We had Associate Dean Xiaofeng Wan:
https://www.amherst.edu/admission/staff
He was very relaxed and conversational, and then really stood out when answering questions since he would answer them very directly!
As you can see, though, Amherst has a lot of admissions officers. Maybe they are all as good or better these days, and maybe not, but presumably we will never know.
We had a good info session at Amherst, by luck, but I agree with @NiceUnparticularMan - there are so many colleges out there that are all so excellent - any time our kids could eliminate one, we didn’t fight it!
(oh, and Amherst students absolutely take classes in the consortium. I think our info session quote was about 50% of students do so by graduation).
Amherst is a small school, and a large percentage of their students are athletes, so it is highly likely that you’d either be one or know one. Getting an invite to a party is pretty easy. If you can’t, go to a party at one of the other schools.
When I was a student at Wesleyan, every party was open. Needing an invitation is kind of ugh. But clearly there are plenty of people out there hankering for the Amherst vibe.
This made me laugh, only because our daughter got the exact same message (and some other downer messages) with a (definitely different) tour guide at Amherst, and crossed it off her list for the same reason. I’m thinking they may need to review their tour guide script 
Are non-athletes not allowed to have their own parties?
Actually, I think it is better if tour guides are candid about the social scene. Why have a script that doesn’t reflect reality (or one reality - there can be many). It is better for prospective applicants to get an honest sense of how things happen at a school so they can choose where to apply based on real information instead of some canned PR put out by admissions.
Lots of show-runners at Wesleyan, so the need for athletic teams to organize everything is much less important. IMHO, the soul of social life at Wesleyan University lay with the senior houses which have size and capacity restrictions, but there are a lot of them.
Let’s face it, Amherst can afford to lose a few applicants due to honest tour guides. LOL
It’s less a question of whether non-athletes are allowed to organize parties so much as who among them has the initiative to do so and to do it consistently. See my post above re Wesleyan University:
Speaking of, our two tour guides both admitted to being afraid of math and never wanted to take another math class again, and so that’s why they chose Amherst. That sent our kids running.
Both also said they only ever went over to U Mass Amherst bc the food was so good.
There is a defense coming in here for Amherst in 5, 4, 3, 2 …
If a student is focused on dorms, they don’t get much better than Bryn Mawr do they? Very nice options at this beautiful campus.
I looked at Amherst while my daughter was looking at Smith. I loved Amherst. Neither of us liked Smith.
My opinion is that Amherst doesn’t have to try very hard to attract applicants. If you don’t like it, move on and they’ll have 5 applicants to take your place. They are fine with it. They are showing the way things are on the tours - parties are hosted by athletes, they don’t take many classes on the other campuses (true or not, they are telling you to pick Amherst for Amherst, not for the classes at the other schools), food is better at UMass (common knowledge)…
There it is.
And that is the EXACT attitude portrayed by admissions which is super off-putting. I haven’t noticed that vibe at other highly selective colleges.
My S24 liked Amherst after visiting, but I don’t feel much need to be defensive about it!
We didn’t specifically hear about the athlete thing. But our guide, who was easily one of the guides my S24 liked best, came across as a very socially-active person. And he did play club Ultimate, which is not varsity but is pretty serious nonetheless.
My S24 is also an athlete, and while he is not a recruited athlete, several of his high school friends have been recruited by colleges like Amherst. Indeed, part of why he has done so much athletics is his recruited friends have dragged him into their sports.
And so I think he would not necessarily have a problem with athletes in that sense being prominent in a college social scene, because I think he would think he would fit right in.
But does this mean Amherst is right for everyone? Heck, no. For that matter, there may be people complaining about his high school, and indeed people just like him at his high school. From his perspective, being on teams with his friends has been great. Maybe from a different perspective, that would have looked not so great.
All this is just my way of noting that I think it is completely reasonable to point out LACs where there are a lot of student athletes, including when they figure prominently in campus social life. That probably means something a bit different than it would be at, say, a big public major conference university. But it could definitely be the wrong vibe for some people, and that is perfectly fine with me.
S24 was being recruited by Amherst for his sport. He decided against Amherst because he felt it was too unstructured. He committed to another equally academically rigorous school. The biggest turn off, in general, for him when he started looking at schools were the tour guides.
It’s amazing how important tour guides are. We were touring a small LAC with D23 and the tour guide told us about how she and her friends rented a loft in the west village (NYC) for the summer to stay in during their internships and the year before they had place on 2nd Ave in Nashville. D23 refused to consider the school. I’m sure that there are lots of kids from normal socio-economic classes there but that comment was enough to turn her off.
30 years ago I was on a tour at Middlebury and the tour guide hit on me! It was so weird and I was so uncomfortable I didn’t even apply to the school. I’m sure I probably would have liked it there too. It only takes one weird encounter or comment to change a 17yr olds mind.
Wow, that’s what we thought years ago. Rice and Wash U weren’t like that.
I was just kidding.
Smith and Amherst are very different colleges, so it’s not surprising kids love one and don’t like the other. But since you brought in Smith to make your point, the need for which is not obvious to me, I myself prefer Smith. While the town of Amherst is a smidge more bucolic than Northampton, Smith’s physical campus is nicer than Amherst’s, and Smith’s many traditions make it unique and interesting. Amherst has more money, but Smith has plenty. If I were to completely ignore the academic pecking order and if all women at least didn’t bother me, I’d pick Smith over Amherst every day. But Amherst certainly has much to recommend it.
Also agree with @dogdoo 's response to your post. While we did not experience it (with recruited athletes, we frequently skipped generic info sessions), I am aware of similar impressions from more good sources than I care to remember that Amherst brings the snotty pretty heavily to its presentations. Again, no first hand experience, but it comes up a lot.
Lastly, I don’t think anybody here is terribly worried about Amherst’s ability to continue attracting large number of applicants.