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Vassar College is a highly selective, private, coeducational liberal arts college situated in Poughkeepsie, New York. Founded as a women's college in 1861, it was the first member of the Seven Sisters to become coeducational in 1969 .

Overview

Originally founded as a women's college, Vassar was one of the oldest institutions of higher education for women in the United States. It was founded by its namesake, Matthew Vassar, in 1861 in the Hudson Valley, approximately 70 mi (100 km) north of New York City. The very first person appointed to the Vassar faculty was the astronomer Maria Mitchell, in 1865. Vassar adopted coeducation in 1969 after declining an offer to merge with Yale University.

Vassar's campus, also an arboretum, is a 1,000 acre (4 km²) lot of land marked by period and modern buildings. The great majority of students live on campus. The renovated library has unusually large holdings for a college of its size. It includes special collections of Albert Einstein and Elizabeth Bishop.

Vassar was also associated with the social elite of the Protestant establishment. E. Digby Baltzell writes that "upper-class WASP families... educated their children at... colleges such as Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Vassar, and Smith among other elite colleges.", p. 8

Roughly 2,400 students attend Vassar. Approximately 60% come from public high schools, 40% from private schools (both independent and religious). In recent freshman classes, minority students have comprised up to 27% of matriculants. International students, from over 45 countries, comprise 8% of the student body. The overall female to male ratio is approximately 60:40, although in recent classes it has been as unbalanced as 70:30. Over 85% of graduates pursue advanced study within five years of graduation. They are taught by over 270 faculty members, virtually all of whom hold terminal degrees in their fields.

Vassar president Frances D. Fergusson served for nearly two decades, longer than almost any other president of a comparable liberal arts college. She retired in Spring 2006, and will be replaced on July 1 by Catharine Bond Hill, current provost at Williams College. Her retirement was marked by a brief campus-wide celebration known as Fran-Fest, as well as a campus walkway, which is lined with marble benches inscribed with the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop, in her honor.

Academics

Vassar confers the A.B. degree in over 45 majors, including the Independent Major, in which a student may design a major, as well as various interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary fields of study. Students also participate in such programs as the Self-Instructional Language Program (SILP) which offers courses in Hindi, Irish/Gaelic, Korean, Portuguese, Swahili, Swedish, and Yiddish. Vassar has an open curriculum, requiring only proficiency in a foreign language, a quantitative course, and a freshman writing course to graduate, and thus encourages a wide breadth in their students' studies. In addition, students are strongly encouraged to take advantage of Vassar's Study Abroad program, which they typically elect during one or two semesters of their junior year.

Ranking and reputation

Vassar College is a leading undergraduate institution in the United States and the world. Barron's has placed Vassar its "most competitive" category for admissions. It is ranked #13 in Liberal Arts Colleges by the U.S. News & World Report. In 2006, it accepted 25% of its applicants. The Princeton Review gave Vassar a selectivity rating of 97 out of 100 in its 2006 edition. The most recent freshman class had a mean SAT score of 1377, with a 698 in the Verbal section and a 679 in the Mathematics section. The median (25%-75%) SAT scores are 680-730 in the Verbal section and 660-720 in the Mathematics section. The average high school GPA of the student body is 3.8 on a 4.0 scale.

Vassar is one of the nation's leaders in producing candidates for graduate school, law school, medical school, and business school. It is known for having high-caliber students, an engaging and scholarly faculty base, strong alumni/alumnae connections, and small class sizes. All classes are taught by members of the faculty, and there are no graduate students or teacher's assistants. The most popular majors are English, Political Science, Psychology, and Economics. Vassar also offers a variety of correlate sequences, or minors, for intensive study in many disciplines.

Presidents of Vassar College

Faculty

Vassar has had a number of distinguished faculty over the years. Some former and current members include:

Athletics

Vassar is a NCAA Division III college.

Vassar College currently offers the following varsity athletics: - Baseball (Men only) - Basketball - Cross-Country - Fencing - Field Hockey (Women only) - Golf (Women only) - Rowing - Soccer - Squash - Swimming/Diving - Tennis - Volleyball

Club Sports which compete in NCAA competition - Rugby - Track and Field

Basketball plays in the new Walker Fieldhouse. Volleyball plays in Kenyon Hall, reopened in 2006. Soccer, Baseball, Field Hockey and Lacrosse all play at the Prentiss Fields by the Town Houses, which will be completely renovated starting in November 2006 to include new fields for all teams and a new track.

