Something immeasurable, but very real, happens at Mills College for women who truly want to discover their best. They learn more than French or music or calculus or sociology. Mills students are constantly given encouragement and skills that reinforce their ability to achieve.

At Mills, we know how to make the learning process work best for women. We've been doing just that for more than 150 years.

• Our faculty members invest all of their talent in developing the abilities of their women students.
• Our liberal arts and sciences curriculum reflects women's perspectives, with many courses focusing on women's issues and women leaders "lost" to traditional history.

Even today, there is still no other kind of college or university focused on teaching a woman student to achieve her best self, to find her own road.

Our academic life is focused on women. You can feel confident that, even if there are a few male graduate or cross-registered students in some of your classes, your voice will be heard and your intelligence will be respected. If your career aspirations change (as many do when students discover fascinating new subjects to explore), our liberal arts breadth and focus make it relatively easy to move from one major to another.

A bright woman like you needs a college that will encourage your talents to grow in uncharted directions, a college that can provide a compass for your dreams.

The value of a Mills College education lasts a lifetime. Your professors will challenge you to reach new depths of understanding, and you will gain respect in class for a job well done. You will have the opportunity to explore unusual internships and gain self-confidence from tackling all sorts of leadership opportunities.

At Mills, the emphasis is on cooperative commitment rather than on competition. There is a special camaraderie when you rise at 5 am to row with the novice rowing team or work a late-night stint on the student newspaper. You will learn the skills of success by exploring new subjects, developing new abilities, and learning how to solve unfamiliar problems in school and society.

There are outstanding women faculty in every field who will mentor and inspire you. Your learning environment will give you daily examples of accomplished women in all their roles, from professors and alumnae to staff and administrators. (Studies show that women's achievement is positively related to the number of women on the faculty and in the administration.)

Your liberal arts and sciences education at Mills will emphasize the relationships between areas of knowledge, demonstrate the importance of learning both skills and theory, and develop your problem-solving skills. You can be confident that you will have the essential preparation needed for a lifetime of changing and challenging careers.

At coed institutions, men typically pursue and receive more opportunities for leadership experience than do women. At Mills, every leadership position from student body president to team captain is held by a woman.

Do you want to make an impact in the world? We will encourage you to organize a tutoring project or engage in environmental studies. Organize a new club, or collaborate with professors on research and writing for professional presentations. At Mills College, you can, and students do.

At Mills, you can begin preparing for a meaningful professional life in your first year. Our Career Services Office provides skills and interest assessment, offers seminars on everything from writing resumes to job search strategies, and offers an outstanding internship program.

You will have direct access to our alumnae mentoring program, a worldwide network of successful women business executives, surgeons, novelists, environmentalists, U.S. ambassadors, modern dancers and artists, who can give you useful career advice.

A sampling of recent and current internship sponsors includes the Oakland Mayor's Office, the American Conservatory Theater, the Marine Mammal Center, UC Berkeley's Neuroscience Laboratory, Senator Dianne Feinstein's Office, KGO Television (San Francisco), the Oakland A's, LucasFilm, Ltd., the National Institutes of Health, Microsoft, Walt Disney Company, and the California Governor's Office.

When you graduate from a college for women, you join the ranks of such accomplished alumnae as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton; ABC "Prime Time Live" correspondent Diane Sawyer; Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children's Defense Fund; Laura d'Andrea Tyson, the first woman to head the White House Council of Economic Advisors; Donna Shalala, former Secretary of Health and Human Services; and modern dancer Trisha Brown, winner of the famous MacArthur Foundation "genius" award and a Mills alumna.

Other notable Mills alumnae include world-renowned artists and musicians, attorneys, educators, scientists and businesswomen, a plastic surgeon, a nuclear physicist, three U.S. ambassadors, a state senator and a former governor. Clearly, these are successful women.

We do not believe that success is just a metaphor for high income or high recognition in a status profession, although Mills alumnae have certainly achieved both.

You might say that, at Mills College, success is learning how to measure and achieve a meaningful life.

For some, the road to successful self-fulfillment leads through graduate school, and Mills students have attended the best, from UC Berkeley, Yale and Columbia to Oxford University in England.

For others, often the creative iconoclasts or perpetual explorers of life, the road is more serendipitous with opportunities evolving through the first job found, or their network of lifelong Mills friends.

The school's motto is una destinatio, viae diversae. One destination, many paths. Education is a journey—your compass internal, your destination always beyond a new horizon. So chart your course for that new tomorrow. At Mills College, you'll feel empowered to pursue many paths.