Smith at a Glance

Founded in 1871, Smith College opened in 1875 with 14 students. Today, Smith is among the largest women’s colleges in the United States, with students from 46 states and 78 countries. An independent, nondenominational college, Smith remains strongly committed to the education of women at the undergraduate level, but admits both men and women as graduate students.
 

Enrollment & Geography

At Smith, we have more than 2,500 undergraduates who come from all over the country and all over the world. For students entering in fall 2023, we received 9,869 applications and admitted 20%. Check out more admissions statistics.

Here’s the geographic breakdown of enrolling students (based on data for the class of 2027):

24%

Mid-Atlantic

23%

New England

20%

West

11%

Foreign & U.S. Territories

10%

Midwest

7%

South

4%

Southwest

Financial Aid to the Class of 2025

At Smith we are committed to making a high-quality education possible for women from all economic backgrounds by meeting 100% of the documented need of all admitted students who meet our deadlines. In the fall of 2022, Smith College eliminated loans from its undergraduate financial aid packages for students receiving need-based institutional grants and replaced the loan amount with grants from the college.

  • Recipients of need-based gift aid from Smith: 63%
  • Smith grant range: $1,120-$81,000
  • Average need-based grant: $55,000

Undergraduate Tuition and Fees, 2025–26

$67,140

Tuition

$23,360

Housing and Meals

$308

Student Activities Fee

$800

Books, Course Materials, Supplies, and Equipment

$640

Transportation (domestic average)

$1,850

Personal Expenses

More at a Glance

President

Sarah Willie-LeBreton is Smith’s president.

Faculty

There are 296 professors in 50 academic departments and programs. The student-faculty ratio is 8:1 in most years, and 99% of full-time faculty have doctoral or terminal degrees.

International Study

Each year, 35% of Smith juniors study abroad in Smith programs in Florence, Geneva, Hamburg, and Paris, or in programs in Europe, Africa, Asia, Latin America, and English-speaking countries in both hemispheres.

Residential Life

Students live in 41 self-governing house communities that accommodate between 10 and 100 students; most houses include women from all four classes.

Library Holdings

The Smith College Libraries hold more than 1.4 million items, including books, periodicals, microforms, maps, and more. There are special-subject libraries for the fine and performing arts and the sciences, as well as a distinguished collection of women’s history manuscripts and a nationally prominent rare book collection.

Athletics

Smith athletics offers 11 varsity sports and extensive intramural and club sport programs.

Success After Smith

Six months after graduation, 97% of alums are employed, in a full-time fellowship, or enrolled in graduate studies.

Support for Smith

Fundraising campaigns, including Women for the World and Here for Every Voice, have raised a total of $605 million in recent years. Women for the World was the largest and most successful campaign ever undertaken by a women’s college. And in 2020, the college received the largest gift in its history—$50 million—in support of financial aid and career development.  

Five College Consortium

The member institutions of the Five College Consortium have collaborated to achieve as a group things they can’t achieve individually. These include faculty exchanges, joint faculty appointments, joint course offerings, doctoral programs, and combined library catalogs and borrowing privileges between Smith and nearby Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire colleges and the University of Massachusetts.

Graduation Rates

First time, first-year students entering in fall 2016 (class of 2020) had a six-year graduation rate of 89% as of fall 2022.

Alumnae

Our alums include more than 45,000 undergraduate and 8,000 graduate degree recipients and can be found in all 50 states and 119 countries.