<p>I’m a rising senior at Amherst College and I wanna try to answer any questions people who frequent this board have about Amherst.</p>
<p>Shoot away…</p>
<p>Who is the best prof you've had that most people don't know about? (ie, not as well known as someone like Sarat)</p>
<p>being a small school, does amherst ever feel claustrophobic to you? one reason why i am hesitant to apply to liberal arts schools, even though i love the idea of ir, is that i feel that after a while seeing the same ppl over and over again will suck. that's what it's like for me at my boarding school of 500 ppl.</p>
<p>Catfish, I'd say Amherst's most unsung professor is N. Gordon Levin, he teaches American Studies and History. I've taken three courses with him and he made me fall in love with diplomatic history. (He teaches a series on American diplomatic history that spans from the Revolutionary War to the war on Iraq, it's a 4 class series in total). He's the most knowledgeable person I've met in my life, is incredibly warm and friendly, really cares about his students, is consistently engaging even in 2.5 hour seminars, offers a unique perspective on history, doesn't try to indoctrinate students (which is a problem with many Amherst professors), assigns paper topics that force students to synthesize thousands of pages of reading on things as archaic as the details of the Israeli-Arab disengagement proceedings after the Yom Kippur War into concise "big-picture" analysis, and gives extensive feedback on papers. I think he better than any other professor at Amherst exemplifies what an LAC education's all about. Hurry though because he's leaving in 2010!</p>
<p>Honorable mentions: Uday Mehta (political philosophy) and Pavel Machala (co-teaches many diplomatic history classes with Levin, Marxology, globalization, miscellaneous area studies). As you can guess, political science is my major and student satisfaction with Mehta, Machala, and Levin (at least in my own case and amongst my group of friends) has routinely been higher than student satisfaction with LJST/Poli Sci big shots like Sarat, Arkes, and the Pulitzer Prize winning Taubman (though they all receive high marks too!!!)</p>
<hr>
<p>Cecils, I'll be honest: Amherst can get very claustrophobic. You will see the same people over and over again. Unlike many LACs, we only have one dining hall. With a big (35%?) athlete population, there's a lot of social segmentation and cliquishness. So a small campus feels even smaller given the size of your social network. Almost everyone lives on campus. About half the campus is too far from home to be able to have a car (I'm one of those people). The stretch of shops/restaurants in town is very small. And, on many nights, the campus will cram into one or two parties. The result of all these factors: you'll keep seeing the same people over and over again (tip: try not to make enemies haha). </p>
<p>But Amherst doesn't have to be claustrophobic if you make a serious effort for it not to be. The Amherst area offers a lot of opportunities to have fun. You can get off campus and go to Mt Tobee, Mt Tom, the Puffer's Pond area, the Notch, and, if you're feeling very adventurous, real mountain ranges in New Hampshire for hikes. A gorgeous bike trail behind the tennis courts goes to Northampton. The Deerfield River and Connecticut River offer opportunities for kayaking, canoeing, inner tubing, and white-water rafting. Puffer's Pond and these rivers provide fishing opportunities. So if you wanna experience the great outdoors you won't run out of things to do.</p>
<p>Mini-golf and bowling are within short drives as well. If you want culture, Northampton is a short bike ride/drive/bus ride away. You can find all the ethnic food and snobby movies you want there. A poetry reading or singer-songwriter on stage? Marsh Coffee House can float your boat. Then there's 4 other colleges nearby with tens of thousands of kids to socially network with and tons of interesting guest lectures (from Noam Chomsky to Antonin Scalia in recent years) all over the 5-College area.</p>
<p>If you absolutely need city-life, NYC is 3 hours away and Boston is less than 2 hours away. So both provide for convenient weekend getaways. Unfortunately, most students, myself included, don't take advantage of these opportunities and are sucked into the campus pressure to go drink at the same two campus parties and call that a "weekend". So, my advice: 1) branch out as much as possible by being really welcoming and by joining a lot of different clubs (i.e. row crew, sing a cappella, etc) to have a more extensive social network than you would otherwise. As opposed to running into the same 15 floor mates/good friends you'll run into the same 200 people and the campus will feel a lot bigger.
