After graduating Bernardsville High School, Meryl Streep enrolled at the all-female Vassar College. Her interest in the performing arts spawned in high school, having performed in all three musicals of her senior year – Daisy Mae in „Lil Abner“, Marian the Librarian in „The Music Man“ and Laurie in „Oklahoma“. However, more than the acting, Streep saw her talents in singing.

In high school I did musicals. I had a good singing voice, so I thought I would be a music major at Vassar. When I got there, I saw very quickly how many people in the music department were also good at math, because music is math. Composition and all. So I was quickly dissuaded from being a music major. And I just followed a course of liberal arts study. I was interested in everything. Except math. I was in a play in my sophomore year at Vassar, and my friends told me I was very good at that and I should do that. (Meryl Streep, Actors at Work, August 2007)

The mentioned play was a starring role as „Miss Julie“ in August Strindberg’s play. Drama director Clinton Atkinson, had cast her already in two minor parts with the Vassar Experimental Theater and felt that the young actress was destined to perform Miss Julie. A reading of the play convinced Vassar’s Drama Professor Evert Sprinchorn to greenlight the idea, despite Streep’s inexperience to lead a classical play. Sprinchorn remembered her as „perfect casting“.