I’d say “resume” value is pretty similar. Forbes and WSJ combine LACs and National Universities and one has William & Mary higher and one has Vassar higher. Forbes has always seemed closest to a resume prestige ranking to me.
ROI / NPV / Value Add / Income data all appears to favor William & Mary over Vassar. William & Mary perhaps has business and some STEM majors that contribute to this.
I don’t think the “High School 2.0” concern about William & Mary is really valid. Even say Thomas Jefferson, the science magnet school that sends quite a few to William & Mary, is only about 2% of undergraduate student body and even large high schools are probably less than 1% on average.
Vassar would be more of a “change of scenery” compared to William & Mary if that is what she is looking for. It will be more oriented to NYC and will have a higher percentage from out of state. Still, with 35% plus from OOS, William & Mary will have about as many from OOS as Vassar will have in students.
I don’t think the creative opportunities will be different between the two.
Princeton Review can be a good source for getting a sense of the school and what the students are like (which she probably couldn’t get from attending admitted student days). My sense is Vassar has a more open curriculum, William & Mary has more of a core. At both, she’ll probably be living on campus for most of her time there, which is a plus in my view. William & Mary seemed a bit more integrated into Williamsburg than Vassar with Poughkeepsie, but I haven’t been there in a while. A plus with Vassar is NYC is relatively accessible. Both have beautiful campuses.
@IzzoOne thank you for putting it all together. I agree with you that the numbers/data leans in favor of W&M and, for us, the cost is less (and I hear they are rolling back the tuition cost to last year’s cost, so that should save us a bit more). I will return and let you kind people know what she decides in the end.
"Vassar takes her outside her bubble, but she is concerned about the size and Poughkeepsie being less than ideal. "
I grew up a few years in Poughkeepsie, and Vassar is pretty much walled off from the the town, if that’s your concern. It’s not really integrated with Poughkeepsie, as IzzoOne noted. NYC by train is how most people do stuff on the weekend. Congrats on your daughter getting in!
Good points. As a point of fact, it isn’t even in the city of Poughkeepsie. It’s in a nice residential neighborhood in the township of Poughkeepsie just outside the city limits.
Congrats to your child! This is a bit late but anybody reading this thread in the future: Vassar is a great school and is perhaps one of the most prestigious LACs out there. No doubt, at LACs are pretty great, but Vassar has incredible resources, funding opportunities, fellowships, etc (and an endowment per student that’s bigger than some ivys).