Wellesley's campus life

WendyMouse
Tue, 07 Oct 2008 19:58:38 +0000

While, I’ve never attended classes at Vassar, I have lived on campus for 10 weeks over the summer in 2006. Nor I am a current student, but I graduated in 2008.

I would say Wellesley’s beauty outshines Vassar’s, though Vassar students there often remark on the picturesque nature of the college. I wouldn’t disagree, but Wellelsey is more to my taste. In general, current and former women’s schools have the best campuses. Wellesley’s campus has comparatively few buildings and was designed to be a park, so the feel is quite different. Vassar’s “Main” building functions as the equivalent of Wellesley’s College Hall, long burned down. As a Wellesley student, it was fascinating to imagine what College Hall would be like today were it still standing (no Tower Court, for one).

The “nothing to do” aspect truly depends on your personality. I never found myself miserably bored at either place because I have always been quite capable of entertaining myself. I worked nights when I was at Vassar, and had scant opportunity to take advantage of evening activities on campus.

You can whine all you wish about the lack of things open in Wellesley past 5, but there’s no Guns, Ammo and Knives store down the street and around the corner. As my mom put it, Wellesley has the vil, but Poughkeepsie has da hood. I never, ever had any personal safety issues at Vassar, and I used to walk around alone at night around campus at every hour imaginable (I worked nights). My only outstanding complaint was that Vassar security was a little overzealous. The shops and restaurants in the vicinity of Vassar are slightly cheaper than those near Wellesley, but at Wellesley, you aren’t as crippled if you don’t have a car (I had a car at Vassar).

I agree that insular campuses promote better on-campus cohesion. RPI in Troy, NY, infamous for being one of the worst places to stick a college, is famous for having the best campus community. A Vassar student (international) bemoaned the isolation of Poughkeepsie. I was able to draw out the source of his urban pining: he missed going clubbing. New York City is a doable, but rarely undertaken diversion.

Vassar has continually held the impression of having very happy students and I would say the people I knew there seemed so. My program included a student from Colgate who liked the people at Vassar rather better than the Colgate ones. The original poster quotes a “relatively” healthy social life. I’m going to venture a guess that s/he is referring to more social opportunities, but many of them being less healthy. Like pot. There are a lot more chances to get stoned at Vassar than at Wellesley. People do drugs at Wellesley (loads of Wellesley students would love to see marijuana legalized), and no one at Vassar is going to make you smoke weed. Introverts and party-shy people like Wellesley because the of the different social focus.

As for social life at Wellesley during the week, I worked weeknights and did homework when I wasn’t doing other stuff (I was an Astrophysics major, geez). However, there were enough events that I regretted missing to never feel like I lacked opportunities to do stuff if I did not procrastinate. As someone who tried (and failed) to plan events, I was always too busy to expect other people to show up on a weeknight, and to scared I was interrupting something More Important on a weekend. I mostly hung out with friends.

Wellesley’s dorms are indeed overdue for renovation at the expense of academic and social buildings that didn’t need it as badly (:: cough chapel cough alumnae hall cough::). At Vassar, I lived in Main and a TA (a terrace apartment), the latter of which my sister called “last chance cabins” and asked if I cried when I saw the place. While a bit old, my answer was to that an emphatic “no”. Yes my TA was a bit grubby, but it was my home, and after living it in, it was part of me, and therefore not bad at all. I also saw the inside of one of the dorms in the residential quad and would remark that it rated similarly on the scale of grub as one of the quad dorms, maybe a bit lower.

As for social isolation, Vassar students get singles more quickly and older students get apartments. Many also live on off-campus. I could count the number of apartments available to Wellelsey students off-hand. Very few Wellelsey students live off-campus, owing to the economic unfeasibility. I’ve found that suite living tends to isolate people quite cliquishly.

The campus cultures are very very different, so the schools aren’t entirely interchangeable. However, there is an overlap of the students who would do well at both schools, and a similarity in educational quality. I agree with the original suggestion that a student torn between the two might want to compare prospective departments.