<p>is anyone else going?</p>
<p>i want to!!! (but am international student, so haha, fat chance)... what exactly happens? could you let me know when you return? :D</p>
<p>no problem---i'm sure i'll be rambling on about it to everyone i know anyway.</p>
<p>hey all! i just got back from the open house today. here's how the day went:</p>
<p>we got there at exactly 9 cuz we hit alot of traffic, but were able to catch one of the last few tours. our tour guide was mikey, a history major and jewish studies minor. he was pretty friendly and gave us ALOT of info on vassar's history and what not.</p>
<p>we toured the buildings around campus (which took about an hour in the cold) if anyone wants to see pictures, i'll be glad to email them to you, just pm with your email address and i'll send them as soon as i can.</p>
<p>all the bulidings were pretty in the rustic type sense but they were doing some construction on some buildings and there were place that needed a bit of fixing up. nothing major though, just the steps leading into a dorm ( lathrop i believe) were kinda run down and not to safe feeling but i dont think thats a major issue. i had the morning session so when we started the tour there wasnt really anyone there on campus. apparently there arent very many morning classes and everyone was sleeping haha. the students i did see however all seemed like the (pardon if you dont agree with me) geeky type. that includes, my tour guide, the others in my group and the majority of the students i saw on campus. now, i'm definitely not one of the most popular people in the world but they seemed to be VERY focused on their studies and not like the party type. i'm not always a shallow person but this definitely stuck out to me because all the campuses i've visited have had their share of preppy/jocks and not so many of the other appearances.</p>
<p>anyway, the campus is beautiful--even the drive there has pretty scenery like the houses on the way and stuff. they are defnitely in to two things at vassar--EDUCATION and the ARTS. you just felt like you were in the presence of a great college where you would learn soo much. they talked about how intro classes are capped to about 21 (25?) and most classes are smaller than 19. since there is no core curriculum, you can take virtually any of the 1100 courses they have to offer (which is amazing). the only requirements are intermediate knowledge of a foriegn langauge and a freshman seminar writing intensive course. i'm not sure if there was anything else but they made it pretty clear that you are free to take whatever you want to take. you need 34 units to graduate and most majors need about 17 units i believe.</p>
<p>we didnt see any dorms, which disappointed me alot but we walked through the parlor of lathrop which was nice. they have steinway pianos in almost every building on campus (third largest amount of steinways behind the ppl who make them and someone else) which is pretty cool.</p>
<p>ALOT of bikes on campus. everywhere there is a bike rack, there's a ton of bikes. the tour guide said that was big on campus...guess i'll have to learn how to ride one now haha</p>
<p>campus security drives around in these little noisy golf carts. the reason they make so much noise is because they run on electricity so stop pollution which was really cool. you could hear them coming from every direction though lmao.</p>
<p>the library is like heaven. its just beautiful. it has wireless, as does most of the campus. the only parts of campus with no wireless are the dorms, which only have ethernet connection, but they are working on it.</p>
<p>the president of the college lives on campus and is very accessible. teacher-student relationships are great because most proffessors live on campus or near campus and they have great relationships.</p>
<p>housing---coed of course except for one dorm (strong--all women's). you're housed with a mix of other upper and underclassmen. usually, freshman year, they put you with a freshman in your room but the rest of your floor will be a mixture. when you're a sophmore, junior or senior, you can get housed with anyone but freshman pretty much. everyone gets an advisor--no RAs. our tour guide said that RAs have to take disciplinary action but the advisors at vassar are more like people to go to who will not take disciplinary action on anyone. so if you know someone did something they werent supposed to do, and you told your advisor, no one would get in trouble through either of you. they're more like a friend i guess.</p>
<p>when you study abroad, financial aid carries over no matter what program you're in --whether it be a vassar program or another school's program. one woman i spoke to told me that financial aid is mostly grants but i'd still be wary of what you will get. frequent trips to nyc are not common even though they can be. they say you'll find that by the end of the year, you'll have spent only about 1 or 2 days in the city and a majority of the time on campus because there is always something to do.</p>
<p>sorry this was so long and boring. i do have a question i would like answered though: if you fill out the common application, do you still have to do the myspace and such?</p>
<p>if anyone has anything they'd like to ask, i'd be happy to answer them. i'm sure i left something out.</p>
<p>more stuff i just remembered::</p>
<p>work study-- freshman can work a maximum of 8 hours a week, sophmores 9, juniors and seniors 10 i believe.</p>
<p>the library is NOT open 24 hours a day because they dont want you to feel that you have to study all of the time. it has a meditation room to relax and a coffee house to get some coffee (durr)</p>
<p>they dont go by the dewey decimal system. i didnt understand the system he explained but its pretty much all the books are grouped by subject (i think)</p>
<p>very lucky you got to visit. thanks for the details. :)</p>
<p>I was unimpressed and disappointed in my visit to Vassar. I guess I had higher expectations of the campus, student body and the town. I was planning to apply prior to my visit.
Vassar is a fine LAC but just wasn't for me.
Guess it shows that a visit is quite important.</p>
<p>i do believe that the tour didnt do the school justice. i still absolutely love it but for some reason, i feel like there's alot more they could've shown.</p>
<p>The library is amazing. I sit in the tiny box that my Argentine school calls a library and I dream of the Vassar library.....</p>
<p>I think it's really funny how they have all PCs on one side and all Macs on the other. :P Apparently, there are a lot of Macs on campus. </p>
<p>Great summary, smile, I really appreciate it since I didn't get a chance to visit during the school year. </p>
<p>Sidenote: I believe their bathrooms are coed. It doesn't bother me, but it's kind of weird and I was wondering whether anyone could tell me why?</p>
<p>PS- 9 am is really early for a college and I'm wondering whether that had an influence on the types of people you saw? I dunno, I'd rather have 'geeky' people than just partiers, but I think it's an interesting observation.</p>
<p>Hi smile06! Seemes like you find Vassar to be an interesting place, and your descriptions are pretty comprehensive. I saw A LOT of tours on campus yesterday, and when I went to the concert last night (student choir and orchestra), half of the audience was parents...mostly of prospective students I guess.</p>
<p>You said that the student body seems geeky and very studious...well you might feel that if you were walking on campus and seeing ppl going to classes...its certainly true that ppl take academics seriously, but that doesn't mean ppl don't like to party. It's hard to generalize but you might say a lot of ppl study hard and also engaged themselves in a lot of activities on campus, and they do party on the weekends (if you want to, that is). </p>
<p>The dorms are quite nice. Basically, you can get a single room after freshman year (I'm looking forward to that). Lathrop's parlor isn't the best; strong and cushing have better parlors. And if you go to the rose parlor on the second floor of main building, you can really get a sense of what vassar was like 100 years ago. The co-ed bathrooms dont really bother anyone you have separate shower spaces and stalls so its not that awkward. But apparently Strong has the cleanest bathrooms b/c its all women.</p>
<p>About the application: Vassar has a supplement in addition to the common app, so you have to complete that, which requires you to send in an analytical essay, and myspace(optional).</p>
<p>are freshman housed in strong? i'm pretty sure that if i go to vassar, i'll be better off in all women's housing.</p>
<p>No first year students are housed in all of the dorms pretty randomly. However on the housing app it asks for your preference for all-female housing, 10-month housing, wellness corridor or quiet corridor. But, apparently a lot of ppl who put no for all-female housing were put into Strong...doesn't really matter in the end coz most students end up loving their dorm. If they're really miserable the res life will try their best to accomodate your need and transfer you to other room or dorm.</p>