MS in Biological Sciences

The college was chartered in 1871 by a bequest of Sophia Smith and opened its doors in 1875 with 14 students and 6 faculty. When Smith inherited a fortune from her father aged 65, she decided that leaving her inheritance to found a women's college was the best way for her to fulfill the moral obligation she expressed in her will:
I hereby make the following provisions for the establishment and maintenance of an Institution for the higher education of young women, with the design to furnish for my own sex means and facilities for education equal to those which are afforded now in our colleges to young men.
The campus was planned and planted in the 1890s as a botanical garden and arboretum, designed by noted American landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted.By 1915, the student enrollment was 1,724, and the faculty numbered 163.
During the 1920s, two students at the college went missing: junior Alice Corbett disappeared on November 13, 1925,and was never found; freshman Frances Smith disappeared on January 13, 192 her body was recovered from the Connecticut River months later.
By 2010, the school had 2,600 undergraduates on campus and 250 students studying elsewhere.[18] The campus landscape now encompasses 147 acres (59 ha) and includes more than 1,200 varieties of trees and shrubs. Smith is the largest privately endowed college for women in the United States.