Vassar College

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The mission of Vassar College is to make accessible “the means of a thorough, well-proportioned and liberal education” * that inspires each individual to lead a purposeful life. The College makes possible an education that promotes analytical, informed, and independent thinking, and sound judgment encourages articulate expression and nurtures intellectual curiosity, creativity, respectful debate, and engaged citizenship. Vassar supports a high standard of engagement in teaching and learning, scholarship, artistic endeavors, a broad and deep curriculum, and a residential campus that fosters a learning community. Founded in 1861 to provide women an education equal to that once available only to men, Vassar is now open to all and strives to pursue diversity, inclusion, and equity as essential components of a rich intellectual and cultural environment in which all members, including those from underrepresented and marginalized groups, are valued and empowered to thrive.
Vassar is committed to working toward a more just, diverse, egalitarian, and inclusive college community where all members feel valued and are fully empowered to claim a place in—and responsibility for—our shared working, living, and learning. The College affirms the inherent value of a diverse campus and curriculum reflective of our lives as members of multiple local and global communities.
The Vassar curriculum has always been characterized by boldness, breadth, and flexibility. Vassar was among the first colleges to offer drama, psychology, and Russian courses, the first to offer an undergraduate degree in cognitive science. The first was to experiment with interdepartmental courses in the early 20th century.
Today, the curriculum is broader, richer, and more varied than ever, with an increasing emphasis on a multidisciplinary approach to intellectual inquiry. Students choose among 30 departments, five interdepartmental programs, 14 multidisciplinary programs, 51 majors, and over 1,000 courses.
The Vassar faculty is a unique and diverse community of scholars, artists, writers, scientists, musicians, and thinkers. They are attracted to the College by our reputation as one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, by the opportunity to engage with talented and highly motivated students, and by the cross-disciplinary collaborations that Vassar fosters. Learn more about the faculty and their research/teaching interests.
The libraries at Vassar are extraordinary and rank among the very best liberal arts collections in the United States, both in the number of titles (over 1,000,000 volumes) and in their exceptional variety and depth. The libraries include the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, considered one of the most beautiful Collegiate Gothic buildings in the country, the Helen D. Lockwood Library, the Art Library, the George Sherman Dickinson Music Library, and the Martha Rivers and E. Bronson Ingram Library, which also houses the Catherine Pelton Durrell Archives & Special Collections Library.
Students interested in doing original research have many options. Students work as research assistants for faculty members in virtually every department, either for academic credit or as paid assistants. A student interested in studying a particular topic can ask a faculty member to supervise them in an independent study project. During the summer, there are three research programs on campus—one in the sciences, one in the humanities, and one in the arts. Students who qualify for these programs immerse themselves in a research project for ten weeks, working one-on-one with a faculty mentor--and earning a generous stipend.
Vassar’s resources and facilities are of the very highest quality—great libraries (art, music, and special collections) with over a million print volumes an art center with more than 21,000 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs spanning the history of art from antiquity to the present a 500-acre farm and ecological preserve and division-specific resources that range from a historical instrument collection in Skinner Hall to a single crystal X-ray diffractometer in the Bridge for Laboratory Sciences.
Vassar is a community of unique character in which people of divergent views and backgrounds come together to study and live in the distinctive tradition of a residential liberal arts college. A Vassar education opens minds and doors.
Recently, Vassar College has received queries from applicants concerned that they might be penalized in our Admissions procedures because of disciplinary action taken against them by their schools if they participate in one of the walkouts and protests in the wake of the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Students are the architects of campus life at Vassar. They govern themselves. They start new organizations and publications and perform groups they sit with faculty and administrators on policy committees. They bring in speakers and entertainers. They plan scholarly conferences and throw wild parties. They point out institutional problems and come up with solutions. They have an unusual amount of power to shape their own experience at Vassar and policies that will influence the future direction of the College.
A pioneer for women’s education and liberal arts education in the United States, Matthew Vassar founded Vassar College in 1861. Opening its doors to its first class of 353 students paying $350 for tuition and “residence” on September 26, 1865, the College offered young women a liberal arts education equal to that of the best men’s colleges of the day. Coeducational since 1969, Vassar College has set the standard for higher education for women for more than 100 years and now sets the standard for true coeducation. Recognized as one of the country's best liberal arts colleges, Vassar has successfully fulfilled its founder’s goals.

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