Hi guys! I am new to this forum and I had a few questions regarding the aforementioned colleges. I have been accepted to all 3 but I don’t know which one to attend. I want to major in Psychology and paying tuition is not a problem. According to you, which of these would be the best place to study, in terms of atmosphere, social life, activities, academic rigor etc. (I’m an international). Thank you! (which one would you pick?)
Vassar 
For all the criteria you’ve listed, I think Vassar would be a great choice.
Without knowing more details, I’d agree with the others. A top liberal arts college like Vassar is likely to give you much smaller classes. It quite possibly also will offer better classroom instruction overall, as well as less bureaucracy and better personal support. Although I’m not familiar with the 3 campuses, I would expect Vassar to have better dorm and dining facilities than UCLA’s or CMU’s. I say this just because Vassar is such a rich college (with an endowment per student more than 3X CMU’s in 2014.) You may want to check into these quality-of-life factors if they are important to you and you have any doubts.
For what it’s worth, Vassar shows up on quite a few of the Princeton Review’s rankings and lists, including “Best College Library” (#9), “Best College Theater” (#9), “Happiest Students” (#9), and “Most Beautiful Campus” (#15). On the negative side, it also shows up on the “College City Gets Low Marks” list (#11).
Vassar would be a fairly easy choice for me
(even though CMU and especially UCLA do have highly regarded graduate psychology programs.)
If you really want to be in/near a big city, then CMU or UCLA might be a better choice.
Either research university would offer greater course variety and possibly better internship opportunities in their big city settings.
UCLA is a big city campus, CMU is a medium city university and Vassar is a suburban campus. The living experience will be completely different in each, and only you can know what you are likely to prefer.
Unfortunately, I think that tk21769 is a little optimistic about Vassar food and dorms- from what I have seen both are perfectly reasonable, but nothing outstanding!
On the other hand, Vassar has great opportunities for research, including a 10 week paid summer research program, that is open to all students (you have to apply; here is a list of the psych ones from last summer: http://ursi.vassar.edu/projects/index.html?dept=Psychology). Also, b/c there are no grad students, any lab / TA help is done by undergrads. My D did URSI (different subject) the summer after 1st year, and has been a lab assistant during 2nd year. That experience helped her to get a paid research job at UChicago for this summer.
Vassar students are not competitive with each other, but they do seem to push themselves, and they work very hard. UCLA individual classes can be very rigorous but there is almost certainly more variation in both the classes and your fellow students. CMU is probably a bit more intense about academics than Vassar. Sports is a big deal at UCLA, local sports at CMU and not really a thing at Vassar.
Hope some of that helps!
Vassar, based on the experiences of my students.
That’s very debatable. I can’t speak from personal experience since I never stayed in the dorms at UCLA. I’ve heard that UCLA has among the best dorm food in the nation. They have several dining halls, including one devoted purely to Asian food (Feast at Rieber.) They rotate between several different types of Asian food (Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indian, etc.) I’ve been to Feast and UCLA’s other dining halls, and they’re quite good imo. I’m not very familiar with rankings on college dorm food, because it’s not a criterion that’s very important to me. But this ranking places UCLA in the top three nationally with 294 respondents.
https://colleges.niche.com/rankings/best-campus-food/
So I wouldn’t necessarily assume that Vassar would have better dorm food.
Vassar is an excellent LAC. You didn’t say what country you’re coming from. If you came a country that doesn’t send very many students internationally, you’d probably have an easier time finding students from the same background at UCLA and Los Angeles. You’d also probably have an easier time finding ethnic food and restaurants from your own background in Los Angeles than in the small town Vassar’s located in. Los Angeles, for example, arguably has the best Korean, Armenian, Iranian, Thai and (if you include the SGV) Chinese food in the United States. And as was mentioned above, psychology is one of UCLA’s strongest programs.
I would not attend UCLA or CMU if you like small intimate environments. If that’s the case, certainly choose Vassar. But if that isn’t necessary for you, UCLA and Los Angeles might be a good fit for you. If you can, I’d try to visit all three campuses and see if you really like one.
Vassar is pretty small and would definitely give you the best campus community. UCLA is huge, but would offer you the best off-campus opportunities being in LA. CMU would be somewhere in between.
If it were me, I’d choose Vassar. But it really comes down to your personal preferences. Congrats on having such great options!
Thank you all so much I think I’m leaning towards Vassar
I’m trying to decide between UCLA and Vassar too! Please let me know once you decide and how you decided!