2) try to get off-campus as much as possible because, as my post hopefully demonstrated, there are a billion things to do off-campus but most people neglect to take advantage of them!
3) get a car, or become very good friends with someone who has one :)</p>
<p>Sorry to hijack this, but Corrales is my fave so far. He teaches poli sci classes on Latin America and political economy. He's a very engaging lecturer, very considerate with workload (assigns 4 3-4 page papers, allows your best grade to count for more, although he does give a lot of reading), teaches classes on interesting and relevant topics, and is just an overall great guy. His classes are always overenrolled, but he always reserves spots for freshmen.</p>
<p>I don't think Amherst is claustrophobic - we are surrounded by tens of thousands of other college students. I like the cozy tight knit feeling, though.</p>
<p>I highly recommend taking a Gewertz class (anthropology).</p>
<p>I visited a Corrales class and it seemed really interesting. I will have to investigate Gewertz, Levin, et al.</p>
<p>Shifting gears, what didn't you bring from home that you wished you did? What did you bring that, in retrospect, you didn't really need?</p>
<p>My mom made me bring an umbrella that I never used.</p>
<p>Gewertz is absolutely amazing, like, my idol. </p>
<p>I wish I had brought a mini-fridge.</p>
<p>I'd say I definitely overstocked in school supplies like notebooks, folders, staples, paper clips, etc. </p>
<p>There were a few favorite DVDs I wished I had brought up on the weekends I missed Kubrick, Scorsese, Seinfeld re-runs, etc.</p>
<p>As a general cautionary note, try to pack as lightly as possible. You'll end up not using A LOT of the stuff you bring up. (And get sore muscles hauling it all)</p>
<p>Any more questions?</p>
<p>P.S. I personally didn't like my Corrales experience and one of my roommates thought he was very overrated. But it seems like most of the people I talk to would be closer to Lemonjello's position than mine. On the other hand, Machala, who's my favorite professor in the dept, is charged with assigning too much "useless" reading and being an unclear lecturer by some people I talk to. Goes to show how subjective opinions of what constitute good teaching are...</p>
<p>Are there any things every Amherst student should do before they graduate?</p>
<p>I want to take a class with Machala, not just because he has a good reputation (though that's obviously key), but also so I can say that I've been taught by a real live communist. I thought most of them were now in museums.</p>
<p>rhcp07, I am almost sure that I saw a list of things to do before you leave Amherst somewhere. I'll try to track it down. In the meantime, I'm interested in what these fine folks think we should do.</p>
<p>Are there any profs or classes that I should go out of my way to either take or avoid? I'm thinking mostly of freshman year, but any advice for farther down the line is appreciated.</p>
<p>Ehhh...Mitzi Goheen is a darling woman, but her classes are a bit of a joke. She's actually remarkably intelligent, but not a good teacher by most any measure. People call her "ditzy Mitzy"...good for an easy grade, and she puts a lot of effort into her classes, but you won't get much out of them.</p>
<p>Catfish, Machala is a Marxist but, though the words "alienation", "transnational capitalism", "the power elite", and "the Orientalist mind" are mentioned in passing in all his courses, he does not try to indoctrinate his students and is very open-minded (he often co-teaches diplomatic history courses with a neoconservative hawk and is, good friends with Professor Arkes, Amherst's most prominent conservative...this is news because many of their colleagues loathe Arkes and have tense relations with him). His main goal is to get students to understand history/current events, not to adopt his views. This is at odds with the way many Amherst professors teach. I hope that still makes you want to take a Machala class :) </p>
<p>As for rhcp's question (great band by the way!), there are so many things you should do before graduating...I'd be writing forever if I wanted to write an exhaustive list. Here's my attempt at a top 10:
10 Go to Marsh Coffee House
9 Go to Arkes' Colloquium on the American Founding
8 Have dinner and watch a movie in NoHo
7 Go on a date at Amherst Coffee
6 Take a dip in Puffer's Pond
5 Go canoeing at Sportsman's Marina on the Connecticut
4 Go tubing at Shelburne Falls
3 Go to an a cappella concert
2 Get a slice at Antonio's
1 SLED DOWN MEMORIAL HILL!!</p>
<p>Catfish, as for profs/classes, my favorites:
Political Obligations- Arkes
Early Modern Philosophy- Vogel
American Diplo: Mid East- Levin/Machala
American Diplo II- Levin/Machala
Aristotle- Gentzler
Macroeconomics- Alpanda</p>
