Reviews of Hampshire College (College)

Joshua Singer

would recommend to a friend

Keri Christensen

Way over priced. Didn't offer marketable majors. Went to Boston College instead.

Dashiell Renaud

Experimentation and education are both great. Experimenting with your education is too risky. Western Massachusetts is a terrible place to spend four years.

D. Hastings

You know it’s doing something right when the alt right feels the need to review bomb it. Like all liberal arts colleges with high tuitions, it has its share of snobs, but it also has lower income people with financial aid to be there, including grants and scholarships as opposed to loans. Great academics. Abundant resources for research and learning. Many well regarded professors, passionate about their subjects and about the non-traditional approach to pedagogy and inquiry. Many of professors have prestigious degrees and publishing records that could probably land them jobs at Ivy Leagues and the like, but they chose Hampshire because of its values. Beautiful area even if some of the buildings get ripped on for not being up to people’s aesthetic standards (yawn). Last I knew, the mattresses suck. Bring your own or a mattress pad. Wish there were more late night food options for the night owls.

Ryan Kerney

It was a terrific education on how to become a life long learner.

Don Anthony

One the few places I feel 'at home'.

Brandon Allen

Almost every 1 star rating is someone angry about the flag deal. Nice school, beautiful campus. The entrepreneurship, cognitive science, AI, and game design departments are to die for, Especially considering the acceptance rate of the school. A student sense of entitlement comes with the territory of any expensive college. There is a large PC culture on campus though, that leaves many students feeling excluded and persecuted, and apparently gives the school a hilariously bad name amongst adamant patriots.

Tenzin monchel

My sister is attending there and I wish her so much luck

L Friedrich

This is the best college to go to if you are self directed and passionate about learning.

Robert Cliche

loved it

Konrad Von Hochstaden

A fine institution of free thought.

Gordon McAllister

Poor decision making.

Stephen Sakai

Hampshire's philosophy definitely contributed to creating a well rounded college experience for my son.

Steve Nesich

I'm a graduate of Hampshire College, located in Amherst, Massachusetts---in Hampshire COUNTY---and those four years were exceptional. I was surrounded by the smartest, most accomplished, focused and creative people I've ever known, both before and after that amazing four years. It was an environment of excitement about knowledge, where future physicians were learning from future environmental biologists, where future documentary filmmakers were influenced by future attorneys, where future journalists were engaged in passionate exchanges with future computer scientists. Learning, debating, engaging with your studies was a 24/7 activity at Hampshire College; intense intellectual exchanges that developed that afternoon in an Integrative Seminar on "Capitalism & Empire" would spill out of the classroom, be brought up again at dinner, and, after returning from the library study carrels, hours later, would be debated again, before bedtime. Hampshire was where I learned the intrinsic value of an education and to love learning for its own sake. But, as a superb liberal arts college that built its foundation on the finest elements of such traditional schools as Amherst---its "mother school", without which, Hampshire would not exist---Williams, Wesleyan, Swarthmore, Middlebury, Dartmouth, Bowdoin and others, and combining it with new, progressive innovations that emerged in post-secondary circles following World War II, it prepared me and my peers for "the real world" of employment in a rapidly and ever-changing workplace much better than more traditional colleges ever could. (Hampshire's unconventional academic structure is likely one of the reasons that so many of us became entrepreneurs, from Gary Hirshberg who started Stonyfield Yogurt to Ken Burns, the documentary filmmaker who started Florentine Films and made such classics as "The Civil War" and "Baseball".) Would I recommend it, all these years later? More than ever. With the passage of time, the value of my Hampshire experience and the way its education model prepared me for success, is clearer every day. Go find out for yourself. Visit Hampshire College and witness, first hand, the unique beauty and architecture of the campus, the gorgeous surrounding environment and the dynamism of its students and faculty. I'd go back in a minute if I could do it all over again. In many ways I envy those of you who might have Hampshire College in your future---with that entire experience in front of you.

Ben Schaeffer

Hampshire was overall a mixed bag for me. The college isn't for everyone, BUT, you can get a solid education there and the school is INCREDIBLE for creative students. The Professors are definitely accomplished and could be teaching at Ivies, but they chose Hampshire because of its pedagogical structure and it's unique approach to undergraduate higher education.The five college consortium is one of the BEST things about Hampshire overall, since the five combined campuses provide unparalleled resources and programming that you can't find outside of a major urban area in an undergraduate institution. I started off-campus classes starting in the Spring semester of my first year (@UMass & Amherst), and it was the best way to utilize the consortium. ONLY taking classes at Hampshire alone is a big mistake. Getting off-campus (leaving the "Camp Hamp bubble") and taking classes at the other four schools, attending cultural events, using the other libraries and collaborating and socializing with students at the other campuses are among the BEST aspects of the consortium. I made Hampshire work for me, but it's not a college that will work for everyone. Coming from a big, competitive (but alternative and creative) public NYC high school (I attended Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn). After I graduated from Murrow I realized I was ready for a smaller liberal arts college experience. All my "target" choices were liberal arts colleges similar to Hampshire: (Emerson, Sarah Lawrence, Reed, Antioch, Bennington, Bard, Skidmore, Marlboro & Goddard). I also chose Hampshire over my "reach" schools: (NYU, RISD, Yale, UC Berkeley, & Oberlin). And my "safety" schools: (Hunter, UVM & SUNY Purchase). I'm pretty sure I was the first student from my high school to go to Hampshire, although I knew someone from my high school's sister school (John Dewey High School; also in Brooklyn) who went to Hampshire at the same time I did. We were both studying radically different things academically, which is what makes Hampshire so vital and dynamic as an educational institution, not to mention makes it interesting because everyone is doing their "own thing". The campus, while NOT "traditionally Ivy-covered Georgian style New England college buildings" are not completely terrible, and the facilities are certainly on par with many other colleges it's size. In fact, I would say Hampshire has above-average facilities for creative concentrations like Dance, Visual Arts, Music, Film/Video & Photography and decent facilities for Theater (although a dedicated performing arts center with a larger performance space(s); in addition to the black box EDH theaters), was something I was constantly telling the College President that we needed to build. The Studio and the Mainstage theaters weren't sufficient enough with ALL the theater students that needed (and wanted) to use them. I still enjoyed Hampshire's theater program overall, and the thing that was the best about it, is that the entire season was all directed and produced and designed by students, with faculty only occasionally directing a show. The other schools in the consortium have quite dynamic performing arts programs as well, with UMass' spectacular world-class facilities at it's Fine Arts Center. If you want that more "traditional New England college," Amherst, Smith & Mt. Holyoke are all just down the road. In fact, Hampshire's facilities were more than adequate for me to study Theater & Film and to do my own original work. I studied abroad in London for a semester and augmented my on-campus work with work in NYC and out on the West Coast. Hampshire CAN really work for you IF you are a VERY self-directed, self-motivated and focused student. Hampshire is "graduate school for undergraduates." You'll know after the first year if you'll stay or not. If you get Div I done, you are more likely to stay at Hampshire once you file your Div II. You'll know once you're through either your first semester or first year if the college is or isn't for you. You'll just know.

Jake Hawkesworth

Great education. Unique opportunity to take advantage of the resources of 5 colleges and get a stellar education.

Sal Migliaccio

Forces you to think critically about everything. A Hampshire education is inherently interdisciplinary.

Achyut Shrestha

Best place to learn!