What can I say about the academics at Wellesley? They really don't get much better than this. I know there are a few schools who are better known for this, but I firmly believe that the "anywhere else it would have been an A" mentality applies here. DON'T come to Wellesley looking for an easy A. There's no such thing around here. In fact, don't come here if you're dead set on getting A's, easy or not. But do come here if you want professors who are incredibly passionate about their subject and who know your name and are willing to go out of their way to help you, or if you want tiny classes (this semester, I don't have a single class above 20 students, and three of the four have under 15), or if you want a giant library and a fantastic course selection for such a small school, or if you want to live and learn with other women who are as focused and intelligent and hard-working as you are.
You will work harder here than you think you will. That is, because Wellesley is a women's college, it's less selective (in terms of admissions) than comparable coed schools, because the applicant pool is automatically cut in half. So there's this perception, sometimes, that Wellesley is not as academically challenging as those schools. And this is so incredibly untrue that it's kind of funny. The grading standards for Wellesley's writing department, for example, say something like, "If you do everything your professor asks, and do it well, we feel that this work merits a B." No matter how smart you are, you're not guaranteed to do well here. You have to work, and hard. But if you do put in the work, it is so rewarding. Hardly anyone makes it out of here with a 4.0, but almost everyone leaves with an incredibly good education.
Students are competitive, but more with themselves then with each other. Everyone is driven to do well, and there is pride in doing well, but it doesn't come into friendships. Like, I might mention to my friend that I got an A on a paper, but I wouldn't compare GPAs with her, and I certainly wouldn't ask about her grades in a class we were both taking.
We study. Oh, how we study. We study A LOT. (We also procrastinate a lot, but you know how that goes.) Wellesley women taking studying VERY seriously. During reading period and finals, we have campus-wide 23-Hour Quiet Hours (as in, no loud noises anywhere in the residence halls), and people WILL call you out on it if you talk too loudly while they're trying to study. We're all constantly sleep deprived, and in most cases, it has nothing to do with going out. We work hard around here.