The food at Amherst is good! I mean it’s not mom’s cooking, but then again it’s not your mom’s college cafeteria experience either.
@wisteria100 observed:
Middletown has changed quite a bit in the last twenty years. The old North End still resembles that Mellencamp song. People of all colors still line up early in the morning for clothing and a hot meal at the St. Vincent de Paul mission. And, though it is clearly discouraged by the local constabulary (whose headquarters are cleverly camouflaged to resemble a bar/restaurant), people may still be observed panhandling (which they do in Northampton, too, except, they’re called “street artists” when they do it.) I would still run the gauntlet, if need be, for breakfast at O’Rourke’s, probably one of the best known diners in New England (just be sure to get there before 3:00PM when it begins to shut down.)
The other end of Main Street (which runs for about ten blocks from end to end) has been almost completely suburbanized. Historic homes have been hauled into place like chess pieces; Wesleyan helped bring in a four-star hotel to host visiting professors; and, the old apartment-above-the-store streetscape has been replaced by modern facades with gabled roofs.
In between those two poles, on any weekday evening, you can see cars parked perpendicularly for blocks as people from the surrounding towns of Portland, Berlin, Haddam and Cromwell come to dine out or to perhaps make a detour for a little froyo before heading home. Over the years, Middletown has definitely become the unofficial county seat for that part of Connecticut.
You’ve got me interested in stopping in Middletown the ext time I pass by @circuitrider !
However, I take issue with this:
There are panhandlers in Northampton, they are asking for money, straight up. They may ask, they may sit with signs, but they are asking for you to give them money because they are down and out or whatever.
Street artists are playing music or painting with chalk or whatever they are doing, with some kind of vessel that people can put money into. They are entertaining you and if you want to support them, you can.
There is a difference.
I don’t know where the assertion about “street artists” is coming from. Panhandling in downtown Northampton (where I’ve lived for more than 20 years) is a serious issue with just about everyone, as it pits the economic interests of the community against the progressive ethos of the same community. I’ve never heard anyone here try to cover up the issues by calling folks street artists.
Wesleyan - you’ll have the resources and flexibility there to pursue whatever you want to study.
@Trixy34, not sure what your comment means. Amherst has the ultimate flexibility to study whatever you want. You have to take a freshman seminar and the other 31 classes are up to you, no core whatsoever. Amherst definitely has the resources as well.
Amherst has a much higher endowment per student than Wesleyan and that will translate into more academic and EC opportunities
Many years ago I placed my deposit at Amherst, but I changed my mind after a fortuitous conversation with a concerned adult, and I wound up going to Wesleyan. I only placed my deposit at Amherst because it was atop the LAC rankings at the time, and I was off at boarding school and caught up in the rankings silliness. Deep down inside, however, I knew Wes was a better fit; I came from a relatively homogenous high school, and I wanted something different in college. At that time, Wes was clearly a better fit, both by the numbers, and in terms of actual feel. Today, Amherst at least rivals Wes by the numbers, and on paper, it exceeds it in terms of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic diversity indicators. That said, the numbers only tell part of the story. I applied to college pre-internet and I never saw any of the schools I applied to until the day I moved in as a freshman. I knew Edward’s B. Fiske’s (Wes Alum, by the way) Selective Guide to Colleges like the back of my hand. Today, the info I have gleaned from that guide, conversations with alum and current students at both schools, Niche, Unigo, etc., lead me to conclude that, while both places have evolved, they have not really changed that much in terms of where they fall on the campus climate spectrum. As I help youngsters navigate the process you are going through right now, I am struck by how long it takes for the culture and/or climate of an academic institution to evolve. Amherst may be more heterogenous than it was a few decades ago, but at its core, it still has some way to go before its ‘inclusion’ ranking matches its diversity numbers. Wesleyan may not be as ‘progressive’ as it once was, but at its core, it comes much closer to living up to the ‘diversity university’ moniker frequently associated with it than so may other schools its size. Similarly, institutions like Colby, Middlebury, and Hamilton, for example, are more diverse than they once were, but how much those institutions have ‘really’ changed is up for debate. How much any of that matters to you is something only you can decide. As others have pointed out, you can get a superb education at either place. If it matters to you (not that I get the sense it does), Wesleyan has fallen even further behind in the rankings. For what its worth, I’d be less reluctant to go to Amherst today, but mostly because I’d graduate with no loans to repay. Best of luck to you in your decision making process!
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I am not quite sure what that is based on other than decades old feeling stemming from one’s own admission experience. Times change, and some institutions have indeed. The president of Amherst has long committed to increasing and sustaining Diversity in ways that other NESCAC schools simply have not. You should visit, talk to recent grads, students of color and make decisions that are based less on conjecture.
https://www.amherst.edu/amherst-story/diversity
I’ve recently been back to both Middletown and Amherst after being away for decades. I was pleasantly surprised by both.
Middletown never really felt “suburban” to me. it felt like a small New England city fallen on hard times. In the 1980s there were a handful of nice places to go, but not many. Middletown now feels much more economically diverse, in the sense that there are people walking around who are not affiliated with Wesleyan but have plenty of money to spend. As people have observed, there are several kinds of restaurants and other shops in Middletown. They’re selling things like fancy chocolates and cool clothes But I still think Middletown has much less nightlife than one might want. (Wesleyan may offer it’s own nightlife.)
In the 1980s, most visitors would have thought that Amherst was “nicer” than Middletown, especially if you liked stores and shops that sold expensive housewares and preppy clothes. Back then, I had an extremely negative reaction to Amherst. It seemed extremely precious and dull. But now it feels more vibrant. It’s still very beautiful but now there are more kinds of people on the streets, more ethnic restaurants, etc. That said, the town still has a fantasy land quality to it. There are very few poor people around. Northampton feels more like a real city and it’s a short drive away.
