Amherst College

Academics

Academics are challenging here. Each class requires hours of reading, writing, problem-solving, and conversation—and discussions often spill over from the classroom into the professors’ offices, dining hall, and dorms. Help is available from Academic Peer Mentors, The Writing Center, and the Moss Quantitative Center. There is a two-week Add/Drop period at the start of each semester, so students can shop around for the right courses before committing.

Professors and the Advisor System

The average class size is seventeen students. Every professor holds regularoffice hours so that students may come in to get clarification on ideas and assignments. Many professors hire student research assistants. A program called TYPO (Take Your Professor Out) lets students invite favorite professors to dinner at local restaurants. Some students suggest choosing courses based not on their topics, but on their teachers.

Each incoming student is assigned a faculty advisor—a particular professor who helps him or her choose each semester’s course load based on interests, goals, and the ideal of a well-rounded liberal arts education. Once a student declares a major, he or she gets an advisor in that department. A student who chooses to do a senior honors project gets at least one special thesis advisor whose area of expertise most closely reflects the topic of the project.

Courses

To graduate, a student must complete four courses per semester over eight semesters—thirty-two courses in all. Unlike most colleges, Amherst has no core curriculum. Other than the courses necessary for one’s major, the only required course is a First-Year Seminar, and there are dozens of these to choose from.

Majors

Students may major in any of thirty-two different subjects or design an interdisciplinary major. Many choose to double-major in combinations of any two subjects. The most popular majors (in varying order) are economics, English, psychology, and political science.Depending on the department, a major will involve anywhere from eight to fourteen required courses and perhaps a comprehensive final exam or a senior project. It’s not only allowed but common for a student to change majors once or twice over four years.

Interterm

Interterm is the three-week period in January, between the fall and spring semesters. Students may stay home for Interterm, or they may return to campus to take noncredit courses or do research. Some also do urban education “Winternships” or other volunteer work. And every Interterm includes at least one colloquium in the new Amherst College Colloquium Series, in which well-known experts are invited to teach classes and debate divergent viewpoints on important and controversial topics. Past colloquium guests (for Interterm and during the spring and fall semesters) have included columnists David Brooks and E. J. Dionne, General Wesley Clark,and former New Jersey GovernorChristine Todd Whitman.

Senior Honors

Roughly half of all students take on ambitious thesis projects—usually research papers; reports on lab experiments; or original works of art, literature, music, or drama—to serve as capstones for their college careers and earn them Latin honors. Any student who completes a thesis of acceptable quality may graduate cum laude; thesis writers whose GPAs are in the top twenty-five percent of the class might graduate magna or summa cum laude. All whose grades are in the top quarter, with or without a thesis, get English honors—they graduate “With Distinction.” Amherst also has chapters of the national honors societies Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.

The Five College Consortium

Amherst works in partnership with the nearby University of Massachusetts Amherst, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, and Smith College. Students can go to any of the other four campuses to take courses for credit; complete certificate programs in, for example, logic or international relations; audition for performances; or attend sporting events and concerts. There is a free bus connecting the campuses.