<p>D is considering applying ED to Vassar. She really loved it when visiting in August. She plans to do an overnight visit in early October to decide for sure. I hear a lot about strong sciences and a high percentage of students going on to grad school at LACs like Carleton, Reed, and Swarthmore, but don't hear much about Vassar and physical sciences. She is interested in majoring in astronomy with a strong physics foundation (would be followed by grad school). Vassar has an astronomy major that she could beef up with extra physics. They also have a dance program that is exactly like what she wants. (She also likes the distance to NYC, the outdoor club, the size, and the winters.)</p>
<p>Her school college counselor considers Vassar a match for her. Chicago is also on her list and is considered by him to be a match (given past performance from her school). The other schools high on her list are Brown, Yale, and Swarthmore--all reaches. Without further research, she ranks them: Brown, Yale, Vassar, Swarthmore, Chicago. (She has additional reachy/matches and some "likelies" as her CC calls them.) </p>
<p>She thinks she's found everything else, but will the sciences be strong enough? What questions should she ask when visiting the department, beyond looking at the course selection? I'm worried about her giving up on the other schools, especially Chicago.</p>
<p>Vassar is a small school. The likelihood that there are many Vassar parents around who happen to have seen your post in the last day and who have knowledge of the physical sciences there are fairly slim. I wouldn’t hold it against the school. :)</p>
<p>Have you tried posting your question in the Vassar forum?</p>
<p>Here’s the percentage of science, math, and engineering majors as a percentage of total majors over a recent five year period for selected LACs, private universities, and public universities. </p>
<p>30.4% – Princeton University
30.0% – Carleton College
28.9% – Swarthmore College
26.3% – Grinnell College
26.0% – Haverford College
23.5% – Williams College
23.2% – Harvard University
23.1% – Bryn Mawr College
21.2% – Dartmouth College
19.1% – Brown University
17.8% – Pomona College
16.9% – Yale University
16.8% – Davidson College
16.6% – Bowdoin College
16.1% – Smith College
15.6% – Washington and Lee University
14.8% – Amherst College
12.2% – Wesleyan University
12.0% – Claremont McKenna College
11.7% – Wellesley College
11.2% – Middlebury College
10.8% – Vassar College</p>
<p>As you can see, Vassar is not brimming with science majors. Doesn’t mean the sciences aren’t good, just means that there isn’t as much interest in the campus culture as there is at some other places. Vassar has always been known as an “artsy” oriented school and I think these percentages confirm that. The plus side is lots of individual attention. The downside is fewer professors, fewer class options, and fewer science geeks in the student population. I wouldn’t go too nuts picking a college solely based on astronomy. Your daughter may hate it after fhe first semester. It happens. A lot.</p>
<p>BTW, I was somewhat surprised to learn from my daughter that Swarthmore’s dance program is considered to be fairly strong. I know absolutely nothing about it, but that’s what I’m told. It’s also almost as close to NYC as Vassar is. 2 to 2.5 hours door to door on the $10 Bolt bus, the cheap NJ Transit train, or the more expensive Amtrak. Poughkeepsie isn’t terribly close to NYC. My daughter took the train to visit friends at Vassar from Swarthmore several times and said it was a haul once she got to NYC. NYC was a piece of cake. She went for a weekend, on average, probably once a semester.</p>
<p>Consolation–you’re right. I didn’t post on the Vassar forum because it seemed pretty quiet, but maybe some folks keep an eye on it.</p>
<p>interesteddad–glad to hear from you. I considered turning this into a Vassar vs. Swarthmore question because I’ve seen how active the Swarthmore forum is. Those are very helpful statistics. I’ll show them to her.</p>
<p>As you can see, Swarthmore is high on her list, but Vassar has caught her eye. Personally, I think Swarthmore or Chicago might be better fits academically (the intellectual atmosphere fits her). While I agree that majors can change, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to go somewhere that will have limited course offerings in an intended major. Good point about the additional attention though. I guess one question to ask would be where the science grads end up.</p>
<p>has your daughter considered Wesleyan? very similar atmosphere, and while the % of science majors isn’t much higher than Vassar, Wesleyan has a more vast science program in general than Vassar due to its slightly larger size and small graduate program on campus.</p>
<p>My sense is that college lists are usually a Vassar AND Swarthmore deal, not a Vassar OR Swarthmore. There’s a good bit of overlap I think. My daughter has several very close friends at Vassar – study abroad friends – that she still stays in touch with. She spent a good bit of time there. She mentioned to me that it felt much larger that Swarthmore and the students felt “much richer”. The second comment is born out by diversity stats, but I think it’s probably a campus culture thing, too. Cars and stuff, I don’t know. It just struck her.</p>
