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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. Five of the seven remain women's colleges today.
In 2006, The Washington Monthly ranked Bryn Mawr, Wellesley, and Mount Holyoke in the top six of all liberal arts colleges in the United States.• The Washington Monthly is an alternative college guide to U.S. News and World Report. In addition, all of the Seven Sister colleges (except Radcliffe) are considered to be Hidden Ivies by Howard and Matthew Greene, in their book Hidden Ivies; Thirty colleges of Excellence.
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Seven sister colleges
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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. 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.
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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.
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Late 20th century events
Vassar College declined an offer to merge with Yale University and was the first member of the Seven Sisters to adopt coeducation, in 1969.
From 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 schools' departments of athletics 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 in Women's Studies 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.
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The Seven Sisters in popular culture
Animal House: This film takes place in 1962. Fraternity brothers from Delta house of the fictional Faber College (based on Dartmouth College•) make a road trip to the fictional Emily Dickinson College (either Mount Holyoke College or Smith College). This segment of the film satirized a common practice up until the mid-1970s, when women attending Seven Sister colleges were connected with or to students at Ivy League schools. Sometimes road trips such as the one in Animal House were made to meet women at the colleges (or vice versa).
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Further reading
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See also
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