<p>Those classes were my favorites and I'd say go out of your way to take them if you're into poli sci/philosophy/history/econ like me. Go out of your way to taken any of those profs (except Alpanda, not that he's bad, but macro with Honig, Barbezat, or Woglom shouldn't be too different since it's a textbook driven theory course)</p>
<p>I've also heard great things about Uday Mehta and Bill Taubman in Political Science. I loved Professor Rossi for Latin as well. Notice the dearth of science/math because I'm a poli sci major. I wish I could help in those depts but I know nothing there. </p>
<p>Classes to avoid at all costs:
FYSE- Growing up in America
Shakespeare
20th Century European Politics and Culture
Ditzi Mitzi (unless you want an easy A)</p>
<p>Overall, in poli sci the only professor I was dissatisfied with was Tiersky. Though that may have been the class (the 20th c Europe one). I've heard better things about War and Peace and Contemporary Europe. I've heard terrible things about George in Philosophy, Westhoff/Yarborough in Econ, and pretty much the whole Spanish dept (I hear Ilan Stevens is good though). </p>
<p>I hope this helped. Any more questions?</p>
<p>Classes to avoid at all costs:
FYSE- Growing up in America
Shakespeare
20th Century European Politics and Culture
Ditzi Mitzi (unless you want an easy A)</p>
<p>Shoot...I signed up for Growing up in America as my first choice. Why should that class be avoided?</p>
<p>As someone who is indeed interested in poli sci/philosophy/history/econ, that's exceedingly helpful, boquacious. I will definitely try to fit all those in. I've got a good enough AP score to skip intro-level econ, though. Is there any compelling reason I shouldn't skip? I've been advised to take an econ elective during the fall and wait until spring to start the intermediate theory courses.</p>
<p>What exactly have you heard about George? Some people on scrutiny say he is a hard grader and is unsympathetic. Is he really that bad? I ask because I would like to take Logic at some point, and George seems to be the only prof for that class.</p>
<p>Whooopa, I was unsatisfied with growing up in America because I thought it was more of a political indoctrination session than a forum for reasonable reflection and conversation. The professor will use a variety of interdisciplinary mechanisms--biographies, slave narratives, fiction, sociological studies, etc--to hammer her point that the experience of growing up in America is driven by race, class, and gender. Alternative perspectives on the realities of race/class relations in America are laughed at and papers are judged correspondingly. I feel like a decent class should do at least one of the following (if not a combination): add to my body of knowledge, change the way I view the world, or develop certain skills. I feel like this FYSE did none of the above. The class just left me bitter, jaded, and convinced that Amherst was an overhyped PC brainwashing camp. Luckily, subsequent classes quickly changed my perspective. :) Other students I talked to were also unsatisfied with the course. In contrast, students I talked to in National Identity and Conflict and Cohesion seemed to love their FYSEs and seemed to have learned a lot. So, in short, I hope you get your second or third choice FYSE!</p>
<p>Catfish, most people I know who could've placed out of Econ 11 took it anyway, got a good grade and didn't regret their decision. :) On the other hand, a few kids I know who skipped Econ 11 got absolutely hammered in intermediate theory courses (I'm talking Cs/Ds at a grade inflated school) because they were inadequately prepared. However, since you're taking a lower-level elective in the fall, you should be in better shape than these kids were in macro/micro. In general I'd encourage people to take Econ 11 even with 4s/5s in AP Econ. But I guess it all depends on the strength of your high school preparation and, if it's solid (as you'd know better than me if it is), by all means skip it! One tip though...don't take your first econ class with Professor Barbezat. (PS add US Economic History to the list of courses to avoid at Amherst.) He's really hard and kinda expects you to know some intermediate level macro, micro, and econometrics even though he doesn't list them as pre-reqs to his classes.</p>
<p>As for George, I've heard he's extremely unhelpful if you need clarification with anything, really smug, and a very unfair grader. He'll often give zero credit on really important test questions for small mistakes. He's not the most generous man with partial credit to say the least. Consequently, a lot of students with strong command of the material get very low grades. On the other hand, it is an easy class from what I hear, so there are a lot of astronomically high grades too. It's kinda an A+ or C class depending on whether you make silly mistakes on tests or not. </p>
<p>So should you take him? It really depends on why you want to take logic. I'd imagine it's for one of 3 reasons.
