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

BookLvr
Sat, 05 Jan 2019 22:41:20 +0000

@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.