Amherst has been a top school academically for a long time, but as a super selective powerhouse it kind of snuck up on people. The acceptance rate has dropped nearly three-fold over the past two decades, and it is now just as hard to get into Amherst as an Ivy League institution. Amherst is very different from an Ivy, though, and that isn’t a dig. This small, private undergraduate college is ideal for students looking for a hands-on experience in a tight-knit community tightly connected to the outdoors. That acceptance rate for the Class of 2030 was only 6.78%.
If you are considering submitting an application to Amherst, the first step is to decide how much skin you want to put into the game. Amherst offers both Early Decision and Regular Decision as avenues to admission. The application process is the same, but ED has the typical early November deadline and the weight of a commitment. If admitted, you will attend. What do you get in return for that commitment? A serious boost in your chance of acceptance. The acceptance rate for Early Decision applicants is regularly more than three-times the overall acceptance rate, which means it is astronomically higher than the Regular Decision acceptance rate. Yes, we help students get into Amherst Regular Decision every year, but we still highly recommend the ED route if you are certain that you want to be there.
The next thing to sort out are your grades and scores. Despite having such a low acceptance rate, Amherst is more flexible when it comes to the numbers — to a point. They most definitely expect excellence, but they also allow for growth over time and bumps in the road, especially when they serve as evidence of you challenging yourself. You should aim to be in the top 10% of your graduating class, and have your transcript illustrate that your success journey is on an upward curve.
While Amherst does not require the SAT or ACT as part of your application, we encourage our students to work for the strong scores that serve to underline an impressive application. Amherst is test optional, but more than 50% of accepted and enrolled recent students submitting an SAT or ACT score. Since submitting is optional, those that do submit tend to have great results to share. Hopeful applicants should aim for an SAT over 1500 or an ACT over 34.
Whether or not you submit scores, the place for you to show how well-suited to Amherst you truly are is the writing supplement. In this post, we’re going to break down the Amherst supplement and provide you with the tools you need to write superior responses. Of course, the best advice is personal advice. If you want to learn more about how we work with our students, get in touch.
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The good news of the Amherst supplement is that they give you a lot of options for how to fulfill the supplemental requirement, two of which don’t require you to write anything new at all. The bad news is that there are a lot of potential avenues to wade through before picking one. So, let’s get into it.
There are three options for the supplement, conveniently named: Option A, Option B, and Option C. Option A is the writing, and there are three prompts to pick from within Option A. Option B is to submit a grades paper. We’ll dig into the pros and cons of this later, but for now start pondering whether you have a paper you might jump at the chance to submit. Option C is only for students who were or are currently applicants to Amherst’s Access to Amherst (A2A) program. We’ll also tell you why choosing Option C is a bad idea further down.
OPTION A
This is the new writing option, which can sound annoying when you could just skip it but hear us out. For 85% of the applicants we work with, Option A is their best choice if Amherst is their first choice. You have never been a better writer than you are right now. You have never known more than you do right now. You have never had more to share than you do right now. You are more equipped than you have ever been to speak directly to the application readers and truly connect. Now you just have to do it in 350 words or less.
Prompt 1
"Hope and curiosity — these are qualities that are the foundation of what Amherst College means, of everything that we do here. Curiosity is at the core of a liberal arts education — a spirit of inquiry that shapes not only what our students do in the classroom, but also how they learn from and about each other." — Michael A. Elliott, 20th President of Amherst College, address at Amherst College’s 203rd Commencement
Prompt 1 Question: What does curiosity mean to you? How do you experience curiosity in your own life?
First, you need to ignore the quote. Each of the three prompts you can pick from for Option A consists of a quote paired with a question. For each, we start with the same advice: ignore the quote. Why? Because it isn’t useful to you. You aren’t going to reference it in your response, you aren’t going to frame your answer around it, and you surely aren’t going to waste any of your 350 words re-stating portions of it. So, ignore it.
Now, we have the question. Amherst asks: What does curiosity mean to you? We are sure that you’ve been told to show, not tell, a bajillion times in school when it comes to writing. If you haven’t been, let us rectify that. Instead of explaining how important curiosity is to you, you are going to tell them a story here that shows curiosity at work in your life. The best foundation for this is something small. You aren’t writing an epic here, it’s all about a moment. Start with a spark, and build a story around it. Maybe it is learning something from a book that led you to creating something that serves your community, or maybe it is building a relationship with a character as you develop an understanding of a fictional ‘persons’ motivations and priorities in preparation for performing in a play or reciting a poem.
The key, here, is to sell the story and to not try to wrap it up with a perfect “this is what I learned” bow at the end. Let the end of your supplement reverberate like a bell, not slam like a door.
