Vassar College Top Questions

the best thing about Vassar is that most students here are very driven and non-competitive at the same time. Everyone helps each other in deepening our understanding of the academic material, as well as the world outside the textbook. Being premed, i was especially worried about the competitiveness and the pressure of fellow premed students. however, i soon found that everyone had the "we're in this together" mentality and were more than willing to help me or be helped at all times.

The best parts about Vassar are the people and the campus. The students and professors there seem very happy to be there, very enthusiastic about being a part of the Vassar community, and proud to be a part of the school. This was my first impression when visiting, and it remains true in my eyes to this day. The feeling of community is also noticeably strong on the campus--as freshman, life in the dorms is very enjoyable and feels very much like home because it is organized in such a way that people get to spend time together and become a type of family. My main complaint (and that of many others) is the school's location in Poughkeepsie. There are not a lot of resources (aka grocery store, movie theater, etc.) that are easily walkable, and much of the town is relatively rundown. This is a main reason I and many others stay on campus, which, because it is the most beautiful many have ever seen, is not such a bad deal.

I love the size of the study body in relation to the size of the campus. We have a lot of beautiful extra space (preserves, golf course, farm) to roam around in and make use of. Most people spend the vast majority of their time on campus, because there really is no need to leave. People here are extremely comfortable with their sexuality(ies), which is something that might be a breath of fresh air- or might take some getting used to.

Best thing - Quality of education One thing to change - More freedom of speech Size - just right Spend most time -my room "What college town?"

Vassar is a beautiful place, small, liberal arts, quaint, friendly, we have our issues but what place doesn't I love this college and her people and the incredible faculty that bring life and perspective to academia. Forget the pop-collar stuffiness of those pompous Ivy Leagues, our education and our student body rival that of any Harvard or Yale... we are the small and intimate place and all of us have chosen this place for a reason. Bring in the unique and creative and obscure and the "deviants" of societal expectations, we cherish welcome celebrate the weird and intelligent and the activist and the bookworm and the barefoot monkey and the strangeness of the NSO, we open up the sheltered conservative and expand the prejudiced and we and we and we and Vassar.... we are all home here, in some way. I would never have felt home in any other place, we were meant for each other.

Vassar is definitely a unique school. You get a VERY high quality education (and yes, that means a lot of work) but without the overwhelming size, preppiness, and pushiness/competitiveness of larger schools. It is true, Poughkeepsie is a dump, but no one actually goes into Po-town anyway, so it's like it doesn't even exist. You get a lot of personal attention from your professors, small classes, and a lot of freedom to study and do what you want. Nevertheless, Vassar can get to be a little homogenous in some respects, particularly in regards to political views. Add to it the fact that it is a very small school, and what you have is an environment that some will love and others will hate. Personally, I love it. Pretty much everyone I know who still goes here loves it, too. Still, there are always a few people each year you absolutely hate it.

Don't let Vassar's physical size fool you! It's a pretty big campus, but be prepared: you're in for very intimate, close relationships with a lot of people. You'll find quickly that if you don't know someone directly, you probably have at least a friend (or twelve) in common. The great thing about this is it creates a really strong sense of community. The bad thing about this is that people find out about things fast. If you want to rustle some leaves, but don't want anyone to find out about it, this isn't the place for you.

