Find information about the College’s response to the evolving situation with COVID-19, including the plan for Spring 2021. Learn about the guidelines for coming to campus and the latest changes to the academic program, housing, dining, athletics, and more.
An Amherst education is personal, dynamic and rigorous. Our professors are among the foremost authorities in their fields. They work with students every day, in and out of class, as teachers, advisers and mentors.
We are known for our open curriculum, a bold experiment in place since 1971. To graduate, students must take four years of classes, but just one first-year seminar and the required classes for their major. In conjunction with their academic advisors, students plan a program of study to discover their intellectual and creative passions and equip themselves for a life of active, collaborative learning.
At Amherst we encourage you to look at the world from new perspectives. Check the list to see if you’ve got what it takes.
An Amherst education challenges you to see things from new perspectives. It allows you to be flexible and nimble.
At Amherst, you start by knowing something. Then you wrestle with it, pull it apart, connect it to other things, see it differently.
You search, question, reimagine. And this leads to a new kind of knowledge—deeper, more creative, more profound.
The performance, lab, essay, field trip, final project: You do these things with as much life, as much joy, as much intensity and determination as possible.
There’s no answer key to the questions we ask. At Amherst, you learn to create the answers yourself.
We are known for our open curriculum, a bold experiment in place since 1971. Each classroom is filled with inquisitive, fully engaged students committed to the topic at hand.
Amherst students can choose among more than 6,000 courses for credit at four nearby schools: Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Our low student : faculty ratio supports a personalized learning experience in which students and faculty work closely together.
49 hires of tenured or tenure-track faculty members since 2010, most to replace retiring faculty, have brought outstanding new teacher-scholars to campus.
74 faculty members have taught at Amherst for 20-plus years, bringing extensive experience to the classroom and shaping their disciplines.
We set our students and graduates on a path to be engaged, effective, and innovative problem-solvers in their communities and workplaces. Learning by doing takes many forms at Amherst.
It begins on campus: Students from more than 50 countries take courses that prepare them for life in a globally connected world. It continues off campus: 40% of Amherst students study abroad.