Bryn Mawr College was founded in 1885 to give women access to educational opportunities that had long been denied them — including the first Ph.D. programs at a women's college. Bryn Mawr's undergraduate college has a student body of about 1,200 women who hail from 49 U.S. states and 63 foreign countries; almost a quarter of its students are women of color. Bryn Mawr seeks to develop in each of its students

• An intense intellectual commitment;

• A self-directed and purposeful vision of her life; and

• A desire to make a meaningful contribution to the world.

Bryn Mawr's coeducational Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, which together enroll about 425 students, make it unusual among small liberal-arts colleges in the kinds of academic resources it can offer.

The College is located in the village of Bryn Mawr (the name means "high hill" in Welsh), about nine miles west of Philadelphia. Its 135-acre campus, which was designed by landscape-architecture pioneers Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, is widely recognized as one of the most beautiful college campuses in the country. Bryn Mawr buildings designed by the Philadelphia architecture firm Cope & Stewardson were the first examples of the "collegiate gothic" style of architecture that later swept college and university campuses; the College also boasts a dormitory, Erdman Hall, designed by the great 20th-century Philadelphia architect Louis Kahn.

• Bryn Mawr at a Glance

• Bryn Mawr College mission statement

• A brief history of Bryn Mawr College