Vassar, like most colleges and universities, is what you make of it. Though I'd say it straddles the line of being too small, its size does allow for some incredible opportunities. For example, just through classes I've taken and people I've met, I'm now a Research Assistant for one class and I've been asked to help interview faculty candidates in a department on campus. Because Vassar is so small, the academic opportunities are not only plentiful, but they're attainable. Professors are incredibly available; if you need an extension on a paper or if you just want to sit and chat with them about something, they're typically quite open. I've had some incredible conversations with professors, and I genuinely don't think I would be able to say that were I at a larger institution. If I could change one thing about Vassar, I think it would be the social scene, to be honest. There's often a sense of hostility--a kind of "too cool" attitude--that permeates campus. People don't smile a lot when you walk by them (which may not seem like a big deal, but for a girl from the Midwest, this was kind of shocking), even if you've had a class with them or done projects together. And nothing gets vented about more than the dating scene at Vassar, or lack thereof. The female students get bitter because they vastly outnumber the male community, and the guys on campus tend to have an inflated sense of self regarding what kinds of ladies they can get. What's even more depressing is that the female students let this happen. I can't count how many times I've seen my incredibly intelligent, strong, confident female friends dumb themselves down for a guy who doesn't deserve them for the sake of a random hook up. This is where the small size, which is so great academically, comes back to bite you in the ass socially. Everyone knows everyone's business. Gossip runs amok. In a lot of ways, it can seem like high school all over again. When I tell people I go to Vassar, they're either extremely impressed, or they give a look of vague recognition and then say, "That's an all-girl's school, right?" For the latter people, I simply smile and explain that no, in fact, we've been co-ed for almost 40 years, to which they seem embarrassed. I'd say, outside of my room, I spend the majority of my time in Main Building. Administrative offices, the Retreat (one of the dining options), the parlors for rehearsals and studying, conference rooms for meetings, the Villard Room for concerts, Matthew's Mug for late-night dancing--Main houses a lot of things. It's kind of great to have most everything right there in one place. If I ever have to run errands on campus, they can generally all be taken care of in Main. Poughkeepsie, as I'm sure many people will tell you, leaves much to be desired. It's not the most accessible town to explore, so having a car has been a pretty great advantage for me. I've been able to find places to go and things to do that make Poughkeepsie a much more available place. The town really does have things to offer--great restaurants, for instance--you just have to be willing to invest time into finding them. The surrounding towns, such as Hyde Park, Rhinebeck, and New Paltz, are even more fantastic. They're quaint, quirky, and definitely jive with the alternative lifestyles many Vassar students have. I have to say that I'm really excited by the lengths the college is going to to make Poughkeepsie more available to students. They've just implemented a community shuttle that stops at numerous places around the town, and our new President, Cappy, has started some great initiatives to make Vassar's relationship with the community stronger. I wish Vassar had more school pride. Athletics, while they're often good, are not really supported by the majority of students on campus. Coming from a high school that had a lot of school pride, it was a big adjustment that I would rather have not made. But we do all have pride for our school, though it's not necessarily boasted through athletics or other competitions. We know we're lucky to be at this school, and I don't think we take it for granted. There are some great experiences about Vassar that I'll always remember: serenading in the fall to kick off the school year (where the whole campus essentially gets in a huge food fight after every dorm serenades the senior class), primal scream before finals (walking to the quad and screaming at midnight), Founder's Day (a big carnival in early May to celebrate our founder's birthday), Gays of Our Lives (a panel during Freshman Week that challenges gender norms), countless theater and a cappella performances--these things make Vassar unique.

Diversity really defines Vassar, both in a positive and negative way. On the one hand, in my relatively short time here, I've met more people with different and fascinating backgrounds, insights, worldviews, and experiences than during the entirety of the rest of my life. The school administration really makes an effort to maintain a geographically, culturally, and economically diverse student body, and it shows; their efforts to bring in speakers from all over the globe and put on events on every imaginable subject really contribute to the character of the college. On the other hand, at times efforts to support diversity go too far. The level of acceptance of the school's homosexual and transgendered population fills me with pride, but it also ends up stifling any discourse that could be considered even vaguely in opposition to the school's minority groups and prevailing social opinions. Despite the fact that there are a surprising number of politically and socially moderate or conservative students on campus, the overbearingly PC climate here generally keeps them from lending their viewpoints to conversations on a variety of subjects, sexually-based and beyond. Even if a lot of us might disagree with what they have to say, I still think its important that they be encouraged to say it; as things stand, the intellectual culture here is rather too isolated from opposing viewpoints and real-world conversation.

Theater can very easily take a chomp out of your life. My favorite thing to do is to go from play to play helping out with building the set in each show's tech week. That way, schoolwork seems less important.