Smith College is the largest independent women's liberal arts college in the United States and is committed to educating women of promise for lives of distinction. Smith links the power of the liberal arts to excellence in research and scholarship, developing leaders for society's contemporary challenges. Smith educates women to understand the complexity of human history and the variety of the world's cultures through engagement with social, political, aesthetic and scientific issues. At Smith, this ideal involves both breadth and depth in a student's course of study as well as obtaining critical skills such as writing, public speaking, quantitative reasoning and problem solving. Students are given the freedom to design their own education
