<p>“While Amherst is a small liberal arts college, the Five College consortium offers students access to five times the courses, library resources, activities and more. The consortium is an unusual cooperative arrangement among Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, and Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Amherst students can take classes at any of the other campuses (all within a 10-mile radius of Amherst), without paying extra tuition.”</p>
<p>It seems to me like this could be a valuable option available to Amherst students, which would materially increase the options/ offerings available to its students. Particularly as compared to some other LACs which are in much more isolated locations, and have to stand solely on the limitations of their own resources, unsubsidized.</p>
<p>I’m familiar with other LACs that have arrangements along these lines and find them extremely valuable.</p>
<p>But I wonder how valuable this is in practice at Amherst. Seeing as how there is some commuting time involved, and possibly other considerations.</p>
<p>Do Amherst students freely utilize the benefits of the 5-college consortium? What proportion of courses are typically taken at the other consortium schools, outside of Amherst? There must be stats on this. What about actual social and other benefits, in practice?</p>
<p>Is the consortium an essential part of many Amherst students’ college experience, or is it merely icing on the cake? Or just fluff/ talk, with minimal significance in practice?</p>
<p>It's heavily used although Amherst and Smith students use it a lot less than Hampshire and Holyoke students. Go here for data showing that more than 5,000 students used the 5-college program in 2005-06:</p>
<p>
[quote]
Can guys take engineering courses at Smith?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think not:</p>
<p>
[quote]
There is no engineering program at Amherst College. There are engineering courses in the Five College area, but these can only be taken for Amherst College credit if a comparable course might have been taught in a department at Amherst College.
<p>For those who don't want to mess with the PDF, here are some numbers:</p>
<p>375 students from Amherst (about 1 in 4) took a 5 college course during the 05-06 year.
40% of the class of '06 took at least one 5 college course in their time at Amherst.</p>
<p>jhl, the handbook says that "professional, technical, and vocational courses" are not generally open for Five College interchange credit (since they don't count towards the BA that Amherst awards) unless you get approval from
your advisor and the Dean of Faculty. In practice, it seems that you can get approval for most anything if you make a compelling enough case. The language in the handbook dealing with taking more than 4 courses is similarly phrased, but I know several people who are taking 5 courses as first semester freshman and had no difficulty in getting approved.</p>
<p>Long story short, if you want to take engineering courses at Smith, you probably can. I've heard good things about them.</p>
<p>(edit: it appears the above poster is more well-informed than I am about this. Listen to them.)</p>
<p>There are several other benefits besides cross-enrollment. Academically, there are a number of faculty with joint appointments to the 5 colleges; cooperative departments in Dance, Astronomy, and Film; interlibrary loan; and a variety of certificate programs. </p>
<p>Socially, school-sponsored parties are generally open to students from the other 5 colleges and it is very common for students from one school to attend parties at another. As a straight guy at Amherst, you definitely see a beneficial tilt in the guy/girl ratio from the large numbers of women from Smith and Mount Holyoke who come to Amherst parties. I assume it's because us Amherst guys are so darn good looking. <em>cough</em></p>
<p>You can see the core engineering curriculum and there's also a link to a bunch of elective engineering courses. </p>
<p>While the Amherst website implies that Amherst students can't take engineering courses through the five-college program, you could probably make the case that a number of the courses offered as engineering courses at Smith are comparable to physics course offered at Amherst and therefore "might" have been offered in the physics department at Amherst.</p>
<p>".....these can only be taken for Amherst College credit if a comparable course might have been taught in a department at Amherst College."</p>
<p>Boy that sounds somewhat limiting.</p>
<p>If a comparable course was taught at a department at Amherst, why not just take it at Amherst? I thought the whole point of such a sharing arrangement is to expand the availabe courses beyond what your own school directly provides.</p>
<p>You'd think they could cover it with a "private studies" type credit in the Physics department.</p>
<p>I can see them not counting the grades into your GPA though. Or counting it towards your major.</p>
<p>Which brings up another question:</p>
<p>Are the grades in courses you take at Smith, Mount Holyoke, U Mass, etc. factored into your reported GPA as computed by the Amherst registrar on your Amherst transcript? Or do you just get the credits for these consortium courses, but the grades aren't factored into your Amherst GPA? Like a course you took at summer school at a differerent college someplace.</p>
<p>Are there any stats on the total proportion of courses Amherst students take at the other schools over their college career, on average?</p>
<p>For example, is it likely that anywhere near 30% of courses taken in aggregate by Amherst students are actually taken at the other consortium schools? It appears not, from the above summary stats of individuals taking any courses via consortium. What would that % likely be? (If no facts, an informed guess?)</p>