Ellen Swallow enrolls at Vassar College, beginning formal studies in chemistry after saving tuition through tutoring and housework.
On September 20, 1868, Ellen Swallow enrolled at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, entering as a third‑year student after years of self‑education and work.[5][10] To afford tuition, she had spent years tutoring and doing housecleaning, saving the $300 needed to attend one of the few institutions then willing to educate women at a collegiate level.[5]
Her Vassar enrollment was a pivotal step for women in science. At a time when most U.S. colleges barred women, Vassar’s experiment in women’s higher education created a rare pathway into advanced study.[9][10] Ellen chose to focus on chemistry, a field almost entirely closed to women. Her academic brilliance allowed her to compress the usual course of study and complete her degree in just two years.[5][10]
This date marks the beginning of her formal scientific training and the route to her historic firsts: by 1870 she would become the first American woman to earn a degree in chemistry, and soon after, the first woman admitted to MIT.[4][5][11] Ellen’s enrollment at Vassar demonstrates how determined women used emerging women’s colleges to breach longstanding barriers in science, setting a precedent for generations of female scientists and engineers.