Vassar College

• 1. Introduction

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  Vassar College sits on more than 1,000 acres in the Hudson Valley, about 70 miles north of New York City, and when its first building opened in 1865, it was the largest building in the United States by floor space. A single structure housed every classroom, dormitory, museum, library, and dining hall the college needed. Its founder, a brewer named Matthew Vassar, had chartered it four years earlier with a purpose that was genuinely rare: serious higher education for women, at a time when almost no institution offered it.

  The questions that follow from that founding are more complicated than they first appear. How did a beer fortune become one of the most significant educational legacies in American history? Why did a college built for women vote to admit men, and what made that decision so tangled? And what explains the extraordinary roll call of graduates who passed through its gates, from a pioneering astronomer on the faculty to a three-time Academy Award-winning actress in the alumni list?

• 2. The Brewer's Vision

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  Matthew Vassar made his money in Poughkeepsie, New York, running a brewery whose fortunes grew large enough to fund an entire college. He chartered the institution in 1861 under the name Vassar Female College, placing it among the small number of schools willing to grant degrees to women. It was the second such degree-granting institution in the country.

  Within a year of opening, Vassar himself had the word Female removed from the name. Residents of Poughkeepsie reportedly joked that he must be planning to admit men someday. That quip would turn out to be prescient, though the change came more than a century later. The college's athletic teams still carry the name the Brewers, a direct nod to the industry that made the institution possible.

  Vassar's first choice to run the new school was Milo P. Jewett, who had previously served as the founding president of Judson College, another women's institution. Jewett arrived in February 1861 leading a staff of ten professors and twenty-one instructors. His tenure lasted only until April 1864, but the institution he helped set in motion would outlast the era that created it. The first person appointed to the actual teaching faculty was astronomer Maria Mitchell, hired in 1865, the same year Main Building was completed.

• 3. Going Coeducational

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  Immediately after World War II, Vassar accepted a small number of male students under the G.I. Bill, a quiet exception to its women's college identity. The formal shift came decades later, and it arrived through a refusal rather than an initiative.

  The trustees were offered a merger with Yale University, which was then part of a broader wave of consolidations between the all-male Ivy League schools and their Seven Sisters counterparts. Vassar declined. Having turned down that path, the college instead chose to open its admissions to men on its own terms. The transition was completed in 1969.

  The decision left traces in the residential life that followed. Strong House, one of the original dormitories, was redesignated as all-women's housing after coeducation began; it has since expanded to also accept nonbinary and gender-nonconforming students. Vassar's current enrollment is 56% women and 44% men, figures that sit at the national average for liberal arts colleges of its type. The student body today draws from more than 60 countries, with international students making up between 8 and 10 percent of enrollment.

• 4. A Campus Built to Last

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  Main Building, designed by Smithsonian architect James Renwick Jr. and completed in 1865, is considered one of the finest examples of Second Empire architecture in the United States. Both it and the original observatory on campus are National Historic Landmarks. Rombout House, purchased by the college in 1915, joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

  Eero Saarinen drew up designs for several dormitories at Vassar, but only one was actually built: the Emma Hartman Noyes House, completed in 1958 and designed to house roughly 160 students. It was meant to be the first phase of a circular construction called Noyes II, but the building's high cost and structural problems with its windows stopped the project there. The common area became famous for its modernist design and has hosted readings and concerts ever since. The Noyes building also produced an unexpected piece of sports history: an all-female football team called the Noyes Nymphs, who competed against Ivy League teams through the 1960s and 1970s.

  The library system grew to match the ambition of the rest of campus. Today it encompasses eight separate libraries holding about 1 million volumes and 7,500 serial, periodical, and newspaper titles. Special collections include materials connected to Ellen Swallow Richards, Albert Einstein, Mary McCarthy, and Elizabeth Bishop. Vassar has been a Federal Depository library for selected U.S. Government documents since 1943.

• 5. Notable Voices

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  Grace Hopper, who became a foundational figure in computer science, graduated from Vassar in 1928 and later returned as a faculty member. Meryl Streep completed her undergraduate degree there in 1971 before going on to win three Academy Awards. Edna St. Vincent Millay graduated in 1917; Elizabeth Bishop in 1934; Mary McCarthy in 1933. The depth of the literary and artistic alumni list is unusual even among elite colleges.

  The suffrage movement drew heavily from Vassar graduates. Lucy Burns, class of 1902, became a leader of the National Woman's Party. Crystal Eastman, class of 1903, co-authored the Equal Rights Amendment and co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union. Harriot Stanton Blatch graduated in 1878. Inez Milholland, class of 1909, worked as a labor attorney and public speaker for the movement.

  Anita Florence Hemmings, who graduated in 1897, was the first graduate of African ancestry. Vera Rubin, class of 1948, became an astrophysicist whose work on galaxy rotation curves proved foundational to the study of dark matter. Sherrilyn Ifill, class of 1984, went on to serve as president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Sasha Velour, who graduated in 2009, won the ninth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. The roster of notable attendees who did not graduate includes Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Jane Fonda, and Anthony Bourdain.

• 6. Student Life and Traditions

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  Founder's Day began as a surprise birthday party for Matthew Vassar's seventy-fourth birthday and grew into a two-day annual festival typically held in late April or early May. The event evolved from lectures and plays into circus activities, fairs, and eventually concerts. Recent performers at Founder's Day have included Toro y Moi and Odesza.

  The Miscellany News has been published weekly since 1866, making it one of the oldest college newspapers in the country. WVKR-FM, broadcasting at 91.3 FM, has operated as the campus radio station since 1971. The Night Owls a cappella group, established in the 1940s, is among the oldest collegiate a cappella groups in the United States; Vassar supports nine vocal music groups in total, including AirCappella, which performs exclusively in whistling.

  The Philaletheis Society, founded in 1865 as a literary group, is the oldest theater organization on campus and has become entirely student-run. Happily Ever Laughter, the college's oldest continually active sketch comedy group, was founded in 1993. On the athletics side, the women's rugby team won Vassar's first team national championship in 2018, defeating Winona State 50-13 in the final of the USA Rugby Women's Division 2 championship.

• 7. Admissions and Rankings

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  For the class entering in fall 2023, Vassar received 12,145 applications and accepted 17.7 percent. The middle 50 percent SAT range for enrolling students was 1450-1530, and the ACT range was 33-35. Of matriculants whose high schools provided class rankings, 79 percent placed in the top ten percent of their graduating class.

  The 2025 edition of U.S. News and World Report ranked Vassar tied for 12th among liberal arts colleges in the United States, out of 211 rated. The same publication ranked the college second for Best Colleges for Veterans and 15th for Top Performers on Social Mobility in 2024. In its 2020 edition, The Princeton Review rated Vassar first for Best Financial Aid among all colleges and universities in the country.

  In May 2007, Vassar returned to a need-blind admissions policy, meaning a student's financial situation plays no role in the admission decision. Over half of Vassar graduates pursue advanced study within five years of graduating. Of seniors who applied to medical school in 2017-76 percent were accepted; the figure for law school applicants that year was 96 percent. As of 2026, the college's endowment stands at roughly $1.57 billion, a resource that underwrites the financial aid and academic programs that make those outcomes possible.