Vassar academics have a few qualities that are difficult to find elsewhere, though whether they are good or bad qualities is up to the individual. There are remarkably few distribution requirements; all you have to do is take a language (a semester of intermediate or a year of beginners), a freshmen writing course (which is not necessarily an English course), and a “Quantitative” course (which can be intro to Psych or economics or many other non-math classes). This appeals to a ton of people. However, there is a flip side. Because there are few distribution requirements, requirements for the individual majors tend to be pretty heavy. Each major is a lot of credits, and sometimes there are weird requirements. For example, I'm an English major and, in addition to making sure I get twelve credits including four 300-level seminars, I also have to make sure that two of those credits are in classes that focus on literature written before 1800, one class on literature written in the 19th century, and one “race and ethnicity” oriented class. Because there are so many specific requirements, students find it difficult to double major. When you get to college, you will be told that you have until the middle of Sophomore year to decide on a major and that, once you decide, you can change it as many times as you want. However, this is not entirely true. You can't discover you're in love with Anthropology second semester Sophomore year and then be an Anthro major; You won't have time to get enough credits to fulfill the major before you graduate. So, you don't have to know your major coming in, but it's helpful to take a variety of classes first semester freshmen year so you can begin to narrow it down and look at major requirements.
That being said, the classes themselves are great and I've loved almost all of my professors. They will definitely know your name and sometimes you get to know them on a pretty personal level; some students even hang with their professors outside of class. Most classes are pretty small, so class participation is key to both getting good grades and enjoying the course.
Students work hard, but not in an uber-intense, University Of Chicago type way. Academic work is just one kind of work that students do every day because almost everyone's involved in a club or organization. I have never had to pull an all-nighter, and it is definitely possible to go your entire Vassar career with out having too many late nights due to academics. It depends on how you manage your time.
Students are also pretty intelligent, as evidenced by thoughtful comments in class, but their conversations out side of class are seldom academic. That's not to say they're trivial. It's pretty common for students to talk about social justice, current events, politics, and other serious conversation outside of class, but you won't hear a whole lot of “according to Thoreau...” or things of that nature.
Academics at Vassar are 100{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} geared toward learning for learning's sake. No class is “job-oriented.” There is no business major or anything like that. It's a great idea, while at Vassar, to spend a semester doing field work or some sort of internship to get some practical experiences. Graduates do go on to do interesting professional things despite the lack of job-oriented classes.