Seven Sisters (colleges)

Seven Sisters
Data
Established	1927
Members	7
Continent	North America
Country	United States
University type	Private liberal arts college

The Seven Sisters is the name given in 1927 to seven liberal arts women's colleges in the Northern United States. They are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Vassar College. They were all founded between 1837 and 1889. Four are in Massachusetts, two are in New York, and one is in Pennsylvania. Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard College) and Vassar (which became coeducational in 1969) are no longer women's colleges.

Six of the Seven Sister colleges are identified as "Hidden Ivies" by Howard and Matthew Greene in their book Hidden Ivies: Thirty Colleges of Excellence.

Seven sister colleges

Institution	Location	School type	Famous alumnae	Full-time enrollment	Founding
Mount Holyoke College	South Hadley, Massachusetts	Private women's college	Emily Dickinson Suzan-Lori Parks Wendy Wasserstein Frances Perkins Glenda Hatchett Elaine Chao Dari Alexander	2,100	1837
Vassar College	Poughkeepsie, New York	Private coeducational	Elizabeth Bishop Jackie Kennedy Meryl Streep Ruth Benedict Grace Hopper Lisa Kudrow Stacy London	2,400	1861
Wellesley College	Wellesley, Massachusetts	Private women's college	Hillary Rodham Clinton Madame Chiang Kai-shek Diane Sawyer Madeleine Albright Nora Ephron Cokie Roberts	2,300	1870
Smith College	Northampton, Massachusetts	Private women's college	Betty Friedan Sylvia Plath Gloria Steinem Julia Child Barbara Bush Nancy Reagan Molly Ivins Yolanda King	2,750	1871
Radcliffe College	Cambridge, Massachusetts	Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study (no longer accepts students)	Gertrude Stein Helen Keller Margaret Atwood Ursula K. Le Guin Benazir Bhutto Stockard Channing Anne McCaffrey	n/a	1879
Bryn Mawr College	Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania	Private women's college	H.D. Marianne Moore Edith Hamilton Katharine Hepburn Drew Gilpin Faust Hanna Holborn Gray Elaine Showalter	1,229	1885
Barnard College	New York, New York	Private women's college	Jhumpa Lahiri Zora Neale Hurston Margaret Mead Anna Quindlen Jeane Kirkpatrick Suzanne Vega Laurie Anderson Twyla Tharp Lauren Graham Erica Jong Martha Stewart	2,356	1889

History

Background

Irene Harwarth, Mindi Maline, and Elizabeth DeBra note that "Independent nonprofit women’s colleges, which included the 'Seven Sisters' and other similar institutions, were founded to provide educational opportunities to women equal to those available to men and were geared toward women who wanted to study the liberal arts" . The colleges also offered broader opportunities in academia to women, hiring many female faculty members and administrators.

Mount Holyoke Female Seminary (founded in 1837) received its collegiate charter in 1888 and became Mount Holyoke Seminary and College. It became Mount Holyoke College in 1893. Both Vassar College and Wellesley College were patterned after Mount Holyoke. . Wellesley College was originally founded in 1870 as the Wellesley Female Seminary, and was renamed Wellesley College in 1873. It opened its doors to students in 1875. Radcliffe College was originally created in 1879 as The Harvard Annex for women's instruction by Harvard faculty. It was chartered as Radcliffe College by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1894. Barnard College became affiliated with Columbia University in 1900, but it continues to be independently governed.

Mount Holyoke College and Smith College are also members of Pioneer Valley's Five Colleges consortium. Bryn Mawr College is a part of the Tri-College Consortium in suburban Philadelphia, with its sister schools, Haverford College and Swarthmore College.

Formation and name

Harwarth, Maline, and DeBra also state that "the 'Seven Sisters' was the name given to Barnard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Radcliffe, because of their parallel to the Ivy League men’s colleges" in 1927. The name refers to the Pleiades, seven sisters from Greek mythology.

Late 20th century events

Vassar and Radcliffe are no longer women's colleges. Vassar College declined an offer to merge with Yale University and was the first member of the Seven Sisters to adopt coeducation, in 1969. Beginning in 1963, students at Radcliffe College received Harvard diplomas signed by the presidents of Radcliffe and Harvard and joint commencement exercises began in 1970. The same year, several Harvard and Radcliffe dormitories began swapping students experimentally and in 1972 full co-residence was instituted. The departments of athletics of both schools merged shortly thereafter. In 1977, Harvard and Radcliffe signed an agreement which put undergraduate women entirely in Harvard College. In 1999 Radcliffe College was dissolved and Harvard University assumed full responsibility over the affairs of female undergraduates. Radcliffe is now the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Mount Holyoke, Smith College, Bryn Mawr College, and Wellesley College are still women's colleges. Barnard College is still affiliated with Columbia University but remains an independent women's college. (In 1983, Columbia College began admitting women after a decade of failed negotiations with Barnard for a merger along the lines of Harvard and Radcliffe.) As an affiliate of Columbia University, Barnard confers Columbia University diplomas upon its students.

Seven Sister colleges in popular culture

There are a number of references to Seven Sister Colleges in American popular culture. As noted by Mount Holyoke College, "The Seven Sisters were immortalized in popular culture in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons. Having won local and state spelling bees, Lisa Simpson advances to the national finals. However, the moderator, concerned about the contest’s low television ratings, offers Lisa free tuition ('and a hot plate') at the Seven Sisters college of her choice if she will allow a more popular contestant (who happens to be a boy) to win. Lisa refuses, but has a dream in which students from each of the Seven Sisters appear to her." The article, "Wellesley College Is Among the Stars of the Film, Mona Lisa Smile indicates the role of Wellesley in the Julia Roberts film. Finally, the 1978 film, National Lampoon's Animal House satirizes a common practice up until the mid-1970s, when women attending Seven Sister colleges were connected with or to students at Ivy League schools. The film, which takes place in 1962, shows fraternity brothers from Delta house of the fictional Faber College (based on Dartmouth College) taking a road trip to the fictional Emily Dickinson College (either Mount Holyoke College or Smith College). .

See also

• Seven Sisters of the South
• Timeline of women's colleges in the United States

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s, Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993 (2nd edition).
• Perkins, Linda M. (Spring 1998). The Racial Integration of the Seven Sister Colleges. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: 104–08.

External links

• The Historic Seven Sisters - Barnard College
• The Seven Sisters - Mount Holyoke College
• Seven Sisters - Encyclopædia Britannica
• Seven Sisters and a Country Cousin

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