<p>One piece of advice I would have in this new economic reality – pay attention to how colleges are weathering the storm. Right now, the key number for private colleges is the endowment spending rate for the current fiscal year that started July 1st. Ideally, colleges would love to be between 4% and 5.5%, but that is a stiff challenge with the huge endowment losses. As the numbers go up from there, they are spending down the endowment at unsustainable rates and cuts will be coming.</p>
<p>The numbers are just starting to roll in with the year end endowment numbers and the current year budgets. The year end recovery in the markets really helped. I’ve got four so far:</p>
<p>4.3% Swarthmore
5.5% Carleton
5.6% Williams
7.6% Vassar</p>
<p>The Vassar number is after cutting 16 FTE faculty slots for this year with 10% to 15% cuts in faculty costs coming over the next three years.</p>
<p>Wesleyan would be a good option, too. As would Bryn Mawr/Haverford, although I have no idea what their dance is like (I think it’s at Haverford).</p>
<p>interested–Thanks so much for the data. I feel a bit overwhelmed when it comes to hunting down stats like that. I wouldn’t know where to look. We should really look up where the recent cuts have been at Vassar and other schools of interest.</p>
<p>Interesting comment about seemingly richer students. That would be a turn-off for her. I think she’s looking for quirky.</p>
<p>smartalic–thanks for the suggestion of Wesleyan. I’ve been noticing references to its similarities to Vassar. We visited last spring and had a ho-hum tour guide and a sarcastic admin officer in the info session and she lost interest. I’ve always thought it would be a great fit based on what I’ve read on CC.</p>
<p>As much as it would be nice to be done with college admissions during the ED round, I’m concerned that she’s thinking about committing early with too little information. The overnight will help a lot.</p>
<p>Astromom: My son is a 2008 Vassar graduate who majored in Biology and is currently a second year medical student. He took several physics courses as well as participated in the URSI program one summer. (Undergraduate Summer Research Institute). He loved his experience at Vassar and would highly recommend it. One thing he loved about Vassar was there really is not a typical Vassar student, he made friends with people from all backgrounds and majors, many of them in science of course. The arts are strong there, but he did not find it to be only an “arty” school. He was involved in sports at Vassar. Your daughter’s upcoming visit may help her decide if it is the right place for her.</p>
<p>Astromom: My son is a current Vassar student. He is not a science major, nor does he have many friends who major in science, so I can’t help you much there. i do agree with HeartArt in that it is not only an artsy school. PM me if you have any specific questions about Vassar other than ones that relate to science.</p>
<p>Some are easier to find than others. Vassar has a very extensive discussion of their financial situation on their website.</p>
<p>Swarthmore has their budget document on-line with the budgeted endowment spending, so as soon as the year end endowment numbers came in, it was just endowment spending divided by endowment. Same at Williams.</p>
<p>Carleton’s endowment numbers came in better than expected so they raised the endowment spending percentage a bit and cancelled a planned unpaid employee furlough.</p>
<p>BTW, by “richer” I don’t think my daughter meant that the Vassar students she hung with weren’t “quirky”, but rather their recreational activities were more extravagent than at Swarthmore, where they drink cheap beer and take the Bolt bus instead of the train to NYC because it’s only $10. There are obviously many wealthy students at Swarthmore, it’s just a cultural thing. I think her close Vassar friends from study abroad would be largely indistinguisable from her Swarthmore friends as would be the Williams students and Wellesley students and Barnard students and Harvard students from her trip.</p>
<p>Bryn Mawr has excellant sciences, and dance. It also has a beautiful campus, and Haverford, Swarthmore,and Penn as other classroom options. You can major at either Bryn Mawr or Haverford. Bryn Mawr also has an excellant Post-Bac pre-med program, which adds an interesting dimension to the classes, as those students take classes with the Undergrads.</p>
<p>The latest plan is to do the overnight at Vassar and spend a day at Swarthmore interviewing and sitting in on classes (she did the info session and tour on another visit; can’t fit in an overnight unfortunately). That way she can get a good side-by-side comparison before deciding whether to commit to ED at Vassar. Thanks for all the input so far.</p>
<p>One of the things that appealed to my son about Vassar rather than Swarthmore was the size. In regard to Vassar being “richer,” … I really don’t think so. Vassar’s financial aid is extremely generous, in fact, it is one of the few need-blind LACs. That being said, there is a fair share of wealthy students at the school. Since it is a bubble campus, most of the activities are at the school and don’t cost much (if any) money. The train to NYC is available but I don’t believe it is taken by many kids on a regular basis.</p>