Hampshire College — Attraction in Amherst

The key to understanding Hampshire is that, above ALL else; the college expects the student WILL step up and take charge of their education and chart their own individual academic course and direction. I watched peers flunk out of/withdraw/transfer out of Hampshire left and right over my four years there because they had the notion that Hampshire was somehow going to be "easy" because the Divisional system isn't traditionally "exam and grades-oriented" and that is a COMPLETE & UTTER FALLACY!

IF you intend to graduate from Hampshire, you'd better have a VERY clear idea of what you want to study and concentrate in, and how you're going to do it. Hampshire REQUIRES you have an academic plan, and a vision. You will HAVE to fulfill concentration requirements. AND, you will also HAVE to push yourself to study extensively on the other four campuses, otherwise an Ivy League (or any) grad school program isn't going to happen unless you have a well-maintained EXCELLENT weighted GPA from Amherst, Smith, Mt. Holyoke & UMass/Amherst. Hampshire evaluations alone will NOT get you into grad school.

I was REALLY happy when I figured that academic caveat out during my first year. I wanted to take Five-College courses from the get-go, but CASA (Hampshire's Center for Academic Support & Advising) will advise first years not to take courses off campus (which I found EXTREMELY academically limiting) until their second semester. Therefore, I took my first Five College courses at Amherst & UMass/Amherst during the Spring semester of my first year.

Hampshire IS therefore VERY difficult and challenging for students who enter college not knowing what they want to do, BUT, if you do choose Hampshire (for me it was my #1 college choice) then it means you feel you are ready for the challenges and the experiences of being a Hampster.

I chose Hampshire over a number of other colleges/universities that I'd applied to, (including some that surprised even me like Emerson College in Boston & NYU/Tisch as a Theater/Film student) but that was just one of the (MANY) things that further convinced me I was DEFINITELY "ready" for the Hampshire experience. If I was turning down Emerson College & NYU/Tisch in favor of Hampshire's Theater/Film Programs, I REALLY wanted the "specific" experience that I KNEW Hampshire would offer me.

You just have to KNOW that Hampshire is for you or not. After a semester or a year, you'll KNOW. Once you complete Division I, and file your Division II that's usually a pretty good indicator you'll keep on attending. Your residential life experience at Hampshire is also CENTRAL to your academic one, so choose VERY carefully with whom (& where) you'll live with on campus. I lived in two different Mods once I left the Dorms. #65 in Enfield (pretty good) & #81 in Prescott (EXCELLENT!) SO, sorting that out is also key to having a good overall experience at Hampshire. 👍

Luckily, in my case I was from an academic family: my parents were both accomplished English Professors and Writers in the NYC Academia/Literary world. Therefore, I researched colleges EXTENSIVELY and even took two "gap years" in between high school and college to decide EXACTLY where to apply, and Hampshire just kept getting "top priority" when it came to my college choices. The fact that they thought also thought Hampshire was exceptional was definitely a plus -- they attended the University of Chicago & Columbia respectively, so I respected both their takes on Hampshire as academics.

Hampshire is NOT therefore an "easy" college, and it will test and challenge even the most rigorous of students. When it first opened in 1970, it was the MOST selective and competitive liberal arts college to get into in the entire country. I ❤️'d Hampshire because it was the "right fit" for who I was as an individual and as a student. And that's WHY I chose it. I needed a "safe space campus" where I felt TOTALLY comfortable being out and open as a gay man. 🏳️‍🌈 Otherwise, don't even bother, because you'll just end up hating Hampshire and wasting a WHOLE LOT...

I wouldn't trade my time at Hampshire for the world. Rating or highly because if it's the right fit, it will change your life. (Also to offset some of the right-wing review bombings of people who've never even gone here) If you want to go to Hampshire though, you really need to ask yourself: Do you have what it takes to motivate yourself when you have no restrictions?

This college is EXPENSIVE. EX. PEN. SIVE. Seeing the current government situation, I don't see that changing, either. During my four years, I'd often look at my classmates and realize that there were 2 kinds of students who go here: Intelligent, hard working individuals making real changes getting the best educational experience for experimental minds that they could hope to get, OR spoiled rich kids and people so depressed and miserable that they could not bring themselves to do any work whatsoever, burning 70k+ every year just to fail classes because they liked the sound of a no testing school on paper. If it's the depression, I'd recommend taking time away, 70k is WAY too much to pay for an experience you're not enjoying. But there will always be people here who have never felt the fear of the real world and grift it in the most expensive college in the area because it's marginally easier, and that's a bit demoralizing for those of us who do have to work. Still, if you are a passionate person, if you want school to work with you on projects instead of against you, if you hate school because there's something you'd RATHER be working towards, not because you think effort is too hard to sum up ever, this is time and money well spent. (Also, they have some great scholarships that really helped me!)

Hampshire has a unique set of challenges, but no more or less than other colleges. You trade fraternities and high assault rates for disorganized management and an occasionally volatile set of peers (always bound to happen on small campuses that collect people with strong morals.) Its structure asks you to apply yourself. If you don't apply yourself to your studies, your community, your values, you are simply wasting your time and money. If you do apply yourself, getting involved in advocacy, independent studies, clubs, learning collectives, you will be getting the chance to learn life skills by doing in an environment which is still safe to fail in. I consider that infinitely more valuable than studying for tests.

If you feel like you belong at Hampshire, here's advice from a very proud alum and former RA: if you need help? Don't stop asking people until you GET IT. Staff on this campus want to help you, ALWAYS, but they're such a mess and so overworked it might take some effort to find the right people to help you in the way you need. You're paying them to be there. You are OWED that support, and then you can direct other people to it later.

Also, if you read this far, check out my Div III project online! It's a comic/prose hybrid novel about the AIDS crisis in Last Vegas, called...

I'm a graduate of Hampshire College, located in Amherst, Massachusetts---in Hampshire COUNTY---and those four years were exceptional.

I was surrounded by the smartest, most accomplished, focused and creative people I've ever known, both before and after that amazing four years.

It was an environment of excitement about knowledge, where future physicians were learning from future environmental biologists, where future documentary filmmakers were influenced by future attorneys, where future journalists were engaged in passionate exchanges with future computer scientists.

Learning, debating, engaging with your studies was a 24/7 activity at Hampshire College; intense intellectual exchanges that developed that afternoon in an Integrative Seminar on "Capitalism & Empire" would spill out of the classroom, be brought up again at dinner, and, after returning from the library study carrels, hours later, would be debated again, before bedtime.

Hampshire was where I learned the intrinsic value of an education and to love learning for its own sake. But, as a superb liberal arts college that built its foundation on the finest elements of such traditional schools as Amherst---its "mother school", without which, Hampshire would not exist---Williams, Wesleyan, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Bowdoin and others, and combining it with new, progressive innovations that emerged in post-secondary circles following World War II, it prepared me and my peers for "the real world" of employment in a rapidly and ever-changing workplace much better than more traditional colleges ever could. (Hampshire's unconventional academic structure is likely one of the reasons that so many of us became entrepreneurs, from Gary Hirshberg who started Stonyfield Yogurt to Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker who started Florentine Films and made such classics as "The Civil War" and "Baseball".)

Would I recommend it, all these years later? More than ever. With the passage of time, the value of my Hampshire experience and the way its education model prepared me for success, is clearer every day.

Go find out for yourself. Visit Hampshire College and witness, first hand, the unique beauty and architecture of the campus, the gorgeous surrounding environment and the dynamism of its students and faculty. I'd go back in a minute if I could do it all over again. In many ways I envy those of you who might have Hampshire College in your future---with that entire experience in...