Radcliffe college was one of the Seven Sisters and was founded as a place for Harvard faculty to educate female students. When Harvard graduate programs started to accept female students, Radcliffe closed its own graduate programs. The two universities began holding joint commencement ceremonies in 1975 to demonstrate how closely they worked together. Radcliffe officially merged with Harvard in 1999 becoming the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. It now accepts both men and women.
Simmons College is a liberal arts school in downtown Boston. The school is known for incorporating practical work experience into its liberal arts curriculum. The college has consistently been ranked in the top 15 percent of four-year colleges by the Princeton Review. Although the undergraduate program is exclusively for women, Simmons College's graduate program accepts women and men. The undergraduate student body is about 1,900 students while the graduate student body is nearly 3,000 students.
Wellesley College has been offering women a challenging curriculum for more than a hundred years with its full-engagement approach to education. Students are expected to be involved in every aspect of college life; students are even involved in college administration by sitting on committees formed by the Board of Trustees. Wellesley College is located in Wellesley, a short bus ride away from downtown Boston.
Smith College says that it, "was founded at a time when there were practically no choices for women who wanted an education equal to that available to men," and it continues in the same tradition. Smith believes that it is still important for women to have the option to go to an all-female university, and that having more female role models, in the form of professors, administrators and alumnae leaders, is a great benefit to a young woman's education.