Amherst or Reed?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Amherst College
1

<p>I have committed to Reed College, but I found out a few days ago that I was admitted to Amherst from the waitlist. The small classes, student-professor interactions, and great academic opportunities at both appeal to me immensely. However, I’m unsure which environment would fit me better. </p>

<p>I love the intellectual intensity, quirkiness, and location at Reed, but feel that the rigor might prevent me from being able to explore my interests (music, art, leisure reading) and that the campus, being so small, might feel insular. </p>

<p>The variety in people, academic freedom, and opportunities and facilities at Amherst sound wonderful, but I am not a sports person at all and I am rather introverted and intellectual, so I’m afraid I won’t fit in socially. </p>

<p>I want to be challenged academically, but I also want to be able to explore my interests.</p>

<p>Did anyone make a decision between the two and have some advice?</p>

2

<p>I was accepted to Reed but committed to Barnard. However, I also got off Amherst’s waitlist recently, too! (: I’ve been debating between the two. Though Amherst’s academics are awesome, I was also a bit worried about fitting in. Though Reed was too quirky for me, I really do appreciate its intellectual environment…But Amherst seems kind of sporty and preppy. And now it’s too late to visit again bc they have finals this week…I would recommend contacting Admissions about getting in touch with some students. That’s what I think I’m gonna do. You can only read so much CC and college guidebook info, ya know?</p>

3

<p>I chose Reed over Amherst because Amherst is almost anti-Reed. I know that sounds like a huge claim, but think about it: Reed was founded precisely to focus on an academic culture rather than on… football and the sorts, which was and is common on the east coast. I’m not saying Amherst is unintellectual, though. I’m just saying that the cultural differences between these two schools is significant enough to warrant a decision based on fit.</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m really not going to criticize Amherst or its bad dorms (jk :wink: but somewhat serious) because it’s a wonderful school but it’s not right for everyone, and it certainly wasn’t for me.</p>

<p>Now, let’s think about your concerns. Why do you think Amherst wouldn’t be as rigorous as Reed? Surely a school like Amherst would expect highly of its students? Reed is hard, but Amherst is too. </p>

<p>What makes you think you cannot explore your interests at Reed? Reed constructed a new performing arts building precisely to make room for and generate interest in the arts and music.</p>

<p>At either school, you will have to manage your time carefully to make room for your interests. If Reed’s workload was so difficult or unmanageable that you simply did not have time to pursue your interests, the $182,000 that is available for the student body to manage for events (not to mention the Gray Fund and everything else the administration does to stimulate extracurriculars) would be considered a massive waste of resources.</p>

<p>Yes, Reed is in its own bubble, which can seem insular, but remember, Amherst is its own bubble too. The consortium isn’t really helpful in that respect either because you have to take buses (unlike in the Claremont Consortium) to get to other schools, which, from what Mohos and Smithies tell me, is not really fun.</p>

<p>I highly recommend you make your decision based on fit. There are drawbacks to both schools, but only you can decide which school’s benefits outweigh its drawbacks.</p>

4

<p>Hey swoonofsin I agree with the above poster! You should really choose by fit and it may sound like reed is more of your place. Amherst does have a big jock scene and it is a little preppy. I’m sure you could find your home at both however. Have you visited both?</p>

5

<p>I would try to visit both. Amherst may be willing to fly you out. Doesn’t hurt to ask the Admissions office. I also would try to talk with any current students or recent graduates that you may know. Otherwise, ask the admissions office for contact information of students whose interests may match yours. You owe it to yourself to get first-hand or at least fairly good second information to make an informed choice. Good luck on your decision!</p>

6

<p>To offer another point of view, I really think that the vast majority of people in a similar situation would view this as a “no brainer” decision and choose Amherst. Amherst has its athletes and sports teams, but is not a jock school by any measure. Reed is a fine school, but also has issues of a different kind. Sometimes the obvious choices are the right ones. </p>

7

<p>I’ll point it out that those who consider this a “no brainer” decision would also view Princeton/Harvard/Cornell vs Amherst as a “no brainer” decision and would pick the former. Those who choose the latter are aware of the concept of ‘fit’.</p>

8

<p>On the spectrum of all places of higher education, from Deep Springs to West Point, Reed and Amherst are I would guess very much alike, even if they are not quite identical.</p>

<p>I do recall how spacious the Amherst campus seemed when I would walk by it, with a nice open feel. But on our campus tour at Reed, more than once I literally laughed out loud at the perfectness of much of the campus. As my mate says, it seems like a “movie set” of the ideal school. </p>

<p>I don’t have much first hand knowledge of Amherst as a school. But, just because this is the internet and I can, I am going to give a long quote from a president of Amherst who later lectured at Reed.</p>

