That’s not Columbia’s creative writing program. That’s a one-semester writing seminar required as part of the core curriculum for undergrads.
You had asked what a creative writing program is, and I provided relevant info. Not sure what the confusion is.
The confusion is that there’s a general disagreement within NESCAC over the proper approach to Creative Writing. Hamilton seems to be the only one that houses a separate major. Almost all the others offer it as a concentration within the English Dept.
Tufts, which is a university like Columbia, comes right out and says the quiet part out loud:
Because creative writing at Tufts is approached in the context of extensive reading and critical examination of literature, the Department does not offer a separate creative writing major or minor, though there is ample opportunity for intensive creative writing practice within both the major and minor.
I just thought it odd that at Columbia, a fairly well-respected American institution (despite some recent and unpleasant publicity) found it necessary to place the subject outside of its traditional LAC?
Ok, I was just responding to your earlier statement/question: “I never know what colleges mean by “Creative Writing”. Are they teaching people how write?”
Hamilton’s description is here:
Creative Writing Students Will Learn to:
- Write with an awareness of the literary traditions within which they are working
- Write with attentiveness to form and genre
- Write a sustained creative project that demonstrates originality and attention to language
From what I understand things like research opportunities are highly faculty-dependent, with no set policy.
So, research opportunities are hard to research. 
Generally speaking, most of them are great at a great many things. In terms of lists noting excellence in this or that, you tend to see Amherst, Bowdoin, Hamilton, MIdd, Williams and Wes listed in quite a few areas. Those that really jump off the page, at least by the overwhelming reputations of which I’m aware (huge qualifiers intended), include: Williams for Econ, Math, Physics (along with Astro) and Art History; Middlebury for Languages and Econ; Hamilton for Physics and Writing; Wesleyan for Physics (along with Astro), Theater & Film and its CSS. I don’t intend to suggest in any way, shape or form that these schools are better than the others. I just don’t happen to know the specific areas in which the reputations of the other schools precedes their names. Midd for Languages, Williams for Art History and Wes for film, as examples, are known to anyone who knows what the NESCAC is.
I look forward to others jumping in.
I would think in situations like that, it would make sense to contact the relevant organization(s)/department(s) (including both at the college(s) of interest and UMass) and ask.
That said, here is the UMass Undergraduate Theater page:
It includes this note:
Students also benefit tremendously from the Five-College Consortium . UMass is located down the road from four renowned liberal arts colleges: Smith College, Mount Holyoke College, Hampshire College and Amherst College. This consortium enables students to take courses or participate in productions at any of the other member schools at no extra charge. There are also several Five-College programs, including those in Dance and Film, which offer courses on the five campuses to all students.
The Amherst Theater and Dance Department has a whole page devoted to “Five Colleges Opportunities”:
Among other things, it states:
Amherst College is a member of the Five Colleges, a consortium of Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts. The consortium facilitates cooperative curricular and extracurricular opportunities that complement the distinctive qualities of each of its members. Several Five College initiatives help to broaden the work of the Theater & Dance Department:
. . .
- The various theater programs have open auditions and coordinate special events.
Neither the UMass nor Amherst pages I found by going to these department pages specifically address speaking parts, however. So again that strikes me as the sort of question you could contact them to ask about.
These schools are uniformly excellent. Their academic strengths are that they use small classes, committed students, and dedicated teacher-scholars (combined with massive endowments) to truly teach their students how to think - no matter what the discipline. It is no exaggeration to say that students who avail themselves of the opportunities at these schools (as well as their other national LAC peers) are given educations as good as found anywhere in the world.
That is not what you were asking, though, was it? More in line with your question: Amherst has long been associated with excellence in English (Robert Frost?), history, political science, and was the first place to offer an undergrad neuroscience degree. Also has a quirky and highly regarded Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought program (like a hybrid of philosophy and political science). I’m sure there are others. These just stick out to me.
As others have mentioned, when I think Middlebury, I think languages, but I also think Environmental Studies (Bill McKibben!! and key place for birth of the sunrise movement).
