<p>Hello, I am a high school senior looking primarily at New England Liberal Arts schools (Amherst, Wellesley, Middlebury, etc.). I currently live in MIddlebury, VT and have not liked the preppy, rich, boarding-school vibe at Middlebury College. I am wondering how much of that culture exists at Amherst College. Care to comment? Thanks in advance!</p>
I’m an applicant to Amherst, and probably can’t give the in depth info you might want about Amherst’s atmosphere, but I’ve been to both A and M for college tours and can tell you they are completely different in terms of atmosphere. A seemed a lot more family-like? I get what you meant about the vibe in M, it seemed like a great school, but really not my type. A’s less like a boarding school and a bit smaller from what I could tell, but seemed much more welcoming(to me, anyways). Plus, A was a lot more diverse - I noticed that straight away comparing the two.
Then again, I’m not an actual student there(ha! I wish) so I can’t really say any more than that. Hope it helped though!
We visited a ton of schools with my California borderline hippy daughter a couple of years ago. The ones that seemed most preppy to us were Middlebury, Williams, Claremont McKenna and (especially) Dartmouth. We didn’t get to visit Colgate or Bowdoin, but both of them have that reputation as well.
Amherst was extremely preppy a quarter century ago, but now it isn’t. Amherst is the most economically and ethnically diverse of all of the top LACs. Others diverse LACs include Swarthmore, Pomona and Vassar. Something like 60 percent of the students at Amherst get financial aid and something like 25 percent get Pell Grants (which means their family income is less than 40-50k per year).
edit - My D chose Amherst and is very happy there.
I haven’t seen many preppy kids there at all, I’m sure they exist somewhere on campus.