Amherst College is a small liberal arts school located smack dab in the middle of Massachusetts. Amherst (the town) is peak college town vibes, with Amherst College, UMass Amherst, and Hampshire College all packed into 27 square miles. In addition to Amherst classes, students can take classes at UMass Amherst, Hampshire, or the nearby Smith College and Mount Holyoke College. Amherst is known for a totally open curriculum – no core classes to mess with. They’re also known for having an academic culture in line with the Ivy League, and they have the admissions stats to back it. In 2022, Amherst’s acceptance rate was 7.25%, and their transfer acceptance rate was 6%. To put it more plainly, 503 people applied to transfer to Amherst in 2022, and only 30 were admitted.
If you want to transfer to Amherst, you need to have excellent grades and scores, compelling extracurriculars, and you need to prove to them that they’re the only place for you to meet your academic goals. Let’s break down what you need to transfer:
Amherst’s Requirements
Let’s start with what Amherst requires of you, hopeful transfer. Each school has different requirements, accepts different credits, and has different standards, which of course, makes planning a lot of transfer apps a little confusing. The first thing that Amherst stresses is having “at least 32 transferable semester hour credits (or equivalent) as a college student in a liberal arts curriculum.”
32-hour credits (or equivalent) is also a little confusing. Most colleges require at least 24 credit hours, because at most colleges, 12 hours is the minimum you need per semester to be a full-time student. If your current institution counts most classes as 4 credit hours, you should be fine, since that would be 4 classes a semester, the standard for 4 credit hour colleges. If you are at a school that counts most classes at 3 credit hours, taking the standard 5-class load, that would come out to 30 credit hours total. Does that follow the “or equivalent” exception?
Because we’re annoying, we called Amherst to ask. They have a very confusing phone system – the admissions number from the website doesn’t connect, so we had to call the operator. The operator connected us to Admissions, but they weren’t accepting calls, which then connected us to another operator. That operator then told us to email Amherst, but we’re girls on the go and wanted answers now. We finally got connected to Amherst Admissions and got transferred to a Dean who could answer our singular question. This process took 10 minutes. @Amherst, if you’re in your self-improvement era and looking for a growth area, we found one.
Anyways, if you are at a school that only had 3 credit hour classes, you would indeed need to take an extra class.
Next up, they only accept liberal arts curriculum credits. According to them, they do not accept the following credits:
Business, criminal justice, engineering, speech and communication, computer application, journalism, or other pre-professional classes
Any Math class below Calculus
AP, IB, or Dual-Enrollment credits
Online classes (there are exceptions to this, especially COVID-related online courses)
You will also need two letters of recommendation from college instructors who have taught you. You cannot use high school teachers, and you can’t use an academic advisor.
In addition to the stated requirements, Amherst also stresses that you will not be a competitive transfer applicant unless you have an A- average in your current college classes. Speaking of grades and classes, let’s talk about the actionable steps you need to transfer.
Pick the Right Classes
Amherst doesn’t have a core requirement, but that doesn’t mean you should completely buck any required classes you have at your school currently. If you don’t succeed in your transfer quest, you still want to be able to graduate on time. However, since Amherst only accepts certain types of credits and expects more than the bare minimum from you, you need to be strategic about the classes you’re taking.
You also need to pick classes that fit into your academic goals. If you applied to college as Undecided, it’s time to decide on a major. When you get to Amherst, you are truly free to study what you want, but you need to convince them that they’re the only place on earth for you to get a degree in say, English, focusing on 19th-century British literature. If your goal is English, take English classes!
Get Really Good Grades
This is a given. Amherst, as a first-year applicant, is as hard to get into as most Ivies. The strongest apps will have great grades and scores from high school, but you’ll also need as close to perfect grades in college as possible. If you struggled with Chemistry in high school, don’t try to take it again! If you’re struggling in your classes, get plugged into the Writing Center or peer tutoring. Go to all your office hours (which will help when you need those rec letters)! Take advantage of what your school offers.
Develop Your Niche
In addition to picking classes that go with your stated goals, you need to develop extracurriculars that do the same. Quality is better than quantity here – joining a ton of clubs and doing nothing isn’t going to help much. To keep with our English theme, get plugged into an on-campus publication or writer’s group. Try seeing if you can help one of your professors with research! You’ve got options, explore them.
Write a Good Essay
This one comes into play a little later, but it’s still good to think about now. Most colleges ask the same question: why do you want to transfer and what goals do you hope to accomplish? This is a lot like a Why essay, which you probably remember from last fall. You need to start researching Amherst, picking out professors and upper-level classes that fit into your niche, and thinking about how those will help you accomplish your goals.
Transferring is almost always harder than first-year admissions, and Amherst is no exception. If you’re looking for an open curriculum at a liberal arts school that feels more like the Ivy League, then Amherst is the right place for you. Remember, transferring is a little bit of a mess, so it’s in your best interest to throw 8-12 applications out and see what sticks.
If you need help with your transfer applications, reach out to us today.