MissMN,
My suggestion to you would be to post questions on the Vassar forum. You’ll get many more responses. The nice thing about Vassar is that its an easy drive or train ride (about 2 hrs at most) to NYC, but also not much more to Boston. You can also, in addition to the study abroad, consider going to one of the partner schools in the 12 college exchange (heres a link to it from Amherst) https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/study_abroad/all_programs/node/535760
The main question is,do you want a big research institution with about 28-29K undergrads (42K total students) or a small, liberal arts college with about 2400 undergrads. They are both great schools. Just very different.