College Profile:
Amherst College

Amherst College, founded in 1821, is one of the premier liberal arts colleges in the nation. With an enrollment of about 1,600 undergraduate students, Amherst offers an outstanding education in an intimate setting, allowing students to work closely with acclaimed faculty. Amherst’s maintenance of a low student/faculty ratio (approximately 8:1) is integral to the continuing dialogues between students and faculty. Amherst aims both to prepare students for careers following graduation and to ensure that every student leaves Amherst with the ability to think for him or herself and listen to the ideas of others, as well as speak and write effectively.

Diversity is an important part of Amherst’s mission. Students at Amherst come from many different races, ethnicities, nationalities, faiths and socioeconomic backgrounds. 10 percent of Amherst’s student body is African American, 12 percent are Asian, 6 percent are international students and 8 percent are Latina/o.

Curriculum

The curriculum at Amherst is remarkably rich and diverse. Amherst offers 33 majors and approximately 850 courses from which students can choose. A substantial number of faculty members hold appointments in two departments—a traditional academic discipline and one of many interdisciplinary fields. Amherst helped to pioneer interdisciplinary programs including American studies; black studies; Asian languages and civilizations; law, jurisprudence and social thought; and women’s and gender studies. Amherst College has no distribution requirements, allowing students and their advisors to tailor programs of study to a student’s academic interests. The sole exception to the open curriculum is the First-Year Seminar, a small class (each is limited to 15 students) designed to help students transition to an academic environment that emphasizes discussion, writing and research. The topics of these seminars are various and based on faculty interest. Recent seminars include: Evolution and Intellectual Revolution; Improvisational Thinking; The Japanese Aesthetic: From Samurai to Sony; National Identity; Science and Gender; Natural and Unnatural Languages; The Power of Images; and Writers and the Writing Life. Amherst also allows students to study abroad through one of more than 260 approved programs.

Amherst offers one degree, the B.A., for which the requirements are as follows:

1. Completion of eight full semesters of study, 32 full semester courses (including one First-Year Seminar);
2. Fulfillment of the requirements for a major in a department or a group of departments, including satisfactory performance in the comprehensive departmental evaluation;
3. Attainment of a satisfactory academic average.

The Five College Consortium

Amherst College is a member of the Five College consortium, which also includes Hampshire, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The consortium allows students to take classes for credit at any of the member institutions and use the library resources of any of the campuses. There are two Five College departments, Astronomy and Dance, which combine the faculty and resources of each the Five Colleges. Furthermore, students are encouraged to participate in extra-curricular activities both at Amherst and at the consortium’s other institutions.

Extra-Curricular Involvement and
Community Service

Outside the classroom, Amherst students make time for a full roster of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities including: a newspaper, several magazines, a debate team, a radio station, performing arts ensembles, ethnic and religious groups, political groups, several intramural and varsity sports and student government. Amherst is home to a total of more than 100 autonomous, student-led organizations funded by the student government.

Many of these organizations are based around community service, which is an important part of life at Amherst. Students participate in many service-based programs including tutoring, volunteering in food-banks or soup kitchens, attending rallies to fight injustice, (whether economic, political, or environmental) and raising money for victims of poverty or disaster. Service even plays a role in many Amherst classrooms. Students taking the class “representing domestic violence” spend three hours a week working with organizations dealing with domestic violence; students in “visual discourses and cultures” document the work of community organizations with video; and students in an introductory chemistry class work with a local environmental group to study groundwater pollution. These service activities help others, but they also play a vital role in the education of many students who bring what they have learned and witnessed through service to their academic work at Amherst and their lives after graduation.

Admission

In the admission process, Amherst College looks for students of intellectual promise who have demonstrated qualities of mind and character that will enable them to take full advantage of the curriculum. Amherst seeks qualified applicants from different races, classes and ethnic groups—students whose several perspectives might contribute significantly to a process of mutual education within and beyond the curriculum. Grades, standardized test scores, essays, recommendations, independent work, the quality of the secondary school program and achievement outside the classroom are among the factors used to evaluate applicants, but none of these measures is considered determinative.

Financial Aid

While the cost of a college education can seem out of reach for many families, Amherst’s generous financial aid packages ensure that an Amherst education is affordable for every admitted student. Through a combination of scholarships, grants, loans and employment opportunities, Amherst awards financial aid that completely covers the difference between what Amherst costs and what admitted students and their families can afford. In 2004-05, about half of the Amherst student body received a total of more that $20 million in scholarships and grants. The financial aid program at Amherst is designed to ensure that concerns about costs will not prevent qualified students from applying. Admission at Amherst is need-blind, which means that the financial situation of applicants and their families will not affect admissions decisions.

Location

Amherst College occupies a beautiful campus in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts. This quintessential college town in the western part of the state is within easy travel of both Boston (90 miles away) and New York (150 miles away). Emily Dickinson was an Amherst native, and Robert Frost lived in Amherst and taught at the college for many years. Located in the heart of the Pioneer Valley, Amherst is surrounded by an area of great cultural vitality. The concentration of Five College faculty and students makes the area a magnet for artists, writers, speakers and performers. Amherst’s location offers its students the opportunity to participate in a wide variety of social, cultural, and academic events throughout the Pioneer Valley.