Brown, Vassar, Wesleyan -- Comparing academics/theater/dance

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DD is applying to all three (among others). We’d like to get insights to help compare the theater and dance departments in particular – Can anyone speak to how competitive or collaborative students are? DD has done theater and dance (ballet as well as modern) and is a collaborative, not competitive, performance student.

Have also seen on old CC threads comments about some Brown classes being very large, taught by TAs, etc. Is that the case, and do students quickly get into smaller seminar-style classes? Vassar’s draw is partly the low student-to-teacher ratio in academic classes and the interaction with professors. Will that happen at Brown and Wesleyan?

How would an academically very curious student fare at each of these schools? DD is a true liberal arts student and wants to be able to take courses in very different disciplines (literature, chemistry, dance, astronomy…) and taste things. Vassar’s “no core curriculum” aspect is appealing-- how do Brown and Wesleyan compare?

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I have to think the class sizes at Wesleyan and Vassar are pretty similar since they have identical student/faculty ratios (8:1.) Popular professors will tend to draw bigger crowds. One of the largest at Wesleyan, if not the largest, is taught by the president of the college and tips the scale at 90 people. Special efforts are made to get first-year students into seminar-size classes as quickly as possible through the First Year Seminars (FYS) initiative:
https://www.wesleyan.edu/academics/journey/fys.html

The arts are highly collaborative at Wesleyan, the best example being the filmmakers who depend on other students for everything from production assistants to actors, to musical scores. Theater is also very popular and there are faculty productions as well as student run productions; proscenium arch productions as well as black box. All are heavily attended.

I don’t think there is a core curriculum at any of the three colleges in the subject heading. Brown has a so-called “open curriculum” which basically leaves it to individual departments to decide what prerequisite courses are required for the major. Wesleyan adds the additional “expectation” that graduates have taken at least two courses from all three academic divisions (natural science and math; behavioral and social sciences; and art and humanities), but it isn’t strictly enforced unless you are vying for Honors.

At Vassar, the requirements in addition to the major are pretty minimal: Everyone must 1) take a freshman writing course, 2) take a quantitative reasoning course and, 3) either demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language or take one year in a foreign language.

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Thanks, Circuitrider. We know the most about Vassar and the least about Wesleyan so your reply is helpful.

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Vassar’s veneer with respect to theatre might be the most evident in this group; Brown’s curriculum registers as the most flexible; Wesleyan shares some attributes with each of Brown and Vassar.

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I visited all 3 schools with two theatre kids (one tech, one acting/MT) and I know recent students from all three schools. The last time I looked at the schools was 2 years ago with my acting kid. Although Brown’s drama dept has a good reputation the overall environment for student theatre training and performing was the least impressive of the three. Their big spring production had an open call for casting and cast mostly students with no acting training… which made us wonder a bit about the depth of talent at the school. My D came from a high school with high quality theatre and it seemed like it would be a step down. Wes was also “everyone plays” but seemed to have a very vibrant student theatre scene - even though my D wanted pre-professional training she was impressed with the campus support for theatre at Wesleyan and applied there. Vassar has a real commitment to the arts and a good history of producing successful PA alumni… we loved the environment but the location was too quiet for my city kid.

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Brown at the graduate level has a dual program partnering with Trinity Rep. The rep company is considered one of the finest in the nation and you perform with the professionals side by side. I am not sure how much the UG programs collaborate. And with opportunities to take classes at RISD as well including set design etc it’s a great set up. Providence is a really arts supportive city and Brown is the center of it all.

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Original poster back again. Does anyone have a feel for the differences in what day to day life is like on these campuses? I already know that Brown is in a larger city, Vassar’s setting in Poughkeepsie is smaller and not a lot to do (or so posters on other threads have said etc.). I’m wondering more about the social vibe - partying, how prevalent alcohol and drug use are (and yes, all campuses have both but some more than others…).

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In my experience, students are very happy at all three schools.

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The Princeton Review conducts surveys with respect to alcohol and marijuana usage. None of these schools appears within the top twenty of the two alcohol lists (beer, hard liquor) though Wesleyan places fourth with respect to the perceived prevalence of marijuana.

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Usage exists at all, but there are a lot of activities available without pot or alcohol.