<p>“The old structure of interpretation of human life is wrecked, it has lost its unity, it has lost its power. We don’t know what to think about any of the essential features of human experience. We are lost and mixed up and bewildered, and if you ask what is the matter with our young people, it is just because they know it their bones, whether they know it with their minds or not, that we haven’t got a gospel, a philosophy; we haven’t, in the proper sense of the term, a religion to give them. We are lost in the maze of gathering together again the fragments of our experience, the theories of our life, the parts of our knowledge, and making out of them a scheme of life by which people may go on in some command of their old faith.
Our task at small colleges is to engage again the attempt to make a philosophy of life or a religion, if that is what you call it, a scheme of values, a settled belief, a formulations of questions, a feeling of enterprises and appreciations out of which human life may be made a significant and beautiful and splendid thing. A college should a place in which every member of the community is attempting to understand what goes on in human life. Can we as communities that are engaged in the liberal enterprise of attempting to take all of human experience into some sort of unified understanding-can we take our communities, these little communities of a few hundred individuals, and fuse them altogether into some such single thing by which the whole community is dominated?”</p>

<p>tl;dr Back in the year 1925, the former president of Amherst told the president of Reed: “You have been able to accomplish more in the three years at Reed than I was able to accomplish at Amherst in eleven”.</p>

<p>So any readers still with me, why the little blast from the past, and quotes from ninety years ago? After all, both schools are now in some ways much different than they were then. To pick just two things, Reed now has a nuclear reactor, and Amherst has female students.</p>

<p>My guess is that, if you are the type of person that 1) does not skip ahead to the tl;dr, and 2) if Alexander Meiklejohn’s message from the past still resonates at all with you, then you may be fated to be a Reedie.</p>

9

<p>@international95 whaaaaaat I think Amherst is the more prestigious choice over Cornell… Amherst is definitely on par with most of the ivies except HYP </p>

10

<p>Be serious. Amherst is well-known in the northeast, but it is nothing compared to Cornell globally. Amherst would probably be better received in grad school committees (but hey, Reed would be too), but except in a few circles, Cornell would almost always be better well-known. It’s not a judgment on Amherst’s academics. It’s just that because Cornell is a giant research university, it simply is better well-known and thought of as more prestigious because it is a part of the Ivy league. I would, obviously, prefer Amherst too. But our preferences, unfortunately, do not fall in line with those of most people.</p>

<p>What I meant was that those who consider “Amherst vs Reed” a “no-brainer” decision would consider Cornell vs Amherst a no-brainer decision as well. It’s just a massive disregard for different schools with different cultures. To nitpick between liberal arts colleges because of the differences in prestige is especially stupid because the differences are going to be very small.</p>

11

<p>Colin Diver, the last president of Reed is an Amherst alum. From the Reed website:
“Diver was the fourth Amherst College alumnus to head Reed. Other Amherst alumni who have been president of Reed are Dexter Keezer, Duncan Ballantine, and Paul Bragdon”. The two schools not only top LACs but also share a common heritage.</p>

12

<p>I’m with 5oclockhero on this one and stand by my “no brainer” comment. I’m sure some people out there would choose Reed over Amherst for fit reasons, just like some might choose Cornell over Harvard, but to say the difference in prestige between Amherst and Reed is “small” is a stretch to say the least. Amherst is consistently rated at the very top of LACs year after year on every kind of study meant to quantify prestige, strength of the student body, curriculum, resources etc. Reed is a fine school that does a great job preparing students for graduate school and does not get some of the attention and recognition is deserves, but it is not remotely close to Amherst in any of these studies. Dragging in the comparisons between Amherst and the Ivies is irrelevant and not helpful because Amherst is an LAC, not a research university. </p>

13

<p>Clearly then you aren’t familiar with how Reed works. It has, for instance, consistently refused to participate in one-size-fits-all surveys since 1995. Therefore, it gets penalized. Before that time, it used to be ranked in the top ten of the “study” (<em>cough</em> US News <em>cough</em>) you so highly speak of. </p>

<p>The comparison was made to elucidate how the ranking mentality allows people to offer recommendations without any regard for or understanding of the other school. And even if they do, it goes something like, “well, Amherst is great, but it’s Cornell.”</p>

<p>I still am at a loss as to how prestige matters when it comes to liberal arts colleges, or even if differences exist between academically comparable schools. Let me know when an Amherst grad with an English major gets a Wall Street job without trying. Then it has truly reached a level where prestige would matter (hurray for English majors from Yale).</p>

