Hood College is a co-educational liberal arts college serving 2,365 students, 1,359 of whom are undergraduates. Located in Frederick, Maryland, the school lies 50 miles west of Baltimore and northwest of Washington, DC.

Established in 1893 by the Potomac Synod of the Reformed Church of the United States as the Woman's College of Frederick, the school was officially chartered in 1897 "with the purpose and object of creating and maintaining a college for the promotion and advancement of women, and the cultivation and diffusion of Literature, Science and Art." The college's founding was the result of the Potomac Synod's decision to transition the coeducational Mercersburg College into the all-male Mercersburg Academy and establish a women's college south of the Mason–Dixon line. In 1913, the institution was renamed Hood College by its Board of Trustees to honor its most generous benefactor, Margaret Scholl Hood, whose land donation allowed the school to move from rented facilities in downtown Frederick to its own campus in the northwest region of the city.