Women's History Month: 20 Women's Colleges to Consider

We are kicking off this year’s celebration of Women’s History Month by sharing a list of 20 women’s colleges for you to consider. Check it out below and read the full article here!

Wesleyan College

The first women in America to graduate from college graduated from Wesleyan College in 1836. Wesleyan is an all-women’s college located on a 200-acre wooded campus in Macon, Georgia. In addition to it’s on-campus programs for undergrads, Wesleyan offers three women-only accelerated online degrees in business, accounting and applied psychology and several graduate programs for men and women.

Scripps College

Scripps is an all-women’s college in Claremont, California. It shares a campus in the foothills of Los Angeles with the other six Claremont Colleges, including Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd.

Spelman College

Spelman is an all-women’s college and a “global leader in the education of women’s of African descent.” Spelman and Bennett College are the only two all-women HBCU’s in the country.

Barnard College

Originally founded as Columbia University’a sister school when Columbia was all-men, Barnard now combines the advantages of attending an all-women liberal arts college with access to the many resources and opportunities available at a top-tier research university in a thriving city.

Saint Mary’s College

Saint Mary’s College is a Catholic all-women’s school in Notre Dame, Indiana. Saint Mary’s has a co-exchange program with Notre Dame, which allows students from both colleges to take classes at the other school.

Meredith College

Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina has an all-women’s undergrad program and co-ed graduate programs.

Hollins University

Hollins University is an all-women’s college in Roanoke, Virginia, near the Blueridge Mountains. Hollins offers undergraduate and graduate programs, including a three-year accelerated Bachelor’s degree program.

Smith College

Smith was founded in 1871 with just 14 women, and now has over 2,000 students, making it one of the largest women’s colleges in the U.S. Smith offers over 50 academic programs and over 1000 courses. It’s part of the Five College Consortium, which means it shares resources with four nearly colleges, Amherst College , Hampshire, UMass - Amherst and Mount Holyoke, which is also a Women’s college.

Notre Dame of Maryland University

Notre Dame of Maryland is a Catholic all-women’s school located on a wooded 60-acre campus in Baltimore. NDMU consists of four academic schools: Arts, Sciences, and Business; Education; Nursing; and Pharmacy.

Simmons University

Simmons has an all-women undergraduate program and a larger co-ed graduate program. The University is located in the heart of Boston, a city sometimes called “America’s Best College Town” because it’s home to many colleges and over 300,000 students.

St. Catherine University

St. Katherine’s University in St. Paul, MN consists of three schools. The College for Women enrolls 1,658 undergrad women. The College for Adults and College for Graduates does enroll some men, but between 80 and 90 percent of students enrolled in those Colleges are women.

Texas Woman’s University

Though no longer technically an all-women’s college, with three campuses and and around 15,000 students enrolled, Texas Woman’s University is the largest college in the U.S that is primarily for women. The college has admitted some men since 1972. TWU offers programs is business, nursing, health sciences and other sciences, and education. Texas Woman’s University graduates more health professionals than any other college in Texas.

Sweet Briar College

Sweet Briar is an all-women’s college in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. It offers an all-women ABET accredited engineering programs, and its 2,850 acres campus has become a hand-on learning lab for students studying sustainable agriculture. It’s also has a nationally ranked equestrian program.

Salem College

Salem is one of the nation’s oldest colleges. Its undergraduate program enrolls just over 500 women, and its graduate programs enroll men and women.

Stephens College

Stephens College is an all-women’s college in Columbia, MO.

Cottey College

Cottey College is a very small all-women’s college in the midwest. It enrolls only 283 women total.

Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke, an all-women’s college in Massachusetts, is one of the Seven Sister schools, a group of seven all-women schools that include Barnard, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Wellesley. (It originally included Vassar and Radcliff too, but those colleges are no longer all-women).

Agnes Scott College

Agnes Scott is an all-women’s college near Atlanta. It has be recognized as one of the most innovative colleges in the country for the past four years.

Bryn Mawr College

Bryn Mawr is a women’s-college near Philadelphia. It’s partnerships with Haverford, Swarthmore, and University of Pennsylvania give it’s students access to some of best colleges in the area and the ability to return home to a small, women-only liberal arts school.

Wellesley College

Wellesley is an all-women’s college just 12 miles from Boston and Cambridge, MA. The college has need-blind admissions, which means it admits students without taking into account financial need. Wellesley meets 100% of demonstrated need for admitted students.

6 Likes

A few highlights for me from what I learned in this post:

Very cool!

Did not know that about Sweet Briar, but a good option to think about for any females looking for engineering, especially if they have concerns about any concerns about gender tilts toward males.

My one tiny bit of constructive criticism would be that it would be great if the location of Cottey could be specific (i.e. in Missouri rather than in the midwest) and if the location of Barnard, Salem and Spelman could be included. Smith can be inferred to be in Massachusetts since it has an exchange with U. Mass.

Thanks so much for developing this list!

2 Likes

Another solid women’s college to consider is Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA. Very strong nursing program and very strong in the sciences in general. coed graduate school.
Cedarcrest.edu

5 Likes

@AustenNut, appreciate the feedback. There is more specific information about these schools in this article: 20 Women's Colleges to Consider

1 Like

I thinks it’s just one of two in the country! One is Smith so thats good company for a little school that was on the brink of death less than a decade ago. I toured once & then went to an Honors Scholarship weekend with my oldest maybe 5 years ago. I have to admit I had no expectations but they have some great stuff coming out of there. They dropped her major in the revamp but I was honestly pretty impressed.

1 Like

Though Radcliffe formally merged with Harvard, there are still alumnae out there from the time that it was autonomous. And Mills College closed its doors a few years ago, but fought hard to stay all-women’s for years, until incorporating into Northeastern.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 180 days after the last reply. If you’d like to reply, please flag the thread for moderator attention.