<p>Do students at Amherst get invited to parties at let’s say UMass, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, Hamphshire or is your social culture contained within Amherst. Do you folks invite students from these schools to parties at Amherst. Curious, I’m trying to better understand the social culture at Amherst and across contiguous schools.</p>
<p>Thanks for responses.</p>
<p>Most parties don’t require an invitation, so students from the other four colleges (especially MH and Smith) regularly attend Amherst parties. I get the sense that more students from the other colleges drop in to Amherst’s parties than vice versa, but there are a few big parties at the other colleges each year that are pretty popular with Amherst students (e.g. Hampshire Halloween).</p>
<p>K-- Thanks.</p>
<p>Are your football and basketball games attended by students from the other schools near by. ? I get the feeling that although 5 schools are within close proximity that the social interaction is nill. ?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>David</p>
<p>A new initiative starting up this year is an events and social calendar for the five colleges, so perhaps we will see more interaction across the five colleges in the fall, especially among incoming students. You’re right that there could be more social interaction, but I definitely wouldn’t say that the social interaction is nil. There are close friendships and relationships between the students at the five colleges. And it just makes sense that the tendency is to attend games and events that your friends are attending. I.e. If your close friends are mostly at Smith, you’ll probably end up mostly at Smith-based events. In the end, you’re free to pick your own friends, but inevitably, you will have to miss out on some events depending on who’s in your social network.</p>
<p>K-- Again, thanks for the insights. </p>
<p>David</p>
<p>My sophomore daughter has yet to attend a party at a different school, but has mentioned high school acquaintances that go to UMASS coming to Amherst parties. You’d think it would be the other way around, but I think that says a lot about the sense of community that exists at Amherst that may be missing at a larger school.</p>
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<p>Perhaps hoping to land a date with someone whose family can afford the $60K in tuition and fees? ;-)</p>
<p>^^also, let’s not be too coy about it: the town of Amherst and the surrounding area revolves around UMass; commerce would grind to a halt if you suddenly took 30,000 students out of the picture.</p>
<p>No doubt, but that wasn’t what the original post asked about.</p>
<p>^^Call it, “extra credit”. 
Seriously, I think to suggest, as some Amherst partisans do, that Amherst - the LAC - is a net importer of students seeking off-campus activity, compared to Amherst - the flagship state university of Massachusetts - is ludicrous. Virtually every strip mall, every nationally known restaurant chain within five miles of the Pioneer Valley is there because of UMass, not because they came to curry the favor of a liberal arts college the size of one UMass dorm. If Amherst, the LAC, exists in a bubble, it is by its own choosing. I certainly wouldn’t go around bragging about it.</p>