About Wellesley
One of the most selective liberal arts colleges in the country, Wellesley is known for the excellence of its education, the beauty of its setting, its gifted faculty, and the uniqueness of its campus culture.
But most of all, Wellesley is known for the thousands of accomplished, thoughtful women it has sent out into the world for over 100 years—women who are committed to making a difference.
A Transformative Educational Experience
A Wellesley education is rich, demanding, and transformative. Every year, some 2,400 of the world’s top undergraduate women are challenged to exceed their own highest personal and intellectual expectations. The mastery demonstrated by Wellesley graduates across the professional and vocational spectrum, and the influence they wield—whether in their own communities or on the world stage—is testament to a singularly empowering undergraduate experience.
Wellesley’s lively academic community places a high value on rigorous, probing inquiry, and creative, cross-discipline thinking, and it takes a collaborative approach to scholarship, encouraging students to question, debate, and refine their points of view, not only with each other, but with our world-class faculty members—often by working directly with them on groundbreaking projects.
A Wellesley education fosters in undergraduate women the highest standard of readiness for the “real world,” in terms of their ability to think, to act, and to contribute meaningfully and effectively in their chosen areas of interest.
The “Full-Engagement” Advantage
Wellesley’s full-engagement academic philosophy extends to the running of the College itself. The student voice is central to decision-making here; students serve on major committees of the Board of Trustees, participate in faculty search, and contribute to strategic planning.
In short, “getting involved” is a Wellesley imperative—both on campus and off. Students participate in a wide range of extracurricular projects: The College and its surrounding community, as well as the greater Boston area, offer hundreds of internships, advocacy projects, and the rare advantages of being a vital member of the single largest academic “hotspot” in the country. (Metropolitan Boston has the distinction of being home to more institutions of higher learning than any other city.)
Expected to be fully engaged while at Wellesley, students carry this sense of purposeful involvement and personal commitment throughout life. It is the signal mark of a Wellesley woman.
A Widely Envied Campus Environment
The sheer sense of scale of the breathtaking natural environment (complete with two botanical gardens for both horticultural study and personal reflection), in which buildings are thoughtfully sited, distinguish Wellesley’s physical setting, in the classically New England town of Wellesley, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.
Home to leading-edge institutions such as the Albright Institute, the Knapp Social Science Center, the Davis Museum, The Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and the world-renowned Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley’s resources are a magnet not only for the surrounding community and metropolitan area; they attract attention—and scholars—from around the world.
Everything about Wellesley College bespeaks its commitment to women, and to providing them with an unexcelled educational experience that honors and cultivates not only what is best about each of them, and their own potential, but about what women offer our world.
