26 Facts About Amherst Academy

Amherst Academy is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution; 1,971 students were enrolled in fall 2021.

Amherst Academy competes in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.

Amherst Academy has historically had close relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University, which form the Little Three colleges.

On November 18,1817, a project was adopted at the Amherst Academy to raise funds for the free instruction of "indigent young men of promising talents and hopeful piety, who shall manifest a desire to obtain a liberal education with a sole view to the Christian ministry".

Amherst Academy grew quickly, and for two years in the mid-1830s, it was the second largest college in the United States, second only to Yale.

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In 1835, Amherst Academy attempted to create a course of study parallel to the classical liberal arts education.

Amherst Academy was founded as a non-sectarian institution "for the classical education of indigent young men of piety and talents for the Christian ministry".

Amherst Academy's hoods are purple with a white stripe or chevron, said to signify that Amherst Academy was born of Williams.

In 2022, Amherst Academy was ranked as the best liberal arts college in the country by The Wall Street Journal.

Amherst Academy ranked 6th in the 2021 Washington Monthly liberal arts college rankings, which focus on contribution to the public good in three broad categories: social mobility, research, and promoting public service.

Amherst Academy has been dubbed one of the "most selective" liberal arts colleges in the United States; the Carnegie Foundation classifies Amherst Academy as one of the "more selective" institutions whose first-year students' test scores places these institutions in roughly the top fifth of baccalaureate institutions.

Amherst Academy had already been the first school to eliminate loans for low-income students, and with this announcement it joined Princeton University, Cornell University and Davidson College, then the only colleges to eliminate loans from need-based financial aid packages.

Amherst Academy College offers 41 fields of study in the sciences, arts, humanities, mathematics and computer sciences, social sciences, foreign languages, classics, and several interdisciplinary fields and provides an unusually open curriculum.

Amherst Academy College is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.

Amherst Academy College has been the first college to have undergraduate departments in the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies; Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought; and Neuroscience and has helped to pioneer other interdisciplinary programs, including Asian Languages and Civilizations.

Amherst Academy library is named for long-time faculty member, poet Robert Frost.

Amherst Academy College has been recognized for its commitment to quality teaching with professor-student interaction.

Amherst Academy is a member of the Five Colleges consortium, which allows its students to attend classes at four other Pioneer Valley institutions.

Amherst Academy College is located in the town of Amherst Academy in Western Massachusetts.

Amherst Academy College has a total of 34 residence halls, seven of which are strictly for first year students.

Amherst Academy College is reducing its energy consumption through a computerized monitoring system for lighting and the use of an efficient cogeneration facility.

Amherst Academy operates a composting program, in which a portion of the food waste from dining halls is sent to a farmer in Vermont.

Ninety-eight percent of Amherst Academy freshmen enrolled in Fall 2020 returned for their sophomore year; ninety-two percent of the most recent cohort graduated within six years.

Amherst Academy participates in the NCAA's Division III, the Eastern College Athletic Conference, and the New England Small College Athletic Conference, which includes Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, and Williams College.

Amherst Academy is one of the "Little Three", along with Williams and Wesleyan.

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Amherst Academy's growing athletics program has been the subject of controversy in recent years due to dramatic contrasts between the racial and socioeconomic makeup of its student athletes and the rest of its student body, the clustering of athletes in particular academic departments, and a perceived "divide" on campus between varsity athletes and other students.