As a student intern for Hampshire College’s Admissions office, a big question I often get is: Why Hampshire? Why choose to attend a small, experimental liberal arts school in Western Massachusetts? Why, if you are so interested in complex political sciences and larger social change, choose to go to this rural, apparently isolated college?
Well, in short, and against misconceptions, because it was the best, most opportunity-filled choice I found in my college search.
As a senior in high school, irritated by my traditional schooling (I am from Ecuador, so the educational system is tightly compartmentalized into strict and disconnected structures), I wanted not only to have a liberal arts experience in college, but to maximize the amount of opportunities this would provide.
I kept running into these mesmerizing dead-ends where either I chose a bigger liberal arts school (I truly believe in the value of smaller, more student-focused institutions) or a smaller one, with much more limited resources and gambles for course availability every semester.
But then I ran into Hampshire College, the 1970s brainchild of four national higher education leaders in Western Massachusetts — Amherst, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Founded by, and for, what would become the Five College consortium, Hampshire College provided me with what I had been looking for all along: access to 5000+ courses and all the facilities in four other, very different schools, all in a small campus community that is invigorated by a mind-blowingly large and diverse student body just a couple of bus stops away.
This is the power of the Five College consortium, and it is what ultimately made Hampshire my top choice. For not only would I be able to take endless opportunities in my four years of undergraduate studies, but I would be able to do so within Hampshire’s exciting, cutting-edge program that would be crafted and defined by myself and supportive, brilliant faculty.
No school that I searched could ever offer, in the same semester, experimental theater, Arabic, French, Middle Eastern economics, and Latin American politics, as well as the chance to go abroad to Tunisia for another semester to develop an original and independent research project, while putting into practice my Arabic and French: this is exactly what my last year looked like.
Now, I am a third year, and am getting ready for my final, Division III project. And I cannot overstate how happy I am that I made the decision to put in my security deposit to this school and make it work for my family and me.
The power of the Five College consortium has not failed to deliver.
