Women's college
In higher education, particularly in the United States, a women's college is a college (that is, a primarily undergraduate, bachelor's degree-granting institution) whose students are exclusively women. The Seven Sisters schools are among the best-known women's colleges, but some are now coeducational. Some women's colleges admit small numbers of male students in their graduate schools, but all serve exclusively female undergraduate populations.
History
Women's colleges filled the need for higher education for women, because most early colleges in the United States admitted only men. (The first coeducational college was Oberlin College, founded in 1833; by 1860, only five colleges or universities were coeducational.) The first all-women's college in the United States was the Oread Institute, founded in 1849, which closed in 1881.
List of women's colleges
Main article: List of women's colleges in the United States
Colleges that are, or were, women's colleges include:
- Agnes Scott College
- Alverno College
- Barnard College, New York, New York (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Bay Path College
- Bennett College
- Blue Mountain College
- Brenau University
- Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Carlow College
- Cedar Crest College
- Chatham College
- College of New Rochelle
- College of Notre Dame of Maryland
- College of Saint Benedict
- College of Saint Mary
- College of St. Catherine
- Columbia Collegete
- Connecticut College
- Converse College
- Cottey College
- Douglass College
- Georgian Court College
- H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College
- Hartford College for Women
- Hollins University
- Hood College
- Immaculata College
- James Madison University
- Judson College
- Lesley University
- Lexington College
- Mary Baldwin College
- Marymount College
- Mary Washington College
- Meredith College
- Midway College
- Mills College
- Mississippi University for Women
- Moore College of Art and Design
- Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Mount Mary College
- Mount St. Mary's College
- University of North Carolina at Greensboro
- Notre Dame College
- Oread Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts
- Peace College
- Pine Manor College
- Pusan Women's University
- Radcliffe College, Cambridge, Massachusetts (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Radford University
- Randolph-Macon Woman's College
- Regis College
- Rosemont College
- Russell Sage College for Women
- Rutgers University - Douglass College
- Saint Joseph College
- Saint Mary's College
- Saint Mary-of-the Woods College
- Salem College
- Scripps College
- Simmons College
- Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Spelman College
- St. Joseph College
- Stephens College
- Sweet Briar College
- Texas Woman's University
- Trinity College
- Ursuline College
- Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts (one of the Seven Sisters)
- Wells College
- Wesleyan College
- Westhampton College at the University of Richmond
- William Smith College
- Wilson College
- Women's College of the University of Denver
- United States Department of Education
