Enrollment at Vassar College

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.