Mount Holyoke College (MHC), a highly selective, nondenominational, residential, research liberal arts college for women, is one of the nation’s best institutions for undergraduate education, according to The Princeton Review Guide’s 2011 edition of its annual guidebook, The Best 373 Colleges. Mount Holyoke ranked first in the category of “best classroom experience,” and was highly rated in other categories, including “most politically active students” (#3), “most beautiful campus” (#7), and “school runs like butter” (#9).

Mount Holyoke is renowned for educating women leaders, from medical pioneers to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights. MHC is the founding college of the Seven Sisters and the recent winner of the prestigious Paul Simon Award for excellence in international education (see article: Getting gold for going global). Its 2,183 students hail from 47 states and 78 countries, with twenty percent of its population listed as international citizens, and thirty-four percent of its domestic students identified as African American, Asian American, Latina, Native American, or multiracial. Sixty-two percent of incoming first-year Mount Holyoke students were in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.