Hampshire College Top Questions

What is your overall opinion of this school?

Anas

Hampshire is a very liberal school. It has a very politicized environment. Justice, freedom, equality, and social change are central to the discourses that take place in the school. The curriculum is very interdisciplinary. It provides the student with a very broad framework of study, and it allows him/her to develop a more accurate methodological approaches to the topics in which they engage. Hampshire College is part of the five colleges. This adds new dimensions to the academic experience at Hampshire College. Unlimited amount of recourses (classes, libraries, research and faculty) is available to Hampshire students through the other close by colleges.

Anders

The school is a pretty good size, but by about the 2nd year all social groups start to collapse onto each other and everybody knows everyone and nobody has any secrets.

Hannah

best thing about hampshire is the well-rounded education you get in each class, which usually does not bias a certain political or social perspective. through the community here most students get exposure to sensitive subjects such as sexual and gender-based identity, class issues, and race politics. hampshire requires students to be self motivated and committed to finding the answers through their own resourcefulness. good training for the real world. amherst is a great little college town with an interesting subculture for almost everyone. good coffee, good food, good wilderness to explore, and other outside activities. excellent community within hampshire as well, with the only down side being the slight isolation from the other 4 schools within the 5 college consortium. which is actually another great benefit of going here- you can take classes at any of the other 4 schools, use their libraries, eat at their dining commons, participate in their student groups. the biggest controversy as of late was the movement to make hampshire an antiracist institution. hampshire is mostly white, and has not shown a huge effort to support students of color. students of color represented by the source group and cultural center drafted up a list of demands and have been negotiating the progress with the administration.

Anna

Hampshire has a lot of hidden gems within it. The OPRA (Outdoor Programs and Recreational Athletics) Department is wonderful with amazing teachers and people who run it. Take at least one of these classes your first year so that you get hooked because most students don't take advantage of it. The writing department is incredible, though very very small. But the professors and teachers are some of the best writing mentors I've had.

Quinn

Hampshire's administration uses lack of finances to not do anything they don't want to do and they don't put student needs as a priority. Housing sucks (and some isn't even up to fire code), there is no student center, and the administration refuses to be actively anti-racist.

Sam

The best thing about Hampshire is that almost all of the professors work very hard to help the students do well at whatever they are interested in. I wish there were more science students and fewer pretentious art students. Most people have not heard of Hampshire, but those who have typically know about and respect the projects that we students do. It feels like it is in the woods, but is 15 minutes by free bus ride from one small city and two large towns. The administration is evil, and should be bypassed whenever possible, which is most of the time. A recent controversy about whether Hampshire is "anti-racist enough" swept the campus, polarizing it in a very negative way. As much as anyone here complains about Hampshire's problems, 90{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of students here are fierce proponents of Hampshire, singing its praise to all who will listen - outside of the college grounds.. At no other school can students even think of changing things; here, students can make things change.

Tony

Best thing about Hampshire is that you can do most of what you want. The last year at Hampshire is spent working on one large project. There are no majors, just concentrations. Between these two facts you have a lot of leeway in terms of elective courses, and changeing your concentration relatively late in the game. This is combination with the resources available through the five college system make for a flexible high quality education experience. The other five colleges are UMass, Holyoke, Smith, and Amherst. The school is the correct size. If it was much bigger it would probably not be possible to have so much freedom. If it was much smaller it mite not exist. The town in the surrounding area is pretty decent. If you come from a major city you might find it a bit rural. If you are outgoing and look around there are plenty of things to do between the five colleges. The Hampshire is pretty bureaucratic. But like many things at Hampshire the bureaucracy is half flexible. Sometimes you can do as you please and miss a deadline long as you talk to the rite people, other times you could fail because you forgot to turn in a form.

Adrienne

Great college, awesome Consortium with UMASS, Amherst, Smith, and Mt.Holyoke - great benefits with all five libraries and being able to take classes at all the other colleges. One thing I would change is that some of the teachers are very lax about due dates for them, they sometimes don't give an Eval for several months. Also, theHub (our internet place for courses etc...) is a bitch, especially during add/drop or pre-registration.

Jesse

It's a really pretty campus, even though the architecture isn't all that great. There are a lot of open grassy spaces and trees, and it smells nice in the spring. There are a lot of really nice people, but there are also some pretentious douchebags; you just need to avoid them. There's isn't a ton to do on campus outside of partying, since there's no town center you can walk to, but Northampton and Amherst center are both bus-accessible. Hampshire is definitely a "hippie school", for better and for worse. It's probably hard to be a republican, right-wing Christian conservative on campus. But on the bright side, you meet a lot of people who are really passionate about what they study.

Wendy

The best thing about Hampshire is the classes- they are small, personal and directed towards topics that really interest me. I would change the organization here. All the campus offices are disorganized and everyone is on a different page, students are virtually on their own to figure out their schedule, education and ciriculum, if you dont pay attention you could kiss key things that will really screw you over later. The school is the perfect size for me, I always see the same people everywhere, easy to make friends. When I tell people I go to Hampshire, they say, "oh, reefer madness school,eh?" I spend most of my time in my room, in the art barn, in the airport lounge and in the dining hall. Northampton and Amherst are close but not very entertaining. School pride is non-exsistent. Students most often complain about being confused and alone in their academic pursuits.

Bobby

Hampshire is small in the scheme of things (especially since it's literally down the street-a few miles-from the University of Massachusetts). It's small in the sense that after a few years you're able to recognize most of the professors' names and most of the students' faces. It's small in the sense that generally you know all of the buildings, where they are, and what's in them. It's small in the sense that it can be very insular. It can be a bubble. A lot of people forget there is an outside world, but there are surrounding communities with a lot to offer.