<p>I’m hoping that a current student, alumni, or someone else with ties to Amherst can answer these questions:</p>
<p>-How hardcore is the athletic spirit at Amherst? I’m worried, because while I’m very academically intense, I don’t enjoy competitive sports. I especially despise watching them. I’m a die-hard jogger and I love weight-lifting, but you’ll never find me at the football game on Friday night. Will this inhibit my ability to enjoy life at Amherst?</p>
<p>-Also, what are the political leanings of the Amherst student body? Is it all liberals, or is there a mix of conservatives? (I myself am a Libertarian, and tend to get along with everyone, so no worries either way.)</p>
<p>-If anyone can speak about their experience in the Philosophy Department, that would be superb, though I hardly expect it. Good professors? Intense curriculum?</p>
<ul>
<li><p>that athletic spirit is not especially hardcore. People enjoy sports, but not anywhere near the point where you would feel ostracized for not attending football games. Lots of people choose to attend, but just as many if not more choose not to.</p></li>
<li><p>most people are liberal, but there's a pretty vocal conservative minority as well. </p></li>
<li><p>I'm pretty inexperienced with the philosophy department here, so I'll defer to others on that question.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>the philosophy department here is, like many of Amherst's humanities programs, one of the very best you'll find at the undergraduate level. i'd go even further, however, and say it's one of our strongest departments. in the philosophical gourmet's ranking of philosophy phD programs they include a special note about the strongest undergraduate-only philosophy departments and the only two they give the highest rating to are Amherst and Dartmouth if i recall correctly.
the philosophy courses here can get very tough though. i've heard of philosophy majors switching out of some higher level courses because the material was simply too abstract to grasp. out of about five philosophy professors i can think of (the dept. is small in number), two are absolutely amazing in my opinion, one is blah and the other two i have no experience with but are said to be excellent.
hope that helps.</p>
<p>I rarely go to a sporting event, and I haven't had a problem with social life. Most of my friends don't really go to sports games. A lot of people play sports, whether Varsity or club, but the school doesn't revolve around them.</p>
<p>I never said the pledge of allegiance in high school, but I was in a crazy liberal town also.
Amherst the town is extremely liberal. The college is majority liberal people, but there are some passionate conservative professors. there aren't that many hard core conservatives, but there are many middle ground people and libertarians, etc. The people I know are very open when discussing politics, not conservative bashers or anything. Most people are open to other viewpoints.</p>