14

<p>I have to agree with @International95. These LAC threads involving Amherst and Williams often resemble a pail full of blue crabs each trying to pull the others down as they try to escape over the top of the pail. It does none of them any good because soon enough they will all be boiled alive. Amherst dares to look down its nose at an institution like Cornell when it can’t even build one rinky-dink science center? Now, its president, Biddy Martin is crying poor because it can’t afford a “shiny new library” like the ones she sees in the other retail windows when she shops for brand new toys for Amherst. When is Amherst going to grow up? </p>

15

<p>circuitrider, why all the hate? You have been trashing Amherst on more than this thread. Who pissed in your Wheaties?</p>

16

<p>@circuitrider, I dont get it either, weren’t you @ the Wesleyan thread, you are a Wes grad yes?. My DS14 was accepted at Wes, delighted for him, then Amherst came with a waitlist offer and now he is going to Amherst and we are all very much delighted and relieved he’ll be in Amherst and NOT Middletown.</p>

17

<p>May I suggest that we make comments to help swoonofsin rather than argue about prestige? Swoonof sin has already made a decision, and I wish her/him a wonderful college experience whether it be at Reed or Amherst!</p>

<p>As an Amherst grad, I have learned that many people have not heard about my college internationally; however, that did not make any difference professionally in the long run. What was most important was the quality of education that I obtained, and it enabled me to feel that I could compete at every stage of my career with graduates from any other university or college. I also believe that my education provided me with the intellectual background and critical thinking to find enjoyment and purpose professionally and personally. </p>

<p>I think many LAC graduates have a chip on their shoulders because their schools do not get as much “recognition” or have as much “prestige” internationally or among the general public. If one is not careful, it can start even before attending an LAC when puzzled friends and relatives ask where you will go to school, and wonder why you did not attend a more “prestigious” school. I agree that while Amherst is well known in the NE, it really is not very well known among the general public in the U.S. or internationally. I think it is a tradeoff that occurs when you decide to attend a LAC vs. major research “brand name-prestigous” university as the latter are known for their research and their international alumni from their graduate programs. Regarding getting a job on Wall Street, I am not sure whether an English graduate from Amherst or Yale would be treated differently since both are well known in New York (although its a tough job market for English majors in general these days). On the other hand, if an English major were looking for a position in Shanghai, Tokyo, or Moscow, graduating from an ivy league school will definitely draw more attention to his/her application. Like it or not,unfortunately, it is a fact of life for an American LAC graduate. I can say this with some confidence since I live abroad, and travel internationally in my profession, and whenever I am introduced, my post-graduate degree from an extremely “prestigious” university almost always get mentioned and unfortunately my education at Amherst, which probably had a more profound, and seminal impact on me, gets overlooked.</p>

18

<p>Unfortunately, many LAC students, grads, and parents also try to focus on prestige among LACs perhaps because they have lost the LAC vs “brand name-prestigious” university game. However, I believe the quality of education at the top 30+ LACs are all excellent, and really not all that different from each other. It is true that some schools will get a higher share of students who otherwise will have gone to an ivy league school or well-recognized university. This potentially may affect the quality of the student body (perhaps measured by entering freshman SAT scores) but I don’t think it ultimately affects the type or the quality of education that they receive. I am always delighted to meet others with a LAC background. I feel a certain natural affinity in terms of common undergraduate educational experience with graduates of Reed, Grinnell, Pomona, Lawrence, or Hamilton than I do with graduates from ivy league schools or large state universities.</p>

19

<p>Thanks, @pmyen‌. I share those sentiments. I think the other piece at work here is that LACs, unlike schools like HYP, don’t get a lot of shots at national publicity; their main strength is through their networking. So, the stakes are always higher for them when they do come in for their share of criticism - deserved, or not. I say that as someone who, as @Englishman‌ rightly points out, regularly “hangs out” on the Wesleyan discussion board.</p>

20

<p>If you look at the Princeton review you will find that Reed is consistently ranked first in terms of professor accessibility, best classroom experience and quite highly on ‘students love their college.’ Amherst is better known on the East Coast. Reed students are admitted to graduate schools far and above most liberal arts colleges and ahead of quite a few highly selective liberal arts schools as well. My son will be applying to Reed, the University of Chicago and Princeton and I have no doubt that an education at Reed will be comparable to Princeton and the U of C. That said, Reed does not have the resources that the other two schools have in terms of research opportunities. Reed casts a wider net than the other schools; its students self-select. Reed has a reputation (deserved, I think) for substance use; my kid is personally conservative and I’m not sure if this would be a problem for him in terms of activities. I think Amherst is a very fine school; it will appeal to a different type of kid, and to be frank, probably a kid who is reassured by the trappings of prestige and reputation, which, by the way,I understand. Also, there is virtually no sports scene at Reed. Reed is also something of a pressure cooker in terms of workload. Both schools are fantastic but appeal to a different type of student.</p>