<p>Does anyone know when Amherst makes the Fall 2005 course catalogue available (as in the actual book)? Will they likely send in in the spring once regular decision letters are mailed?</p>
<p>Who knows? I think an ED person would know that.</p>
<p>Although I do have the 2004 catalogue from the DiVOH, and it's amazing, the breadth and depth of courses they offer. And even if they don't send it to us, you always have <a href="http://www.amherst.edu%5B/url%5D">www.amherst.edu</a> !</p>
<p>i'm an ED admit and haven't received the catalogue. I have last years, which I presume is similar. We will prob. get them in the spring. So are you regular decision?</p>
<p>i'm in ed.</p>
<p>can i ask you you're stats darkstarrising...not that im obsessed with stats, but just curious to see where i stand.</p>
<p>sat I: 800 on verbal, 720 on math = 1520</p>
<p>sat II: 770 on writing, 740 on literature, 750 on math ic</p>
<p>gpa: taking full IB (ie, all 6 courses + Extended Essay) with 4 HL, I had a ~93.5 average (unweighted)</p>
<p>EC: national honor society throughout hs; started a political discussion group with a friend of mine (he got into princeton, so it seems to have worked well); wrote for the newspaper, but was then fired; did model UN for 3 years; played 0 sports for school; didn't have any ridiculous or fatuous ec's really - none of this rsi or siemens ********; b/w 10th and 11th grade, i actually did a putney course at amherst (completely arbitrarilly - i knew nothing of college at that time); b/w 11th and 12th, i did the yale summer program (got an a- and b+; it also convinced me that I couldn't tolerate either New Haven or the students there.)
I think that's basically it... kind of surprising actually</p>
<p>Hook: none really, other than the fact that my principle's brother was on the amherst board of trustees - he offered to write a letter to his brother on my behalf (as we have an excellent report - the principle and i that is) and i said that I was unsure as to whether i wanted him to write one or not... I still don't know if actually wrote it...</p>
<p>Rec's: probably stellar, with the either the top 1% or "one of a handful I've encountered in my life".</p>
<p>Essays: Writing is my forte (though my posts probably don't elucidate that fact), but I kind of half-assed my essays. I did a somewhat satirical, lampooning essay, but I guess I pulled it off.</p>
<p>Misc stats: male; houston, tx; school is exteremly difficult, but does terribly with college placement (ie, this year was the best ever, with 2 to stanford, 1 to amherst, 1 to brown, and 1 to ptown (ha that rhymes) - usually, 1 or 2 to the ivy league/comprable schools is excellent for my school); oh yeah, i had a 228 psat and national merit</p>
<p>wow dark... i really feel like an idiot. best of luck to you. i'm in IB and i did all the courses and the EE as well, but my grades are no where near as stellar as yours. I do have some pretty nice extracurriculars but im pretty confident i'm not going to get in. what was your EE topic? i'm from, educationally, the worst state in the nation. At least i have that going for me. :)</p>
<p>whoah, there's a state worse than texas as far as education goes? incredible :)</p>
<p>yeah, ib really sucks. especially now that the orals are rolling around, as well as tok presentations, ee, etc.</p>
<p>my ee has an interesting history. i started off doing the wasteland, and of course, did nothing in all of 11th grade. over the summer, at yale, i wrote a paper on ulysses (joyce) that i intended to use as my ee... however, my ib coordinator saw things differnetly. hence, i had about 3 weeks to churn out 4,000 on the wasteland. i made it as frustrating, obtuse, and essoteric as possible (interestingly, it's highly mimetic of the poem itself). </p>
<p>but i'm glad that ib scores don't matter at all. and the best thing is, my school seperates things like ib orals and internal assesments (i hate eco), exorcising them from the american grade/report grade/gpa. </p>
<p>do you have mock exams comming up soon?</p>
<p>yeah... my school district changed our schedule to an idiotic 7 52-minute periods so i didn't even have a TOK class last year. on top of it, we have to take it early-bird this year and i live an hour from my school. irritating, as i'm sure you can imagine my EE was on the conflict between christianity and islam and obstacles to resolution. i actually enjoyed writing it... the night before it was due. we just did our presentations and that i enjoyed as well. my grades have suffered because i'm student body president and i participate in an annoying amount of other ex. curriculars. i must say though: it's nice to speak with someone who has experienced the same academic pressure that i and my friends have endured. whats your top choice school?</p>
<p>as bemusing as this will sound, amherst honestly wasn't my top choice school; however, i weighed the leverage i had using e.d. there against a myriad of other outcomes (applying to an ivy or other top lac ed, applying to amherst r.d., or just skipping the whole ed affair completely) and decided to apply ed to amherst. so i'm in, and going into it with a possitive attitude.</p>
<p>i did the same thing as you, thinking ed would give me an advantage. for a few weeks, I was kind of upset i would have to withdraw my other apps.</p>
<p>wow. i felt the exact same way... as ridiculous as it sounds, almost a regret at some sort of promise or potential that will remain unrealized. but then i got over it.</p>
<p>what were your other choices you applied RD?</p>
<p>princeton, yale, dartmouth, brown - those are the ones that i would have preferred over amherst (though brown and yale were much lower than the other two)</p>
<p>my matches were (considering i got into amherst): swarthmore and williams</p>
<p>and my endless list of safties included (but i hadn't even filled out my apps for them): colgate, hamilton, bates, bowdoin, trinity, weslyan (though its probably more of a match), vassar, and lots of other misc. lacs</p>
<p>i think you're matches were brown, dartmouth, swarthmore and williams based on the fact that you got into Amherst</p>
<p>you're probably right in that assesment. however, i've come to the conclusion that aside from abstract notions like "culture" and "atmosphere," almost all of the schools in the top xx are the same - at least, i can derive the same experience from any of them. and also, i think that what i hope to take away from college transcends pretty buildings, statistics of library holdings, and prestige among the canille.</p>
<p>this might sound stupid but im a whore for pretty buildings and beautiful campuses</p>
<p>sounds normal to me. and it's not as though i'm trying to intimate that amherst lacks in any of these departments, but it just kinda is dwarfed some other (importantly, larger) schools.</p>
<p>In terms of camps and buildings and stuff, I think Vassar and Swarthmore are among the prettiest schools I visited, universities (aside from Yale) included.</p>
<p>yeah, i agree. although i have a somewhat hazy fog of swarthmore's "pulchritude," i definitively remember that vassar had a gorgeous sort of castle looking building at the center of its campus... really pretty. princeton also looked beautiful to me, although something seemed "unnatural" about it - i can't articulate it exactly, but there was something that didn't seem "organic"...</p>
<p>what do you guys think of amherst's campus? i'm pretty crappy with architectural terms, but its not gothic, like the ivy leagues right? it looks almost like a village or something.</p>