Wesleyan I think film/performing arts, biology is well regarded.
And so on - but each of these schools in NESCAC (and their peers) are strong across the board.
Big miss on my part about Amherst and neuro. That is a rep that really really sticks out.
Conn College seems to get overlooked a lot. So here’s a shout-out to their environmental studies, ecology, and conservation biology heritage.
“ The Connecticut College environmental studies major ranks as one of the oldest in the country, founded as the “human ecology” major in 1968 by two long-time faculty members and nationally renowned ecologists, Richard H. Goodwin and William A. Niering. The College honors both with its Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment”
The environmental studies major is part of a College commitment to conservation and sustainability. In 1999, the College became the first in the nation to sponsor a carbon offset program.
Not sure how typical this is, or even what it reveals about Amherst and its relationship with the 5Cs, but I found this audition results list by scrolling through the Amherst Theater & Dance Dept and being directed to a Five College Dance Spring `23 casting call. Out of 28 finalists, only one dancer was from Amherst College:
Audition Information | FCI (fivecolleges.edu)
If Conn College were in the PNW, it would be viewed as a top LAC whose peers would be Whitman and Reed … maybe Lewis & Clark. As it stands, it’s in a tough league of schools.
I know opinions vary, but Conn is one my favorite NESCAC campuses. Unlike many, the uniformity appeals to me, and with its view of the sound, the Green is lovely. My soccer player liked it a lot as well.
Off hand, it looks to me like those are predominantly, or all, female dancers. That may help explain why among the 19 non-UMass dancers, it is mostly Smith (13). But it is interesting there are only 2 from Mt. Holyoke–why not closer to Smith? And 3 from Hampshire and only the 1 from Amherst is sort of the opposite of what one would expect proportionately. For that matter, proportionately, 9 out of 28 from UMass is quite low. Of course this is just one sample, and a small enough one it maybe varies from year to year somewhat.
Using Dance as an example is interesting to me in that it is one of the areas in which a major is actually offered through Five Colleges, and there is apparently a very well-organized collaboration on courses:
Since Dance seems like a pretty specialized area to me, I googled up what at least appears to be a serious ranking of Dance colleges:
There are a lot of LACs that appear when you get to the “four star” area, and Smith is one of them (at 42 out of 398 overall).
Smith was the only Five College in their Top 50 list. Poking around, UMass was at 56 (also a four-star), Mt. Holyoke 147 (3.5 stars), Hampshire 276 (3 stars), and Amherst wasn’t even ranked (ouch).
So looking back at that list–maybe that is why? Presumably if you were into Dance you would be researching this in much more depth, but Smith appears to be the “best” Dance college among the Five Colleges, so maybe that helps explain their disproportionate representation on that list. UMass is nearly as well-ranked, and they are second. Then there is a big drop off to Mt Holyoke and Hampshire, and Amherst not even ranked, so . . . maybe there you go.
At last interesting question to me is whether the rankings formula used at that site takes into account Five Colleges (or other consortiums), and if so how. Their methodology is proprietary and so details are scarce:
https://dance-colleges.com/methodology
Like, they say:
The ranking algorithm is based on proprietary, unique formulas that involve fifty nine academic, financial, and organizational factors and metrics, as well as faculty profiles, student retention rates, and alumni job prospects. The factors are each weighted differently and are then scored to reflect program ratings.
The scores are then normalized so that consideration is given to other characteristics of the school such as the present student body enrollment, relevant faculty and staff metrics, past ranking history of the specific college, and its current trend.
That sounds reasonable but there are references to faculty profiles and faculty metrics. In a case like Smith, is that just Smith faculty? All of Five Colleges? Some weighted balancing?
Of course presumably if you were serious about Dance and considering Smith, you would go well beyond these sorts of generic formulas in your considerations.
