Prestigious women’s colleges in the Northeast, often paired socially with the older and richer male Ivy League schools. The group includes Radcliffe, Wellesley Smith and Mt Holyoke in Massachusetts, Vassar (Poughkeepskie, New York), Barnard (New York City) and Bryn Mawr (outside Philadelphia, PA). Women’s education and environment in these private schools have ranged from a high academic focus including graduate programs (Bryn Mawr) to the urban partnerships of Radcliffe/ Harvard and Barnard/Columbia to the rural vistas of Mt Holyoke. In the 1960s, Ivy League coeducation put pressure on both admissions and mission. Vassar went co-ed, after unsuccessful merger talks with Yale, while others entered wider consortia; Radcliffe merged with Harvard in 1999. These colleges have become focal points in rethinking women’s education and civic roles in subsequent decades—both Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton attended Wellesley.