Vassar College

Date: Jan 17 2003
Major: Philosophy (This Major's Salary over time)
Vassar is awesome. The professors are spectacular teachers (which is their first priority) and often famous scholars in their fields. Personal attention is there for the taking, I often find myself chatting up a professor for so long that I become the one who has to cut conversations short so that that I can make my appointments!

Academics in general are an awesome experience, there are many venues for intellectual discussion with peers and the speakers that the college brings in are often quite inspiring and thought provoking.

The thing that I love most about Vas (well, if you leave out our awesome campus which is a must visit) is the academic freedom. There is no core here, only three extremely loose requirements, 2 of which are so easy to fill they shouldnt be considered required.

1) Freshman Course: Each year there are a colelction of about 20 to 30 courses which are limited to 19 freshmen and provide an introduction to college level work through a specially selected course plan designed to introduce students to an area of major intellectual importance.

This year I took Markets Institutions and State: an Introduction to Political Economy. This covered an introduction to varied forms of political economy (socialism, communism, capitalism, interventionism pretty much all of the good "isms" :) ) in a great round table format which was great for lively discussion and debate.

Other freshman courses include (but are not limited to) The Dark Ages, Problems of Philosophy (the description was really cool), Literature of the Underground and many many others covering just about every department at the college.

2) Quantitative Requirement: Easily fulfilled if your doing anything math/science/econ related, and also there are some classes like "Physics for Poets" which can be used here if you are really averso to math.

3) Foreign Language Requirement: There are about 10 different ways to pass out of this (sat 2's, ap scores, on site test … yada yada) and if you cant you need only do 1 semester of an intermediate/advanced language or 2 of a beginner language.

Other than these three there is absolutely nothing you need to take during your career! (tho some majors have certain requirements ie. linear algebra for econ). And to top it all off you can (as i am) take your requirement and up to a quarter of your classes NRO (non recorded option) where you set a minimum grade of say… A- and anything below that (excluding an F) will not be shown on your transcript and will not count towards your GPA!!

The only bad thing about the big V is that poughkeepsie really sucks. There is basically nothing going on - one needs to hop an hour and a half long train to get to new york for major cityish excitement.

Dont let this discourage you however, because vassar students rarely venture into poughkeepsie (save perhapps for a haircut or some groceries) as there is a quite alot to do on campus. We are innundated with theate related productions (this is a very competitive thing on campus and many people are involved on some level) and have a nice assortment of clubs for all types of people (intramurals, Frisbee team (oh yeah), computer gaming/anime club, outdoors club, all sorts of things)

Also, because we have no frats the parties are not always the greatest. There is a good amount of drinking tho and some of the parties can be a hell of a good time.

Overall, I heartily encourage you to apply - It will be the best descision you ever make if you are looking for an awesome education at a small, laid back school with both an intellectual and friendly atmosphere.