Amherst College is a small undergraduate-only liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. It has become extremely well-respected for providing a unique undergraduate experience to their (just under) 2,000 students both in the classroom, and in the community. The school boasts an impressive 7:1 student-to-faculty ratio and an enviable 95% first-year retention rate. They also have an open curriculum without any distribution requirements that encourages exploration and depth. They want you to try things out, and when you find what you love they don’t want to get in your way. Students have their pick of 42 majors, and 85% of classes have fewer than 30 students. This leads to strong student-professor relationships, as students work alongside their professors building research and career chops before graduation.
The combination of a close-knit community and open curriculum has made Amherst immensely popular. Over the past few years, the acceptance rate has stayed below 10%. In this post, we’ll break down how you can make yourself part of that chosen few by using your summers to make a difference on your application.
If you’re considering applying to Amherst, send us an email. We help students craft acceptance-winning applications through academics, extracurriculars, and (yes) summers.
What does Amherst want to see from your summer?
When it comes to summers, Amherst is flexible. They don’t have rigid expectations of how you’ll spend your time, but there are a few boxes they really want you to check. These boxes are broad categories, and they’re excited to see how you fill them. Amherst looks for students who will fully embrace the open curriculum, so they want applicants who like to explore. But there is a fine line between having a curious mind that loves to explore and coming off as scattered. Summers are a great opportunity to show where your focus is, what your passions are, and to give Amherst a sense of how you’ll pursue them as a member of their community.
Emphasize Your Interests
Extracurricular activities are very important to Amherst, and they say as much in their Common Data Sets. Volunteer work and employment, which are categorized separately from extracurriculars in the Common Data Sets, are also both considered important. So, aim to do at least one of each — one volunteer role and one job — every summer before you apply.
Volunteering: Volunteer for a day-camp, summer program, developmental sports league, food pantry, or local nonprofit. This should be in your community, as you should not be traveling to volunteer if you want the experience to significantly augment your application. A volunteer role should also include at least 40 hours of active volunteering over a period of at least two weeks. Ideally more than 40 hours, ideally longer than two weeks, and ideally repeatedly (like it’s something you could do each summer). It could be volunteering at a camp for two weeks two summers in a row, or volunteering at a food pantry for an hour once a week for many months.
Work: Seeing that you have work experience is important to Amherst, but what that work is can take many forms. They don’t expect to see you starting your long-term career path during the summer between sophomore and junior year. What they do expect to see, though, is that you know how to work hard and pursue a goal — whatever that goal may be. The goal could be saving up for a car, or it could be that you want to become an astonishingly good summer souvenir salesperson. You could work as a server, in food service, as a member of a camp staff, or for a landscaping company — but if you’re scooping ice cream, they want to see you that you are the most passionate scooper and sprinkler ever. We’ve even had a student who ran a shaved ice truck. Get creative!
Augment Your Academics
Alongside getting a job, you’ll want to use your summer to strengthen your academics. Summers are an amazing opportunity to underline what you care about in the classroom. You can do this through summer programs, in-person classes, online courses, internships, or independent research that you turn into a report, presentation, or project (like pursuing a science fair project or coding something).
Summer programs, like those put on or hosted by colleges, are an easy way to fill your summer if they are within your means. You apply or simply sign up, you go to the program, then you put it in your application. Easy, but it does not offer the biggest returns for the time, effort, or money they require to execute. Amherst knows, when they see these summer programs on your application, that you just had to sign up and go. They know that it’s checking a box — a really fun box that can help you distill your interests, focus your passions, and clarify your future, but a box, nonetheless.
Courses, either online or in-person, take more effort than self-determination. They take longer, especially if they are for credit (and, ideally, they should be), and you have to drive yourself forward in them rather than a counselor nudging your along. Amherst respects that, and so these types of courses carry more weight on an application than a fully-produced summer program.
Then, there are internships and independent research. These are our first choices for students planning their summers with Amherst in mind, but they are also the hardest to set up and execute. That doesn’t mean you can’t do it on your own, it’ll just take some planning.
Have Fun
We’ve been talking a lot here about work of the volunteer, paid, or academic variety, but Amherst doesn’t want students who only know how to work and study. They want the people who join their community to be passionate, driven, and to be active members of their community off the clock. So, Amherst wants to see you that you aren’t just going through the motions. Show your passion by spending some time enjoying yourself.
But Not Too Much
That said, don’t go too wild. Getting into trouble is a bad idea, as it’s a quick way to tank any opportunity of getting into Amherst. Have fun, but not too much.
One way of having fun is to visit Amherst for yourself. They do not take demonstrated interest into account, and they don’t offer interviews, but visiting will help you tailor your application to what Amherst prioritizes. And maybe we believe a little in manifesting. Seeing yourself there will help you see yourself there.
While you’re in town, check out the other members of the five-college consortium. Students at Amherst benefit from the resources of Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which are all within 10 miles. This opens up broad opportunities for creativity, exploration, and the building of expertise.
Getting into a top-tier school isn’t a fluke. It takes strategy, planning, and, ideally, expertise. If you’re hoping to attend a college with an acceptance rate under 10%, send us an email.