That algorithm doesn’t measure enthusiasm or participation levels in dance and theater on each respective Pioneer Valley campus. Judging from the number of their alumni who have gone on to successful careers in the performing arts (Burgess Meredith, Jeffrey Wright, Stephen Collins) there are artsy Amherst students. There have to be. Kids everywhere want to move their bodies; kids everywhere will “put on a show”, if given the space. Sometimes there are simple explanations right in front of us: there are WAY more women than men in the Pioneer Valley and most of them attend Smith, Holyoke and UMass.
Sure. But if you look at, say, the Dance course list at the Five Colleges Dance Major page, it is pretty clear Amherst has very few courses compared to most of the others, with specifically very little depth. So it seems this is another case of complementary specialization, where if you are an Amherst student who only wants to take a few Dance courses, you could do that all at Amherst, but if you want to go deep in most Dance areas, or major in Dance, you would necessarily be taking a lot of courses at other Colleges.
I may be doing a disservice to Amherst Dance, but it seems plausible to me if you have a known strong interest in Dance at the time you are choosing a college, maybe Amherst will not be at the top of your list. However, if you come to Amherst for other reasons, but develop a deeper interest in Dance while at Amherst, you could pursue that interest through Five Colleges, including up to majoring in Dance.
This would be enough to explain why the number of women on that list specifically from Amherst are less than the number of women at Amherst proportionately. Like, obviously Smith has more women, but not 13 times more women. But Smith has lots of breadth and depth in Dance courses, so it makes sense to me if you knew you were interested in majoring in Dance when choosing a college, you would be more likely to choose Smith.
Anyway, that is the information we have–Smith offers a lot more breadth and depth in Dance than Amherst, and Smith women were disproportionately represented on that Dance list relative to Amherst women. If someone was looking at colleges and interested in deep involvement in Dance, including possibly majoring in Dance, that could be a starting point to consider, but presumably it would be a good idea to actually talk to these Departments and ask them detailed questions.
That’s true for spikey kids. For ordinary Amherst students who just want a friendly audience, it means sticking close their own campus.
I note Five Colleges Dance has a FAQ that addresses many issues including performance opportunities:
https://www.fivecolleges.edu/dance-faq
A couple relevant Q&As:
Are there performance opportunities?
Yes! There are over 20 performance events under the umbrella of the FCD over the course of an academic year. This includes faculty-choreographed concerts (both on individual campuses and cross-Five Colleges), student-choreographed concerts, and MFA and undergraduate thesis projects. The FCD organizes at least one major repertory project each year for which all FCD dancers may audition. Recent rep projects include Urban Bush Women’s Batty Moves, Uri Sands’s One, Doug Varone’s Boats Leaving, Camille A. Brown’s New Second Line, Bebe Miller’s The Blues Project, Bill T. Jones’s Story/Time, and Pilobolus’s Megawatt. Additional guest artists each year come to choreograph or restage work on Five College dancers. Recent examples include David Dorfman, Ephrat “Bounce” Asherie, Idan Cohen, John Heginbotham, Kinsun Chan, Sidra Bell, Vanessa Anspaugh, and Kathleen Hermesdorf. And, of course, our accomplished faculty members create work on FCD students every year as well.
How can I participate in performances?
We hold a Five College-wide audition for dances choreographed by faculty and guest artists during the first week of classes. Auditions for dances choreographed by students take place throughout the fall semester. Auditions for major repertory projects may be scheduled during the course of the year. Auditions on all campuses are open to all Five College students – you do not have to be a dance major or in FCD classes to audition or perform, although some rehearsals may take place in repertory coursework. If you want to perform and are willing to seek out chances to do so, you will find no shortage of opportunities. We strive to make auditions as inclusive and open as possible to students of all levels and types of expertise.
As usual, since this is promotional in nature, if this sounded attractive to a prospective applicant at any of the Five Colleges with only a “non-spikey” interest in Dance, it would make sense for them to try to connect directly with some real people at their possible college with a similar interest to see what their experience was really like.
And avoid a bad case of confirmation bias. Yes. I totally agree with that.
Probably Trinity too – if in the PNW.
Oh, yeah. They have a beautiful self-contained campus.