“Maybe a little, but it”s not a big thing”
63%
“We only party on weekends”
27%
“There”s some drinking happening every night”
0%
“Never, we”re here to learn”
26%
“There might be people who do”
58%
“People are known to partake on weekends”
15%
“There”s a huge drug scene”
4%
“We”re apathetic”
17%
“We know about current events and vote”
60%
“We participate and encourage others to get involved”
19%
“There”s nothing we won”t protest”
0%
“We save it for the classroom”
5%
“Sometimes, but not often”
39%
“There”s usually intelligent conversation to be found”
56%
“All the time, including weekends”
1%
“I”m always terrified”
2%
“I only go out in groups”
36%
“I usually let someone know where I”m going”
62%
“I feel extremely safe”
76%
“We don”t play sports”
0%
“We play recreationally”
23%
“We bought the gear”
1%
“We live for the big game”
1%
“It”s not really our thing”
3%
“Occasinally we gallery crawl”
48%
“There are a variety of opportunities”
49%
“We”re a very artistic group”
2%
“Haven”t met them”
2%
“Available in class”
45%
“They keep regular office hours”
52%
“They”re always available”
99%
“No greek life, but other groups to join”
0%
“There is some involvement, but not a lot”
0%
“Plenty of people join a sorority or fraternity”
1%
“It”s everything. If you”re not greek, you”re a geek”
58 Students rated on-campus housing 4 stars. 17 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate off-campus housing?
36 Students rated off-campus housing 3.1 stars. 0 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate campus food?
60 Students rated campus food 3 stars. 10 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate campus facilities?
59 Students rated campus facilities 4.4 stars. 47 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate class size?
59 Students rated class size 4.7 stars. 76 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate school activities?
59 Students rated school activities 4.3 stars. 51 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate local services?
60 Students rated local services 3.6 stars. 18 % gave the school a 5.0.
How would you rate academics?
59 Students rated academics 4 stars. 46 % gave the school a 5.0.
Vassar College REVIEWS
What's your overall opinion of Vassar College?
10 Students rated Vassar College
Alexa
04/08/2024
Vassar is the perfect mix of academically rigorous, collaborative, and artistic. Students work together and support one another. Everyone is passionate about what they do but never at the expense of someone else. People at Vassar are also extremely creative. They make art, build tree houses, compose music, and a lot of it is just for fun which is amazing to see. I love this school.
Anna
01/01/2022
Vassar College has a good campus culture, supportive atmosphere for the most part, not overly competitive, students value their education but also seem to make great groups of friends and meaningful connections, professors are very approachable and available during office hours or via email, students collaborate for class projects or study groups.
Sarah
05/28/2019
Vassar College is an amazing institution with wonderful facilities and teachers. Professors are quite engaging with their students in and outside of the classroom, willing to help you with the class itself and your major. The environment of the campus is very welcoming and provides many opportunities to people of color!
Jens
04/29/2019
Vassar isn't perfect. Yet, it is the imperfections that have broadened my education. Like most east-coast, expensive institutions, Vassar is a predominantly white campus. And as a student of color, this can be challenging and exhausting. Yet, what I've found, as that this experience is not just making me a more passionate activist, but has strengthened my bond to my race and ethnicity. I feel prouder to be black here.
On another note. I will say that my least favorite part of Vassar is its isolation. Poughkeepsie is a fairly large city, but there is not a lot going on.
James
03/25/2019
Vassar is a very diverse campus with more things to do then I have time for. I am always feeling that I need to cut back on things, even though I still want to join a theater group and maybe even a comedy group. The teachers here are able to answer almost any question, and if how they are explaining it to you doesn't make sense, they have five other ways of describing it which will definitely help you understand. I have met some of the most friendly and accepting people here. I never realized how nice people could be until I came to Vassar.
Jade
07/12/2018
I have a high opinion of Vassar College. This school is very generous with its scholarships. I work with the food places on campus, and the food we have is so diverse and delicious, we make sure that everyone has options. We also are warmly welcomed to the local eateries just outside the school\'s gates. The library is only closed from twelve in the morning to seven in the morning. Our school lets us access so many great musicals, plays, and lectures with well-known people in the academic and artistic worlds. The liberal, progressive environment of the school really makes me feel safe and secure.
