A growing number of women's colleges are welcoming transgender women on campus after refusing to admit them for years.

Two transgender women attending Wellesley College in Massachusetts this fall are believed to be the first at the school since it decided to start allowing transgender women in 2015.

Ninotska Love says being accepted to the college is "a big validation of the person that I have become."

Wellesley joins at least eight women's colleges that have adopted policies allowing transgender women since 2015.

Several declined to say if they had admitted students under the new policies, citing privacy concerns.

Some critics have said the change undermines the colleges' mission to empower women, but some schools counter that they were founded to help anyone who would be denied education because of their gender.