Admissions strategy adapts to changing applicant pools

Beginning with just over 300 well-to-do women in 1865, the profile of students admitted to Vassar College has changed drastically over the past 150 years. Vassar's most recent class—highly diverse and selected from the largest applicant pool in the College's history—included 666 young men and women from 48 states and 29 foreign nations. With over 90 percent of the Class of 2014 in the top 20 percent of its graduating high school class, Vassar has maintained its commitment to selecting talented students over the years.

As the field of college admissions has evolved from an informal conversation between high school teachers and a College representative to an active recruiting production with a full staff of officers in the Kautz Admission House, several prominent shifts have marked the College's procedures. As Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid David Borus explained, "It was not until the 1960s when the numbers of students graduating high school and pursuing a college degree really started to boom that colleges decided they needed to be out there to conduct group information sessions and travel."

In addition to the drastic shift in admissions processes, Vassar's image outside its own walls has changed. In the first half of the 20th century, Vassar was synonymous with a "women's college," and "the Vassar girl" was a widely-known stereotype. "Vassar was undoubtedly the best-known women's college in the world," Borus said. Although Vassar still maintains many of the traditions rooted in its all-female history, a coeducational student body has undoubtedly impacted the admissions sphere.

Vassar's decision to "go coed" in 1969 came at a time when many men's colleges were considering a similar move; Trinity and Williams Colleges, as well as Wesleyan University, were all pursuing coeducation around the same time. Vassar, however, stood apart from its all-female peer institutions in its decision to admit men. Skidmore, Wheaton and Connecticut Colleges eventually embraced coeducation, but not until several years after Vassar opened its doors to men. Some women's schools—including five of the Seven Sisters—never made the change.

As a result of coeducation, the College's applicant pool increased in size, and classes grew slightly; the Class of 1974 grew from 469 freshmen the year before to 528, and the Classes of 1975 and 1976 stabilized in the mid-600s. Presumably, the size of the student body increased because "being coed not only meant that there were men in the applicant pool, but also women who wanted to be at a coed school were now attracted to Vassar," Borus explained.

The decision for coeducation was not without hesitation. In 1965, Yale University made a formal proposal that the schools should merge and that Vassar should relocate to New Haven, Conn. Vassar, however, was in a difficult situation. "Unlike most women's colleges, we were here [in Poughkeepsie] by ourselves, without any comparable men's colleges around to enable us to stay just a women's college," Borus said. "It was not only part of the times, but also a smart market move because Vassar's leaders at the time saw that all single-sex colleges were either going coed or associating themselves with colleges around them."

Just a few years later, Vassar again became a pioneer in the field of admissions through the inception of the now widely-used Common Application. Drafted in the early 1970s by a small group of liberal arts colleges that included Vassar, the Common Application sought to provide a holistic view of applicants by including essays, letters of recommendation and other components beyond objective measures. Its growth over the past 40 years has been slow, but within the last decade, membership has opened up to 414 institutions.

The dawn of the Internet has expanded the horizon of the admissions realm in many ways. The electronic version of the Common Application has been available for seven to eight years, and today, Vassar gets 98 percent of applications via the Internet.

Beyond the logistics of decreased processing time due to electronic submissions, the Internet has also allowed for mass dissemination of campus materials. "The move to information availability online has been the biggest change. Students are so much better informed now about what the College has to offer," Borus said. Although Vassar still prints several brochures, fewer students are in the prospect pool and mailing list because they can easily find the information they need online.

That being said, the Internet has also invited some unwelcome insight into the seemingly elusive admissions process. Prospective students often solicit advice from blogs and forums that are monitored and answered by parents and peers who have little to no experience in the Office of Admissions.

Since Borus arrived at Vassar in 1996, the Vassar College admissions profile has progressed dramatically. In 1996, the Office of Admissions admitted 48 percent of its 4,000 applicants. Fifteen years later, the Class of 2014 had almost 8,000 applications with an acceptance rate slightly under 24 percent. As academic credentials of prospective students have risen and the admissions landscape has shifted, Vassar has maintained its commitment to selectivity.