What is your general opinion/perception of Vassar College?

<p>MWP-
Are you truly a "new" poster with old views?? </p>

<p>ID- I think danas was comparing schools with "alternative" student bodies. Would you consider Wesleyan to fit into that category?</p>

<p>A couple of comments...</p>

<p>I doubt Vassar would change its gender balance, which as you say is not all that much different than other top LAC's anyway.</p>

<p>Vassar and Bard do have many similarities with a fair number of Bard students not being accepted to Vassar. While the stats on Vassar students are higher the arty feel to the place and the somewhat less than traditional student bodies (NY Hipsters is the description I hear from my D at Vassar and S at Bard though the term is not clear to me).</p>

<p>I do agree that Wesleyan and Vassar are very similar and a fair number of students at both would have gone to Brown if they had gotten in.</p>

<p>Vassar students are very very smart and don't seem to be pretentious to me at all based on one year of close observation.</p>

<p>Poughkeepsie itself does not contribute very much to the Vassar experience but New York City is only a train ride away and there are many outdoor actiivities available in the Hudson Valley if one has a car.</p>

<p>interesteddad...
Schools always seem to list their cross admits up market, now don't they?
I think there are substantial similarities in the types of students Bard, Vassar, Reed, and Hampshire draw. I will happily put Wesleyan in that mix.</p>

<p>Fiske Guide says the overlap schools with Vassar are Brown, Wesleyan, Yale, Tufts, NYU and Columbia.</p>

<p>
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ID- I think danas was comparing schools with "alternative" student bodies. Would you consider Wesleyan to fit into that category?

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</p>

<p>I could be wrong, but I don't really see Vassar or Wesleyan as having particularly "alternative" student bodies. Certainly not in the same sense as Hampshire and Bard attract. I mean, let's be real here... you can't get much more mainstream than Vassar and Wesleyan. Perhaps "non-preppy" would be a distinction with more meaning relative to some other presitgious LACs that have traditionally catered to the well-heeled NY/New England society crowd. The only thing that makes them "alternative" at all is that not everyone at Vassar and Wesleyan majors in economics and plans a career on Wall Street and probably a bit more NYC-ish "edge"</p>

<p>I actually would look at a group with some overlap that includes Swarthmore, Haverford, Wesleyan, Vassar, Oberlin, and most if not all of the remaining Seven Sisters.</p>

<p>
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If memory serves me correctly, ID- there were several large endowments given to VC by alums with stipulations that the enrollment ALWAYS favor females over males.

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<p>I think most, if not all, of the single-sex colleges (male and female) had to throw a bone to their barking alums and promise not to reduce the enrollment of the traditional gender. This meant increasing enrollment at most of these schools during the transition to co-education.</p>

<p>
[quote]
Schools always seem to list their cross admits up market, now don't they?

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<p>It's a numbers thing based on the shape of the pyramid. An ideal admissions office is going to cross-admit and equal distribution of students getting accepted to "lower" schools and "higher" schools. But, at any point on the food chain, the cross-admits are spread out among more "lower" schools, while the number of "higher" schools gets smaller. Thus, any list of the schools with the most cross-admits will skew towards the fewer more selective schools.</p>

<p>
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Rich privileged NYC females who are smarter than average.

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<p>I dunno. If I were an 18 year old single male, I can think of a lot worse things than hookin' up with a really smart rich girlfriend from New York City....</p>

<p>Was this supposed to be a bad thing about Vassar?</p>

<p>^^ if you were an 18 yo single male without a last name in the wikipedia, they are trained to overlook you.
Again, these are MY perception of Vassar College.</p>

<p>middsmith, that's ridiculous.</p>

<p>decent lac</p>

<p>thats all, I have no interest in an lac personally so I have very little perception of most of them</p>

<p>interesteddad, where do you find the cross admit data on U.S. news for various schools?</p>

<p>sorry for being off topic with this post</p>

<p>If you buy the US. News version, on each school, there's a little section called "most common cross admit"</p>

<p>I mean where is that section, I can't find it</p>

<p>what seven colleges make up the Seven Sisters?</p>

<p>Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Mt. Holyoke, Barnard, Radcliffe (no longer accepts students all go to Harvard), and Bryn Mawr. All are all female except for Vassar.</p>

<p>
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I mean where is that section, I can't find it

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Do you have the mag in front of you? Look again. It's there.</p>

<p>I have the online version, not the mag</p>

<p>prism:</p>

<p>It's under the ADMISSIONS heading in the online version (which has gotten so slow and unwieldy as to be virtually unusable). In a purple box, way down the page. Same box as male and female applications, acceptances, and enrollment, out-of-state freshmen, and waiting list info.</p>

<p>Not all colleges report it. It's also not clear to me whether there is much consistency in how colleges come up with the information.</p>

<p>It's kind of interesting to see the lists evolve over time. For example, Stanford replaced Amherst on Swarthmore's Top Five cross-admit schools this year -- probably a reflection of Swarthmore's strong draw from California and large Asian American pool.</p>

<p>Looking at it, that stat on U.S. news is technically cross apply not cross admit, similar though.</p>