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Music is also very big at Wesleyan, and not just classical. Rock bands of all sorts seem to group and re-group and look for venues to perform which can include anywhere from a frat house to a theme house to outdoor concerts on the lawn of Foss Hill, the central student gathering place. A few, like MGMT, have had some commercial success.

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@conrad2 --It sounds like my daughter and your daughter share a lot of interests: creative writing, dance, and theater. Since my daughter is a junior, I will of course be interested to see which option your daughter chooses!

My daughter is quite interested in both Vassar and Wesleyan! Has your daughter visited either campus? I think the offerings in creative writing, theater, and dance are likely to be great at all three of the schools you mention, but each school does have a distinct vibe and look.

My daughter absolutely LOVED Vassar and Wesleyan, and would be thrilled beyond belief to attend either one. We still have a lot more schools to visit, and are already charting out President’s Weekend and spring break trips, but I am 100% confident these two schools will remain on her list.

At the Wesleyan Information Session Q+A session, she asked about the literary magazine on campus, as she is the co-leader of her high school literary mag and would like to continue to be involved with a literary magazine when she goes to college. She was told there are about two dozen literary magazines on campus, and yes, absolutely, first year students can be published. So that’s amazing! One other thing I thought was really cool was that there is a big dance event called Terpsichore which aims to involve as many students as possible, regardless of previous dance experience, as performers and as choreographers. Sounds like a very active theater and film scene too.
https://www.wesleyan.edu/creativecampus/studentgroups/dance.html

At Vassar, my daughter GASPED when she saw the library. She thought it was breathtakingly beautiful! In fact, she thought the whole campus was possibly the most gorgeous campus she has ever seen. It was really a love at first sight type of experience. We were told that there are about 50 shows a year, only a handful directed by the theater department, many student directed. My daughter has been in five shows at her high school and took Directing as an elective this year, so again, that was pretty exciting news. There is also a Vassar Repertory Dance Company, which has videos on YouTube (extremely good!), plus some student dance groups for other styles like hip-hop. And the creative writing scene is very lively as well.

So those are some of our impressions. Best wishes to your daughter through the rest of the college admissions season.

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Student/faculty ratio is not a particularly good indicator of class size, because research/graduate focused schools (such as those in the Ivy League) reduce the teaching load so professors can spend more time doing research. Wesleyan has some grad programs and performs more research than the “typical” LAC, so it is toward the upper end of the range for LACs when it comes to the % of classes with more than 50 students.

School…S/F…%Classes…%Classes
…Ratio…>50…<20
Vassar…8:1…0.3%…67.2%
Wesleyan…8:1…3.0%…74.1%
Brown…7:1…10.7%…70.3%

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Thanks, BookLvr! Your DD and mine do sound similar. We visited Vassar and my DD, just like yours, gasped at the library both inside and out. We haven’t visited Wesleyan (and that ship has sailed, as DD is a senior) but she has applied there too so we’ll see. DD might want to check out if there is a campus dance event at Vassar similar to Terpsichore at Wes–what a good idea to open up the art form to everyone.

I will add this about Vassar for your student. My DD found it to be very welcoming. We were not going on any special day for visitors with extra events, just a regular “tour and info session” day, so she e-mailed ahead of time and asked if she could briefly stop in and see the theater and dance departments. She ended up immediately invited to take part in two dance classes, spent a lot of time with the instructor getting a tour of the department, then had a long tour and talk with someone in the theater department. They took a lot of one on one time for a totally random senior who was visiting. That left both her and me with an excellent impression. (I have to add for full disclosure that William and Mary’s departments were also very amenable to her arranging to stop by and talk with people including department heads, so kudos to them as well!) So as your DD looks at colleges, encourage her to contact staff directly if her official visit isn’t scheduled to see departments she really wants to visit.

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M D is a sophomore at Vassar and she has been very happy with the class sizes and the quality of the instruction. She feels her professors have been very good and have been willing to help when needed. She has taken a lot of interesting classes so far and does feel the work load is quite heavy. D feels she spends most of her time reading and writing (English major) without a lot of free time. It seems like there are always performances (music, theater and dance) going on. While D did four years of high school theater and had leads, she knew it would be fairly competitive to get parts and she was right. She did not get into the first things she auditioned for as a freshman and decided to do props for a play that November. In the spring she got a part in a “late night” musical theater production.

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