Emma
07/11/2018
I chose Vassar college for its rigorous academics, and beautiful campus. The school met all of my academic needs during my first year and I will be returning this fall. The only thing I have a problem with at Vassar is the student body. The campus is politically polarized to the left, which can interfere with daily life more than one might think. It became exhausting even after a few weeks of living there. The students are extremely aggressive and abrasive when it comes to politics. I came in as an excited liberal who wanted to have meaningful discussions. Instead I was lectured about why I was an awful person for eating a burger or how I was going to steal from the poor by becoming an economics major. I’ve run into many of these pretentious students who formulate counter arguments before I even have a chance to speak. If anything, I completely avoid political conversation and now find myself walking on eggshells to prevent myself from offending anyone. Vassar prides itself on promoting an open minded and accepting campus through it’s engaged pluralism initiative, but simply fails when people disagree or when there is an unpopular opinion. Students have been physically attacked for supporting certain candidates, sports groups have been generalized as racist or rapey based on stereotypes, and students of certain backgrounds shamed for having certain privileges. At Vassar, it is almost a competition to be the most oppressed in society and there’s constant reminder of everything your doing wrong by existing. As someone who was excited to be part of various social movements, I was very disappointed by this behavior. The student body at Vassar exposes how even the most open minded can be shamefully ignorant and hypocritical. Vassar needs to address these issues if it wants to successfully have difficult conversations, be taken seriously by the world, and properly prepare its students to face people with different opinions. As of now, the school fosters an environment or should I say “bubble” of hypersensitive students with unrealistic expectations and victim complexes.
Guila
04/12/2018
Very impressed with the caliber of teaching here and the academic rigor. You have the choice here to study a lot or not study as much, without the peer pressure. And most people do put in quite a bit of an effort. There's people in the library all the time, even on Fridays. And the library here is to die for I have yet to seen a more beautiful library OR campus. Except during winter. It's ugly af during the colder season and there's not much to do off campus because Poughkeepsie is Poughkeepsie. However, Vassar sometimes feels like a very high quality prep academy where you learn a ton about anything you want and it is a great platform to pursue further education. A lot of people I know consistently get admitted into top phd or masters degrees at Harvard, Yale, and MIT.
tyana
03/09/2018
I really like this school because my older sister went in like 2014 and the campus of the school is very green and beautiful. their graduation was very beautiful and emotional I really do wish I can attend the school after I graduate because it would make my family proud
Julia
06/06/2017
Acts real woke but isn't!! There are cool people here but also nasty sports cliques who say awful things. The administration pretends to be there for low income/first gen students but doesn't do anything to support them. If you are low income/first gen DEFINITELY sign up with transitions, they are your friend. Production department in film is very lax, you're going to have to hold YOURSELF to the standard of what you want to become. The school, especially film, is white-dominated. POC spaces are limited, but you can find them. LGBTQ center was disappointing, they have said some really problematic things. There are still LGBTQ+ folks on campus who are cool, though. Academic accommodations are easy to get if you have a diagnosis from an outside physician, which you may be able to get through Vassar's insurance. Going abroad is not supposed to be more expensive than any other sem, but because you can't do student employment, it really is. Be wary of that! Student employment in general is good, although some profs just won't give you enough hours. Try to reach out to other students before applying if you can. There's a big "I'm sooooo busy!" culture, so get ready to pretend to be even more swamped than you actually are. Don't feel pressured to take on more than you want to!
The fall 2020 acceptance rate for Vassar College is 26%. That means, out of _____ applications received in 2020, _____ students were offered admission.
What is the stereotype of students at your school?
Most would describe Vassar as a small liberal arts school with a spectacular campus.
Some stereotypes I have heard iabout the students include academically inclined, free thinking, and very liberal. I have also heard that we are all tree hugging hippies who don't shave, are stuck up, and smoke weed all day - oh, and that everyone is gay.
