Mount Holyoke College

Mount Holyoke College was the first of the Seven Sisters – prestigious liberal arts colleges for women on the East Coast of the United States. At a time when education was male-dominated, founding Mount Holyoke was a great step forward. The Seven Sisters became known as the female equivalent of the (formerly all-male) Ivy League. Mount Holyoke is one of five of these colleges to remain a women’s college.

There are over 50 majors on offer at the college, along with the option to design your own major. As a liberal arts college, Mount Holyoke requires students to study outside of their major, giving a broad education in arts, sciences and humanities. Students are also required to study a foreign language and a multicultural perspectives course.

Mount Holyoke has been sister college to the Women’s Christian College in Chennai, India for around 100 years. 

Since 2014, Mount Holyoke has explicitly accepted transgender women and people with non-binary gender identities as students.

The campus at Mount Holyoke is very large given its population, with 800 acres encompassing lakes, waterfalls, a botanic garden, riding trails and stables.

Several of Mount Holyoke’s alumni have broken new ground for women in their careers after college. They include Secretaries of Labor Frances Perkins and Elaine Chao, who were respectively the first woman and first Asian American woman in the US Cabinet.

Other notable Mount Holyoke alumni include the poet Emily Dickinson, producer Debra Martin Chase and anesthesiologist Virginia Apgar.