1) you want to refine your logical reasoning skills
2) you want to prepare the LSAT
3) you want to major in philosophy</p>
<p>For 1, other classes in the dept will develop these skills just fine. In fact, in Early Modern Phil, Vogel spends a week teaching logic and throughout the year asks you to re-create great philosophers' arguments in logically valid form. That course did wonders for my logical reasoning skills. Gentzler and Vogel will teach you what modus ponens, modus tollens, and a lot of syllogisms are. And the rest of logic, from what I hear, is often unnecessary anyway (given most students' goals).</p>
<p>As for 2, see answer to 1. And do LSAT specific prep. It'd help you a lot more than George would.</p>
<p>As for 3, unfortunately logic w/ George is a major req. So suck it up and take George anyway. Don't let one class stop you from an awesome dept!</p>
<p>Any other questions anyone?</p>
<p>What class would be a good starting point in Spanish if I got a 5 on AP Spanish? There seems to be a bunch of classes that I could start out with. </p>
<p>How much math should you take if you want to major in econ?</p>
<p>Elcorredor, you are qualified to take start out with literature courses and what not that are taught exclusively in Spanish. You can either start out with whatever elective interests you above Spanish 7 or you can take Spanish 5, 6, or 7 if you feel like you want a little bit more Spanish instruction (though you can place out of these classes). Since every class above Spanish 3 counts toward the major, it doesn't hurt you to take Spanish 5, 6, or 7.</p>
<p>As for math as an econ major, you only have to take Math 11 and you can place out of that with a sufficient score on AP Calculus AB. However, if you want to take advanced microeconomics and advanced macro, Math 12 and 13 are necessary. You can place out of Math 12 with a sufficient score on Calc BC. You'll have to take Math 13 absent prior college experience however. Some econ majors I know take Linear Algebra and say it helps them with their theses. Math and Econ is actually a very popular double major in case you're really interested in both.</p>
<p>Other questions anyone?</p>
<p>Actually, US Econ History was the econ elective I was planning on taking this fall. Your advice is very timely. I'm curious what you've heard about it, though, since the Scrutiny feedback seemed pretty good.</p>
<p>My other options for this fall appear to be Poverty & Inequality (Rivkin), Money and Econ Activity (Woglom), and Economic Development (Kingston). Do you know anything about those?</p>
<p>I feel pretty good about my intro-level preparation. I didn't actually take the class (not enough people signed up for it to be offered), but I got the textbooks and study guides from the teacher and worked my way through them. Everything seemed to click without too much trouble and I am extremely pleased with my AP scores.</p>
<p>Looking a bit further ahead, how hard would it be for me if I took the Advanced Macro this spring? Would I be better off waiting until sophomore year? I have enough AP credits to cover the math prereqs.</p>
<p>Thanks for the suggestion of Early Modern Philosophy as a Logic substitute. Most of the other Philosophy classes would also serve that role, I presume?</p>