Colleges Vassar College

Vassar College www.vassar.edu

Vassar College is a private institution that was founded in 1861. It is located on a 1,000-acre campus in Poughkeepsie, NY, in the scenic Hudson Valley, 75 miles north of New York City. At Vassar, students can get involved with more than 100 student organizations on campus, including the Vassar Night Owls, one of the nation’s oldest continuing all-female a cappella groups. Vassar does not have fraternities or sororities. It is a residential college, and freshmen are required to live on campus. The school guarantees housing for all four years, and 98% of students live in the nine residence halls and apartments. The Maria Mitchell Observatory and the Main Building, which once housed the entire college, are registered as National Historic Landmarks. The Miscellany News, the college newspaper, was founded in 1866 and is one of the oldest college newspapers in the country.

Academics

Intellectual inquiry at Vassar is characterized by an unusual degree of flexibility. The college does not have a core curriculum and students can declare a major by concentrating in a department, an interdepartmental program, a multidisciplinary program, or an individually tailored field of study in the Independent Program. Vassar College is one of the first of the Seven Sisters, a group of historically women’s colleges in the northeast including Mount Holyoke, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr and Barnard. In 1969, Vassar became the first of the Seven Sisters colleges to open its doors to men. The student-faculty ratio at Vassar is 8:1, and the school has 72% of its classes with fewer than 20 students. Popular majors include Economics, Research and Experimental Psychology, and Computer and Information Sciences.

Special Highlights

Learning, Teaching, and Research Center. The LTRC connects students and faculty with one another across disciplines, recognizing that both students and teachers are involved in learning, leading, and scholarship. The center’s mission includes helping students realize their academic potential and achieve their educational goals, as well as supporting faculty in their professional development. The LTRC houses peer-tutoring programs in writing, quantitative reasoning, and is working to develop a program of peer-support for core academic skills. LTRC staff also design and lead faculty development seminars informed by their work with students.

The Libraries. The libraries at Vassar are extraordinary and rank among the very best liberal arts collections in the United States both in the number of titles (over 1,000,000 volumes) and in their exceptional variety and depth. The libraries include the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, considered one of the most beautiful Collegiate Gothic buildings in the country; the Helen D. Lockwood Library; the Art Library; the George Sherman Dickinson Music Library; and the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Library, which also houses the Catherine Pelton Durrell Archives & Special Collections Library.

School Mission & Unique Qualities

The mission of Vassar College is to make accessible the means of a thorough, well-proportioned and liberal education that inspires each individual to lead a purposeful life. The College makes possible an education that promotes analytical, informed, and independent thinking and sound judgment; encourages articulate expression; and nurtures intellectual curiosity, creativity, respectful debate and engaged citizenship. Founded in 1861 to provide women an education equal to that once available only to men, Vassar is now open to all and strives to pursue diversity, inclusion, and equity as essential components of a rich intellectual and cultural environment in which all members, including those from underrepresented and marginalized groups, are valued and empowered to thrive.

Student Reviews…

“As someone who did not initially want to come here, I have grown very fond of the school. I’ve made great friends and learned a lot. Vassar has a faculty that really cares about its students, providing them with the means and resources they need to thrive and flourish.”