Prompt 2
"We seek an Amherst made stronger because it includes those whose experiences can enhance our understanding of our nation and our world. We do so in the faith that our humanity is an identity forged from diversity, and that our different perspectives enrich our inquiry, deepen our knowledge, strengthen our community, and prepare students to engage with an ever-changing world." — from the Trustee Statement on Diversity and Community
Prompt 2 Question: In what ways could your unique experiences enhance our understanding of our nation and our world?
Full disclosure, Prompt 1 is our favorite option. Prompt 3 is okay, too. This one, though, we consider a bit of a dud. It looks and sounds good, but the results too often smell off. This is because the prompt is basically an invitation to express a sense of inflated self-importance. Students drawn to this prompt are often the opposite of those who may actually be able to write a workable answer to it. That isn’t because you don’t have unique experiences, and it certainly isn’t due to an inability to enhance others’ understanding of the world. However, feeling like you have unique experiences that can shape movements globally is an expression of ego — not impact.
If you do want to answer this prompt, you need to make sure to strip ego out of it. This isn’t a chance for you to brag about your successes. Instead, you need to make it bigger than you while also keeping it tiny. So, if the unique experience you want to write about is something objectively impressive, think again. We want you to find an experience from the past two years that spotlights community, communication, and compassion. You need to be in it, of course, but also de-centered. Then, build a short story that reads like an intimate tale of you learning something about yourself. Don’t end by summarizing the lesson or theorizing about potential future impact. End with a hope towards the future.
Prompt 3
"We are working together to build a community that makes room for both true disagreement and true connection, one that practices the kind of recognition and robust negotiation that the everyday life of democracy requires, and one that explicitly prepares our students to work for the greater good in their professional and personal endeavors." — Presidential Priorities: Serving the Greater Good
Prompt 3 Question: Tell us about a time that you engaged with a viewpoint different from your own. How did you enter that engagement, and what did you learn about yourself from it?
This ‘civil disagreement’ question started popping up on college supplements a few years ago. Today, it has become a cornerstone of the college supplement cannon. Strategically, then, it does make sense to seriously consider this prompt. You will probably write an application for at least one other school with a close enough question that you can rework the answer you write for Amherst. Prompt 1 is still our favorite, but we understand embracing utility. Now to the writing.
The key here is to keep two things in mind:
There is no winner.
You are not in the right.
Whatever story you decide to tell for this prompt, it cannot position you as the winner of an argument or debate, and you can’t come off as being morally superior or somehow correct. That doesn’t mean that someone else should be the ‘winner’, either. This prompt is all about highlighting the power of conversation over conviction, so the real point is to show how good you are at listening, at challenging your assumptions, and at making room for others.
Start the supplement in the middle of the conversation, then zoom back to provide context. You can explore the issues under debate or what is at stake, but end up back in a room with you and your conversation partner(s) hashing things out.
OPTION B
The second way that you can fulfill the required supplement for Amherst is by submitting a graded analytical paper. It must have been submitted in your junior or senior year, and they are flexible in what they mean by “graded.” What they really want to see are the comments. A paper with no comments is bad for this option, but you can ask a teacher to go back and add comments if they were not forthcoming with feedback at first.
Amherst does not put a page limit on Option B, but longer is not better. In fact, it is often quite the opposite. Remember, they have only a few minutes to read your application regardless of how cool you are. We guide our students to limit the graded paper submission to 6 pages maximum, but if you have something impressive and shorter that is ideal.
If you choose Option B, you do need to understand what you are sacrificing in favor of not needing to write anything new. It is quite possible that Amherst will review your application without your voice in it beyond your personal statement. This is a big risk, and should not be taken lightly. We really only recommend that students pick this option when they have a paper to submit that checks all of these boxes:
Exceptional grade on a paper that fits the bill
Subject of the paper is related to your prospective area of study at Amherst
Thoughtful comments from your teacher that offer critical feedback (i.e., they didn’t just throw an A at you)
If all of those are attainable, Option B may work, but we still prefer new writing.
OPTION C
The final option applies to the fewest number of people. For students who have already applied for the Access to Amherst (A2A) program, students are invited to resubmit their A2A writing supplement to satisfy the first-year application supplement requirement.
We do not know whether doing this has no impact on the likelihood of admission, but we would still never recommend it. As we have said, you are growing and developing every day. Who you were when you wrote that application, even if recent, was different then who you are now. So, you can take your A2A writing as inspiration, but don’t copy and paste. Use your voice to represent your best self in the most current way, and your application will sing.
As you work on your Amherst application, remember that they like students who are independent thinkers, but who also prioritize community. They are looking for first-years who will raise the caliber of the conversation in the classroom, and in the residence halls. Amherst is less impressed by you sounding impressive, and more impressed by how you think, how you move through the world, and how you engage with others along the way. So, be your best self. Amherst will see how awesome you are.
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