sacchi

Vassar has an 80 on the Princeton Review's Quality of Life category, significantly lower than most schools on my S's "maybe apply to" list.

The rankings for quality of life are based on students’ assessment of food on and off-campus, dorm comfort, campus beauty, ease of getting around campus, relationship with the local community, campus safety, the surrounding area, interaction between students, friendliness and happiness of the student body and smoothness with which the school is administered.

Vassar has high rankings for "Most beautiful campus" and "More to do on campus" so they can't be dragging down the score. Any guesses as to what is dragging the score down? I'm trying to figure out if they are things that would actually matter to S.

I wouldn't think that #12 on the "Town-gown relations strained" rankings would be enough by itself to pull the quality of life score to 80. That category probably wouldn't matter much to S, since he will likely be the stay-inside-the-campus-bubble type. When we visited, the campus seemed plenty easy to get around and safe to me.

Food? Dorms? Happiness of students? Administration? How are those things? Can current students comment on those?

dc89

Vassar campus isn't particularly safe. It's physically open to the community, and security is so busy running around inside the dorms writing up wannabe frat boys that they do absolutely nothing outside, which is where incidents take place. So far this year, there's been one physical assault (a couple of teenagers hit someone on the back of the head) and a series of sexual assaults (some guy groping girls while they walk around at night). Last year, four students were mugged by a guy with a sawed-off shotgun on a well-traveled path on a weekend night (the path from campus to one of the areas of senior housing). I don't mean to scare anyone off from applying, but it is not the world's safest college campus by a long shot.

Food is mediocre. (Food off-campus is actually pretty good though thanks to the number of CIA graduates who stay in the Hudson Valley!) The school's relationship with Poughkeepsie is TERRIBLE - for an idea, look at the reader comments on any article about Vassar on the Poughkeepsie Journal website. It's just depressing. There are also a lot of kids at Vassar who take umbrage with the administration, especially now that the economy has forced some layoffs.

As for happiness of students, I don't think Vassar necessarily makes its students unhappy. My experience is that Vassar attracts a lot of intense people, and intense people have a lot of mood swings, you know? I'm an arts kid; my friends are all arts kids; sometimes we get extremely depressed. It's not Vassar's fault. I personally love Vassar, as unsafe as I occasionally feel here and as much as the town hates us. It's done so much to help me grow as a person and I would much rather be here dealing with some less-than-ideal situations than at a cushier school that had less to offer. (However, I would really like it if security actually patrolled outside. Did the director of security reply to me when I emailed him that? Nope. They don't give a crap what we think... that's my only issue there. haha)

twinmom

Sacchi - From a parent's perspective, Vassar students seem to be very happy overall. The relationship with Poughkeepsie won't affect your son at all. If you have specific questions, feel free to send me a PM.

mythmom

These numbers reflect only the self-report of the students. There is no objectivity to them at all. Maybe Vassar students were more honest when they answered the question.

Who knows?

I wouldn't put stock in that.

I would allow your son to form his own impressions.

My S is at Williams. The year he decided to go the quality of life rating was 99 or something like that. This year it was 91. I doubt if it really changed in the two years. A different group answered the survey.

Vassar certainly has a strong cheering section. That doesn't mean it's for everyone, but it's a very good start.