Vassar College has been featured in many books, movies, and television shows. This is a partial list of references and fictional alumni.

• Martin Geldhart, Vassar professor of landscape architecture in The Substance of Fire
• Holly Goodhead, character from Moonraker and its novelization
• Miss Jane Hathaway, a character in The Beverly Hillbillies, graduated from Vassar.^[1]
• Erica, the main protagonist of the Academy-Award nominated film An Unmarried Woman (1978), went to Vassar
• Three Vassar Girls Abroad, a book series by Elizabeth Williams Champney about Maud Van Vechten, Barbara Atchison and Cecilia Boylston (current students)
• Katherine "Kitty" Montgomery, character played by Susan Sullivan on Dharma and Greg
• Olive Snook, character played by Kristin Chenoweth on Pushing Daisies; attended on a jockey scholarship
• Georgina Tuskin, character in Susanna Kaysen's memoir Girl, Interrupted
• Lilly Kane from Veronica Mars attended Vassar in a second-season dream sequence; in the actual storyline, she had been murdered three years earlier.
• Two young men in Terrence McNally's Off-Broadway play Some Men portray gender studies majors from Vassar College.
• Heidi Holland, main character of The Heidi Chronicles by Wendy Wasserstein
• In Miss Congeniality, Benjamin Bratt introduces Sandra Bullock to Beth, an undergrad at Vassar, doing a paper on law enforcement.
• Two old ladies in The Dark Tower, the seventh and final book of the series of the same name, by Stephen King
• Principal Willoughby, from the Nickelodeon cartoon Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
• Characters from the 1963 novel, The Group, by alumna Mary McCarthy
• Cricket Feldstein, from Hamlet 2, an ACLU attorney who holds a degree in French.
• Betsy Ann Fitzgerald, from The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
• Kathy Lacey, from Gentleman's Agreement, a high-status New Yorker portrayed by Dorothy McGuire.
• Marian Stevens, from Robin and the Seven Hoods, a mob daughter, portrayed by Barbara Rush
• Selena St. George, from Dolores Claiborne, an alcoholic journalist portrayed by Jennifer Jason Leigh
• Elizabeth Vaughan, the central character of the musical If/Then, as well as her friend Lucas^[2]
• Catherine Meyer, First Daughter of the United States in the HBO series Veep, majored in film studies at Vassar.
• Hallie Shea, a journalist in the HBO series The Newsroom, graduated from Vassar.
• Winter Anderson, in the series American Horror Story: Cult, dropped out of Vassar to campaign for Hillary Clinton.
• Jared Dunn, from the HBO series Silicon Valley, went to Vassar.^[3]
• Dr. Harris Bonkers, Ph.D., a rabbit portrayed in the "Amnesty" arc of the podcast The Adventure Zone, went to Vassar^[4]
• Lisa Simpson, in the season 6 episode "The PTA Disbands" of the animated TV series The Simpsons, makes a reference to her possibly attending Vassar in the future: "There's no way I'll get into an Ivy League school now. At this rate, I probably won't even get into Vassar." Homer replies, "I've had just about enough of your Vassar bashing, young lady!"
• Tulip Olsen, in the season 1 episode "The Cat's Car" of the animated TV series Infinity Train is shown to go to Vassar in an alternate future: "The school for smart people too creative for their own good."