Allison

Vassar's a fantastic place where you can do anything that you want to do if you really work with the faculty. The best thing about Vassar academically is that you have so much freedom. You can create your own major if you want, you can go to petition to go to any country in the world that we don't have a program in already, just to name a couple of possibilities. We're extremely quirky. We have a different weirdly themed dance every week it seems like, and we bring in some amazing talent every year to perform. Also, we have some pretty awesome traditions, like primal scream, where the entire student body packs onto the quad and screams its lungs out on the night before finals. They can hear us all over Poughkeepsie. One thing is that Poughkeepsie isn't a very exciting town, but we can barely be lured off campus to do the few good things that it does have just because there's such a large amount of stuff to do on campus. In Poughkeepsie there is a lot of good food, because it is also the home of the Culinary Institute of America, whose graduates often set up amazing restaurants in town.

Classes at Vassar are always engaging. We have amazing professors, but even if you got a less amazing prof. (which, let's face it, is bound to happen eventually), our class sizes are so small that the sheer force of the ideas coming from the other students always makes it worthwhile. Your professor will almost always know your name, and we have an unusually close relationship between the deans of the college and students. Most of the student body has had at least one conversation with Cappy (President Cathy Hill). The Drama department in particular is a really close knit place. Every senior drama major does a significant senior project in some aspect of drama, and everyone (faculty, majors, the whole student body really) gets excited for the shows that we put on. Our facilities are fantastic. The Martel Theater is as well equipped as just about any stage on broadway, and we put all that potential to some really good use.

We have a very very strongly liberal campus. I'd say that the most out of place person on campus would be someone who is strongly conservative, not to say that they wouldn't be completely accepted...they would just be in the vast minority. We also have a large and very visible LGBT community. We have lots of events on campus every year to promote awareness of that community. A lot of kids on campus are affluent, but we have such a good financial aid program that no one should feel that they can't afford Vassar.

Vassar social life is almost completely campus based. We do a LOT of dancing on the weekends, and senior housing is always a good place to go for parties. We don't have greek life on campus, but that doesn't stop us from having fun even a little bit. The dorm communities are really close. Usually everyone on a hall gets really close. Our student theater is really popular. There's a huge community that participates and nearly everyone goes to shows every weekend. The library is a really social place. It's always packed, and you always see someone there you know to study with.

Well I guess we sort of stereotype ourselves as a mix of hipsters and hippies, of which almost everyone is slightly weirder than the average person in the outside world. And also that we're all liberals.

Yes. Of course, they're only true to the extent that any stereotype is true and we have kids of all kinds at Vassar.