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A search on "seven sisters" took us out of this world, since the Seven Sisters is an alternate name for the Pleiades star cluster. So, we refined our search by adding "colleges" to the query. That gave us a list of the seven sister colleges in just a couple of clicks. Along the way, we learned that two of these distinguished women's colleges have become coed institutions, leaving only five all-female "sisters" in this historic group of siblings. Here's a look at the "Seven Sisters" in alphabetical order: - Barnard College (New York, NY) - founded in 1889, adjacent to Columbia
University. In 1983 Columbia began to accept women applicants, ending Barnard's exclusive right to enroll women undergrads.
- Bryn Mawr College (Bryn Mawr, PA) - this nondenominational college counts actress Katharine Hepburn among its notable alumnae.
- Mount Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA) - founded in 1837, this was the first of the Seven Sister schools, and the first institution of higher education for women in the U.S.
- Radcliffe College (Cambridge, MA) - emerged in 1893 as an institution adjacent to, yet separate from, Harvard University. In the 1970s, the two schools merged and women were officially granted Harvard degrees.
- Smith College (Northampton, MA) - Australian educator and author Jill Ker Conway became Smith's first woman president in 1975.
- Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY) - coeducational since 1969, its the first of the Seven Sisters to welcome both genders. In 1989, Rick Lazio was the first Vassar grad to be elected to Congress. However, he was defeated in a recent Senate race by a Wellesley grad.
- Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA) - Wellesley's presidents have all been women, many of them Wellesley alums.
Our search results turned up an historic timeline from Barnard titled Women and the Academy. We found tons of information about the progress of co-education and women's education in America. We also learned that the "Seven Sisters" nickname came about when the schools self-organized in 1927 in order to promote private, independent women's colleges and the premise of "separate but equal" liberal arts education for women. A report on the U.S. Department of Education web site, titled "Women's Colleges in the United States: History, Issues, and Challenges," suggests that these Northeastern colleges were dubbed the "Seven Sisters" to associate them in the public imagination with the eight Ivy League men's colleges (the Ivy League
schools have since become coed). Final factoid: Although these highly regarded women's colleges were all founded in the 19th century, it wasn't until 1978 that all Seven Sisters had women presidents.
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