Amherst College

Amherst College AM-ərst) is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts. The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst, Commander-in-Chief of British forces of North America during the French and Indian War. Originally established as a men's college, Amherst became coeducational in 1975.
Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution; the school enrolled 1,855 students in fall 2018. Students choose courses from 38 major programs in an open curriculum and are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfill any distribution requirements; students may also design their own interdisciplinary major. For the class of 2023, Amherst received 10,567 applications and accepted 1,144, yielding a 10.8% acceptance rate. Amherst was ranked as the best liberal arts college in the country for 2018–19 by The Wall Street Journal, the second best liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and 16th out of all U.S. colleges and universities by Forbes in their 2018 rankings. Amherst competes in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.

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