What are the Seven Sisters?

Many years ago, higher education for women was limited because most colleges accepted only men. Then in 1837, a forward-looking woman named Mary Lyon founded Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. Her goal was to provide higher educational opportunities to women that were equal to those available to men. Six more women's colleges with the same goal soon followed -- Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard. These seven institutions became known collectively as the Seven Sisters, a name derived from Greek mythology (the seven sisters of the Pleiades).

Historically, the Seven Sisters Colleges have been considered the academic equivalents of the Ivy League schools, which were founded as men's colleges but have since become co-educational (Harvard, Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell). Today, the Seven Sisters continue to be prestigious liberal arts colleges that are routinely ranked among the top educational institutions in the United States. They are still women's colleges, with the exception of Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard) and Vassar (which is now co-educational).

The Seven Sisters have many famous and accomplished graduates, including:

• The founder of Ms. magazine, Gloria Steinem (Smith)
• The first woman Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and Secretary of State / former NY State Senator and presidential candidate, Hillary Rodham Clinton (Wellesley)
• One of America's foremost poets, Emily Dickinson, the Pulitzer and Obie Award-winning playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Wendy Wasserstein, and the first woman elected US governor in her own right, Ella Grasso (Mount Holyoke)
• The first woman UN ambassador, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, and the novelist Anne Bernays (Barnard)
• The actress Katherine Hepburn, the neurosurgeon Dorothy Klenke, and the poet Marianne Moore (Bryn Mawr)
• The blind activist Helen Keller and the newspaper columnist Katha Pollitt (Radcliffe)
• The author Edna St. Vincent Millay, the neuroscientist Patricia Goldman Rakic, and the actress Meryl Streep (Vassar)

The members of the Metropolitones are honored to be fellow alumnae of the Seven Sisters Colleges. We proudly express and share our colleges' traditions of excellence, spirit and "sisterhood" through our music and performances.

Sources:  Wikipedia, Wisegeek, Answers.com