Wellesley College is a women's liberal arts college chartered in 1870 by Henry Fowle Durant and his wife Pauline Fowle Durant. Today, the mission of the college is to "provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference in the world." The college's motto, "Non Ministrari sed Ministrare" (not to be ministered unto but to minister), reflects this purpose.

The private college, located in Wellesley, Massachusetts (17 miles west of Boston), grants four-year baccalaureate degrees and is one of the Seven Sisters. Approximately 2,300 students attend the school. The college has a cross-registration program and a five-year dual degree program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and houses the Wellesley Centers for Women, which consists of the Center for Research on Women and the Stone Center for Developmental Services and Studies. Based on rankings by U.S. News & World Report, Wellesley consistently ranks among the top five liberal arts colleges in the United States, and as the highest ranking women's college in this category.

The current president of Wellesley College is Diana Chapman Walsh, class of 1966. Throughout its history, the college has always had female presidents. The average class size at Wellesley College ranges from 18 to 21 students, and there are approximately 9 students for every faculty member. Wellesley's libraries contain over 1.5 million catalogued books, journals, media recordings, maps, and other items. As of 2002, the endowment for the college was about $1 billion. Half of all students receive some form of financial aid.

Wellesley is the college in which the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile was set; some of the outdoor scenes were filmed on campus. The college is renowned for the picturesque beauty of its 500-acre (2 km²) campus which includes Lake Waban, evergreen and deciduous woodlands, and open meadows. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Boston's preeminent landscape architect at the beginning of the 20th century, described Wellesley's landscape as "not merely beautiful, but with a marked individual character not represented so far as I know on the ground of any other college in the country."

Wellesley and MIT were the two primary institutions Benson Snyder studies in The Hidden Curriculum (1970), in which he concludes that a mass of unstated requirements and expectations thwarts students' ability to think creatively or develop independently.