Architecture

The Vassar campus has several buildings of architectural interest. Main Building formerly housed the entire college, including classrooms, dormitories, museum, library, and dining halls. The building was designed by Smithsonian architect James Renwick Jr. and was completed in 1865. It is on the registry of national historic landmarks. Many beautiful old brick buildings are scattered throughout the campus, but there are also several modern and contemporary structures of architectural interest. Ferry House, a student cooperative, was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1951. Noyes House was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen. A good example of an attempt to use passive solar design can be seen in the Mudd Chemistry Building by Perry Dean Rogers. More recently, New Haven architect César Pelli was asked to design the Lehman Loeb Art Center, which was completed in the early 1990s. In 2003, Pelli also worked on the renovation of Main Building Lobby and the conversion of the Avery Hall theater into the $25 million Vogelstein Center for Drama and Film, which preserved the original 1860s facade but was an entirely new structure.

Famous alumni/alumnae

Writers

Drama, film, and television

Music

Science

Business

Politics

Attended, but did not graduate

Fictional alumni/alumnae

  • Characters from the 1963 novel, The Group, by alumna Mary McCarthy. A film was released of the novel in 1966.
  • Dr. Holly Goodhead from the James Bond feature film Moonraker. After she incapacitates two men, Bond asks, "Where did you learn how to fight like that, NASA?" She replies, "No, Vassar."
  • Selena St. George, from the 1995 movie Dolores Claiborne, based on the Stephen King novel of the same title. (Two of King's children graduated from Vassar, and he gave the 2001 commencement speech).
  • Two old ladies in The Dark Tower, the seventh and final book of the series of the same name, by Stephen King.
  • Principal Willoughby, from the Nickelodeon cartoon Boy Genius.
  • Heidi Holland, main character of The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein
  • Ruth Morrison, from the 1948 film noir, "The Naked City"
  • In the 1990 book American Psycho the character Timothy Bryce tells a story about a sexual encounter he had with a "Vassar girl."
  • In Miss Congeniality, Benjamin Bratt introduces Sandra Bullock to "Beth," an undergrad at Vassar, doing a paper on law enforcement.
  • Lisa Simpson, responding to Homer's decision to pay a hefty amount for family therapy, says "There go my young girl dreams of going to Vassar."
  • I'm Spelling as Fast as I Can: an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa Simpson is tempted by the Siren-like representatives of the Seven Sisters (and George Plimpton), who offer a free ride to the Sister school of her choice (and a George Plimpton hot plate) if she will throw a Spelling Bee *.

Famous parents of alumni/alumnae

Many current and former Vassar College students are children of famous people. Some of these famous parents have sent their children to Vassar:

Trivia

  • The original colors of the college were gray and rose, intended to symbolize "the rose of dawn breaking through the gray of women's intellectual situation," or "the dawning of women's education out of the grayness of its former state." In the late 1970s, the pinkish-rose was darkened to burgundy. However, pink is used instead of maroon for the graduation hoods. The official colors are burgundy and gray.
  • Vassar has a world-class art collection. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center is run as an independent museum and is open to the public.
  • The campus is a registered arboretum. There are over 200 tree species spread over 1,000 acres (400,000 m²) of forest land.
  • Except for Strong House, an all-female dormitory, all of the student residence halls at Vassar are co-ed. All dormitory bathrooms are co-ed.
  • New England building, one of the many academic buildings on campus, displays a piece of Plymouth Rock above the entryway.
  • Immediately following World War II, Vassar accepted a very small number of male students on the G.I. Bill, while still remaining formally all-female. The male graduates were given diplomas to the University of the State of New York. The diplomas were reissued under the Vassar title after the school went co-ed.
  • In 1920, in thanks for Vassar student's participation in the war effort, the French government gave the college an army tank. The tank was deposited behind Josselyn Dorm, and removed when it inevitably rusted.
  • The opening flyby in the movie The Muppets Take Manhattan is over the Vassar campus. Kermit and his friends graduate from “Muppet University” in a scene filmed in Taylor Hall. The opening scene of The Time Machine (2002) was filmed at Vassar and all the extras for that scene are Vassar students.
  • Vassar is also mentioned in:
  • The halls in Main Building were built wide enough to accommodate two hoop skirts side by side when the girls did their exercises during poor weather.
  • Vassar was host to the first baseball game played by two completely female teams in 1867. It was an amateur game.

References

  • Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).

External links

Dutchess County, New York | Educational institutions established in 1861 | Film schools | Liberal arts colleges | Universities and colleges in New York

Vassar College | ヴァッサー大学

 

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