I mean, to be fair, if you've ever checked niche or student reviews of rural schools, there does tend to be a lot of complaints about how "boring" and "middle of nowhere" it is. Even Amherst's niche have complaints about how boring it is...

But Amherst isn’t rural. It’s in an area with the same types of shops and fast food places you’d find in a typical suburb. I guess it depends on what kind of “excitement” you need, but I’ve been to campuses with much worse surrounding areas (either ghetto or actually rural).

If you don’t care for Amherst’s campus and facilities, might I suggest High Point as an alternative? LOVELY campus with OUSTANDING facilities.

Anonymous wrote:We toured all the NESCAC schools except for Trinity and liked Amherst and it’s campus the best. I think it’s going to get even better with the new student center and dining commons currently being built. Williams way too remote and no other surrounding colleges so no real college town. You walk out of Amherst and there are a number of restaurants nearby.

? Williams grad here who would have to disagree. How can you say no real college town? Williamstown is about as picturesque as can be. It has everything one would need in a college town.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured Amherst two years ago and DC was similarly underwhelmed. Not sure why they are ranked high. Academics don't really stand out--similar to other lower ranked schools--and they recruit a lot of athletes, which is a problem for such a small size school.

I've begin to see WASP more as WSP-A, because I can't ever find something that puts Amherst above the other T4 LACs. Williams has fantastic tutorials/Oxford connections, Swarthmore has engineering, an amazing honors program, and top grad placement rate, and Pomona is special as an LAC in California, the Claremont colleges, and Cambridge connections.

Amherst has a lack luster campus, an open curriculum, which I still will never understand why this is a pro outside of avoiding classes you wouldn't try which defeats the purpose of a liberal arts college, and a depressing library.

A compelling argument for an open curriculum is that it creates a great classroom environment because everyone wants to be there. They aren't just fulfilling some distribution/writing/quantitative requirement—they all have a genuine interest in the material. Also, Amherst has the consortium. Turns a smaller LAC course catalog (which many say is a con of LACs) into one with 6000+ courses.

Love Amherst, but the consortium is overstated at best and pretty underutilized by students due to the distance of the colleges. Would love for it to be like Pomona where you just walk 5 minutes over onto the next campus. Ultimately, you run across a lot of small barriers that make the consortium borderline useless. I wish the open curriculum line was true; we're still college students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured Amherst two years ago and DC was similarly underwhelmed. Not sure why they are ranked high. Academics don't really stand out--similar to other lower ranked schools--and they recruit a lot of athletes, which is a problem for such a small size school.

I've begin to see WASP more as WSP-A, because I can't ever find something that puts Amherst above the other T4 LACs. Williams has fantastic tutorials/Oxford connections, Swarthmore has engineering, an amazing honors program, and top grad placement rate, and Pomona is special as an LAC in California, the Claremont colleges, and Cambridge connections.

Amherst has a lack luster campus, an open curriculum, which I still will never understand why this is a pro outside of avoiding classes you wouldn't try which defeats the purpose of a liberal arts college, and a depressing library.

A compelling argument for an open curriculum is that it creates a great classroom environment because everyone wants to be there. They aren't just fulfilling some distribution/writing/quantitative requirement—they all have a genuine interest in the material. Also, Amherst has the consortium. Turns a smaller LAC course catalog (which many say is a con of LACs) into one with 6000+ courses.

I think the campus is gorgeous. The view from the monument is so pretty and the quad is the most classic New England quad. It is a beautiful little town. But ues much more sleepy than Northampton. Northampton is the fun sport for bars and music.

Anonymous wrote:Wow those 13,000 kids who applied to Amherst last year must be really stupid. How did they not know how lame the campus is? Application is really going to drop when word gets out.

I mean, to be fair, if you've ever checked niche or student reviews of rural schools, there does tend to be a lot of complaints about how "boring" and "middle of nowhere" it is. Even Amherst's niche have complaints about how boring it is...

Students are terrible researchers and often times, especially in this era, students are just clicking the "apply" button with a copy pasted supplement and a list of top schools with no correlation with one another. DC's friend was accepted to Cornell this year and thought that Ithaca was 30 minutes away from New York City and thought it was as small as the other ivies. You can imagine the shock when they did a campus visit...

Anonymous wrote:Wow those 13,000 kids who applied to Amherst last year must be really stupid. How did they not know how lame the campus is? Application is really going to drop when word gets out.

And yet its yield rate is a meager 41 percent. Quite underwhelming for a school of its supposed stature.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. We were also underwhelmed and DC didn’t apply; but I know Amherst could not care less and has plenty of applicants. I also went to a SLAC whose campus most find wanting, but I had the time of my life and a great education.

Wow those 13,000 kids who applied to Amherst last year must be really stupid. How did they not know how lame the campus is? Application is really going to drop when word gets out.

Anonymous wrote:Open curriculum.

Not everyone can go to Brown

An acceptance rate of 9 percent to Brown's 5 percent isn't much of an improvement.

We toured all the NESCAC schools except for Trinity and liked Amherst and it’s campus the best. I think it’s going to get even better with the new student center and dining commons currently being built. Williams way too remote and no other surrounding colleges so no real college town. You walk out of Amherst and there are a number of restaurants nearby.

Open curriculum.

Not everyone can go to Brown

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We toured Amherst two years ago and DC was similarly underwhelmed. Not sure why they are ranked high. Academics don't really stand out--similar to other lower ranked schools--and they recruit a lot of athletes, which is a problem for such a small size school.

I've begin to see WASP more as WSP-A, because I can't ever find something that puts Amherst above the other T4 LACs. Williams has fantastic tutorials/Oxford connections, Swarthmore has engineering, an amazing honors program, and top grad placement rate, and Pomona is special as an LAC in California, the Claremont colleges, and Cambridge connections.

Amherst has a lack luster campus, an open curriculum, which I still will never understand why this is a pro outside of avoiding classes you wouldn't try which defeats the purpose of a liberal arts college, and a depressing library.

The academics are great, but it's campus does leave a lot to be desired. Beautiful science center and most colleges cannot top the excellent faculty, better than the ones at the other WASP colleges.

Anonymous wrote:Agreed it was very underwhelming. The most interesting thing we saw in town was Emily Dickinson's grave. Daughter much preferred the Maine LAC's we toured the next day.

Bowdoin is such a lovely little college. DC shot it up past Williams and Amherst after touring!