One thing that has changed the town of Amherst is the evolution of the student bodies at UMass and Amherst College. UMass feels more like a big time state university than it did back then. And Amherst has a vastly more diverse student body than it did back then.
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Question: Does Amherst produce alumni who go into the performing arts? Wesleyan and Amherst both have amazingly impressive Wikipedia pages listing alumni, but Wesleyan seems to have far more musicians and actors in its list. Amherst has far fewer under the age of 50.
I think a lot of this can be traced back to choices each college made back when they decided to go co-ed (Wesleyan for the second time) in the late 1960s. Both were very concerned that they would not be able to pull enough overlaps from the Seven Sisters, widely considered the female equivalent of the Ivy League. This impacted Amherst in particular since it was identified so closely with Smith and Mt. Holyoke. So, it spent many years recruiting women by holding total enrollment at 1200 students by cutting the number of males. My sense is that the women were expected to match the same academic profile as their male counterparts and were heavily weighted in favor of the social sciences and English.
Wesleyan which was swimming in money, thanks to some canny investments in tech stocks (sound familiar?), made a much different calculation. The closest female college was Vassar, some eighty miles away. A tiny, all-male college by comparison, steeped in a kind of pious, Prescott Bush-style Republicanism, Wesleyan could afford to “go big”. And high on its to-do list was an expansion of its arts offerings. The result was a mammoth architectural undertaking by a prestige firm (headed by perhaps the prestige architect of his time, Kevin Roche), the Wesleyan Center for the Arts (CFA). I don’t think anyone anticipated at the time the profound effect a capital investment would have on the number of both men and women who would find themselves attracted to the arts while at Wesleyan over the next forty years.
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If financial resources of each school are a consideration, Amherst’s endowment of $2.4 billion certainly outpaces Wesleyan’s $1 billion despite having 1000 fewer students.
@ReCorc3 Has a decision been made?
@AmazingBlue Yes, Amherst does produce alumni that go into the performing arts. I have seen where they even have Open Auditions on campus for plays that alumni are producing. So, having alumni in the arts is one thing, having them active at their alma mater is even better. The Five College Consortium also adds additional opportunities at the other campuses for auditions and classes.
Wesleyan has long been known as the place to be for undergrad film studies and they have quite the active alumni network in entertainment. It has a top 10 program film program which if I’m not mistaken was birthed by the iconic Professor Basinger, who I believe has recently passed on the torch, but may still have ties to the program Most recently you will hear of Lin-Manuel Miranda giving back to his alma mater. I think their opportunities in the arts are pretty rich.
As with any school, it’s what you make of it. I love Amherst. Wesleyan for undergraduate film studies is tough to beat.
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Well, hold on. If instructional budgets are any consideration (and, why would they not; these are colleges, not sports camps), Wesleyan outspends Amherst by nearly 2:1. According to their respective 2017 Annual Reports, the latest available for both colleges, Wesleyan spent $103,700,000 on the broad category of “instruction” while Amherst spent only $56,000,000.
https://www.wesleyan.edu/finance/annualreporting/2016-2017.pdf
https://www.amherst.edu/system/files/media/2017_annual%2520report.pdf
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As a Williams grad, I’d say these two excellent LACs are so close and for OP there is no wrong choice. Hopefully, he/she has had an opportunity to visit both and the decision has already been made. Last year, my D almost had to make a choice between Amherst and Williams. That might have set off some real fireworks here on CC…much less in our home!
One observation: Wesleyan’s 2018 operating budget is larger at $225 million vs. Amherst’s operating budget of $189 million. Note however that Amherst has a student population of a little over 1800 while Wesleyan has nearly 3000.
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@anon145
But you left out the fact that Amherst has almost 25% of its students from the bottom 60%, with incomes less than 65k. That’s a much higher % than most if not virtually all peer schools.
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This is an old post, I know, but it’s about a topic that matters to a lot of people.
A lot of college rankers say Amherst and Williams are the best two liberal arts colleges in America, with Wesleyan ranked a bunch of spots lower, but spend a few minutes comparing the Wikipedia pages for the Little Three, and then check out the lists of alumni. All three lists are really impressive, but if you spend time reading about the alumni in more artistic and public service oriented fields, Wesleyan really seems to stand out.
If nobody told you that Wesleyan was supposed to be in third place, well behind Amherst and Williams, would you think it was in third place based on the descriptions of the programs or the alumni lists? I doubt it. (I guess you might if you were more focused on finance and industry, but I’m not even sure about that.)
Also if you watch videos of students at the Little Three, the Wesleyan ones just seem a little more entertaining. Having an extra 1000 students at Wesleyan must make it slightly easier to get into, on average, but the people who get in sure seem to have more energy on screen, as a group, than the ones who get into Amherst and Williams. There are a lot of funny Wesleyan students. I’m sure there are some funny Amherst and Williams students too, but let’s just say they don’t have as big of a presence on the internet.
I do like the Amherst campus, though.
That view is crazy.
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That southern view over the War Memorial may well become Amherst’s most enduring landmark. Over the space of the next twenty years, they will have obliterated nearly every other structure built between the end of World War II and the early 2000s. Few colleges of its stature have had worse luck with modern architecture than Amherst:
Having had a kid who went to UMass Amherst for the linguistics program (in which they’re tops in the country), I can tell you that Amherst college offers more in the way of diverse course offerings, by virtue of being a member of the 5 colleges consortium. For that reason, I think one gets the best of both worlds with Amherst. Top LAC with a major flagship U a mile away, plus access to the course offerings of 3 other excellent LAC’s within a 20 min bus ride.
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