Vassar or Notre Dame

D_yer_Maker
Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:25:39 +0000

These are vastly different choices. The biggest difference, I think, is the student body. I personally like both schools, so it’s not a good versus evil choice. But there are big differences in terms of who you will be with. And since these will be people you will know and count on as friends throughout your life, it’s not a bad thing to focus on who your fellow students are and what they’re like.

Vassar is much more diverse than Notre Dame – in terms of the make-up of the student body as well as their intellectual and ideological diversity. I have studied with Chinese students and know several from Notre Dame (which is where I went to college many eons ago). All of them are very big fans of Notre Dame and love their Notre Dame education. Like many Chinese students I know, all of these people who went to Notre Dame and loved it were very conservative by nature. (Bold enough to study abroad for college…but among that group of adventurers, these people were more conservative in their ways.) Of course there are many Chinese students I know who are not conservative and are interested in exploring and experimenting and dabbling in new things. The stranger the people around them seem, the more fascinating they are to these other students. And these more intrigued students, I suspect, would do well in an environment like Vassar.

I think you’ll find the weather to be similar enough in both South Bend and Poughkeepsie. Same for the interaction with the city – and your infrequent visits to New York would, instead, be infrequent visits to Chicago on the lengthy commuter rail line to South Bend.

Both admission offices think you’re the kind of person who would succeed in their environment…so I doubt you could make a bad choice between the two. I think the question boils down to whether you want to experience America in a very tight-knit, supportive community that is relatively conservative and very homogenous or whether you want to be among people who tend to be much more individualistic, more unconventional and very difficult to peg or pin down by stereotypes. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer here – but if you think there’s a right or a wrong answer for you, then I would suggest at least leaning in that direction as you consider other factors that are important to you.

Good luck with your choice – but, as different as these choices are, I don’t think you can make a bad choice.