Is the stereotype of students at your school accurate?
Only partly. As far as the pot smoking goes it's pretty huge but partying in general kind of encompasses that, the people here are more inclined to smoke up when it's social. Everyone is liberal though, that is definitely true. I've yet to meet a true conservative on this campus. As far as Vassar being gay... well yeah, it kind of is. The gay population is definitely present and accounted for but so is the straight population.
The best thing about Vassar is definitely the feeling of community. The fact that the professors live with us and their kids park their tricycles next to student's bikes makes for a very unique college experience. It's a good size for making sure you feel like you know people but very difficult to remain anonymous. The town-college relationship sucks, not because Poughkeepsie is so awful but because Vassar tries very hard to keep the students on campus all the time, which gets very smothering. The reaction I get when I tell people I go to Vassar is either "where?", "ooh, a smarty", or "good luck finding a husband", which is kind of representative of the experience here, strangely enough.
Professors 100{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} know your name. They may not be the best professors in the world but they will definitely take the time to get to know you. My favorite teacher of my life is Abigail Baird of the psych department... check her out. Class participation is a big deal here, there aren't very many big lecture classes. Intellectual conversations outside the classrooms are quite common. I'd say students are competitive but only because everyone wants to do well, but most people don't discuss grades. I love that Vassar has such a teeny required course load, sitting in a class you don't enjoy is a useless practice.
What should every freshman at your school know before they start?
It's a big world out there. Take your time and breath. You will face things you can't control, remember that. You like to plan every little detail of your life and enjoy knowing what the future holds- be prepared to let that go- once you hit the mainstream you'll have to roll with the punches. Don't give up on your dreams or let anyone else tell you who you are!
Here's your chance: Say anything about your college!
Vassar is really good at selling itself. Be careful not to buy too much into what they say at the info session and the pretty tour under the longest no longer free standing branch by the hogwarts-esque library. Vassar is a great school with great opportunities but it's not the happy rainbows and cupcakes fairyland admissions makes is out to be.
What do you consider the worst thing about your school? Why?
The worst thing about my school is its location. Poughkeepsie does not compare with big cities, which have much more resources for learning and expanding curriculum material. If only Vassar were in a city like New York, where museums and art galleries, among so many other attractions, enhance the quality of education just by the unique resources they make available to students!
The availability of faculty (and their knowledge) and the openness of staff and students to consider alternative paths after graduation. Although many of my friends from Vassar went on to the typical internship/corporate drudgery work, many of them also went on to be Park Service Naturalists, starving actors, publishing agents, and other slightly more exciting and unique pursuits.
Furthermore, my current attendane at a large state university for graduate work has allowed me to appreciate the small classrooms that encourage thinking and problem-solving, with no one answer looked for. Discussion is paramount. I miss it.
Someone who attends Vassar should be highly motivated to do well in school. They should willing to listen to a diverse set of views and not be bothered by them. They should not be bothered by cold weather and should love to go sledding. They should be outgoing and willing to put themselves out there in order to meet knew people and learn new things. They should be bold. They should be accepting. They should either like to party or be able to find alterative means to have fun other than the party scene.
What's the most frustrating thing about your school?
Vassar tends to project an image that it doesn't really hold true to. Financial Aid is not as generous or helpful as they make it seem, administrative officers are not really willing to listen to student input, and the Vassar Student Associationis more like an elite group of students that work with the President's goals in mind, and rarely genuinely consider the student body at large. Social life here is what you make it, but it's not that easy to find fun activities that don't involve dancing and alcohol. People are not that friendly or open.
All students must apply yearly for financial aid. This process starts with the FAFSA.
Though financial aid deadlines vary by school, it is a good idea to apply as soon as possible. For the upcoming school year, you can apply as early as October 1 for the FAFSA. Additional school aid will be dependent on the FAFSA results.
77% of students attending Vassar College receive some sort of financial aid.
23% were awarded federal grants.37%received federal loans. Many students do also need to apply for additional private student loans.
