The creation and development of 10 women's colleges are discussed: Mount Holyoke, Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Radcliffe, Bryn Mawr, and Barnard (the Seven Sisters colleges), and Sarah Lawrence, Bennington, and Scripps. Consideration is given to: how each of these colleges offered to women an education equal to that offered by the best men's colleges; how they drew on an understanding of predecessors' successes and failures; how this understanding affected the colleges' initial design; and how the plan for each campus reflected the changes in attitudes, hopes, and fears that accompanied the bold act of offering higher learning to women. While the colleges extended to women the skills and culture previously reserved for men, they did so in a setting designed to keep students virtuous and to protect their femininity. Students, however, broke with the common notions of femininity of their era, and women faculty members threw off the restraints they had known as seminary teachers and began to enjoy autonomy in both their professional and private lives. Responses to changes by the Seven Sisters colleges included raising standards, reorganizing administrations and policies, erecting new buildings, and as a group, developing a common conception of their design and purpose. (Author/SW)