@Daniel Clark (and also @ CC B) -- Thank you for validating something I experienced many years ago when I took classes for a year and a half at Amherst. I also found Yale WAY LESS arrogant (and pretentious) than Amherst also. My father was a Columbia alum, and Columbia was also less pretentious and elitist than Amherst as well. I was a Hampshire College student, but I really enjoyed being able to take classes at all the other consortium schools. Amherst students were the WORST snobs I've ever met at ALL of the schools combined. Self-entitled, stuck up, pretentious, wanky, preppy, and literally for me, kind of nightmarish. I had the best off-campus course experiences at UMass/Amherst and Smith, but Mt. Holyoke ended up being ok too when I took a class there during my fourth year at Hampshire.
That being said, the three classes I took at Amherst were EXCELLENT. Amherst does deserve it's ranking for it's academic rigor (I worked hard to even get B's), however, I was always happy to go to back to Hampshire after class. The third and final class I took at Amherst was a multimedia performance art class called "Scripts & Scores" taught by a WONDERFUL visiting professor at Amherst from NYU. He was very experimental and allowed us to create a multi-media performance piece combining film video/dance/spoken word/music. I collaborated with another Amherst student and another Hampshire student to each create our own individual material within the piece. I was even able to get the dance studio where we usually held class at Amherst as a venue to present the piece.
The piece was so well-received after our two performances at Amherst, we were invited to perform it at Hampshire next (I had planned on performing it there anyway), then UMass asked us to perform, followed by Mt. Holyoke and Smith. I have to say: as only a second-year Hampshire student, I was honored to be asked to perform a piece at all five campuses. That was when I truly learned how great a resource the five college consortium is. And I knew it was mainly due to the professor (who remained one of my favorite faculty contacts during the rest of my college career). I ended up having a VERY positive experience come out of taking the classes at Amherst. Later, when I was in my fourth year at Hampshire casting for my Senior Theater production, I cast a couple of Amherst students in my show, and to their credit they were decent actors.
In the end, Amherst College was an experience I guess I needed to have, but do I EVER understand WHY you would have taken a year of leave to go breathe less blue-blooded air. Amherst was pretty "upper crusty." And I think the students were the way they were because in their circles Amherst is where you go if you get waitlisted or denied acceptance to the Ivies (I only discovered later on that Amherst is considered a "little Ivy." I visited Williams also, and it's VERY similar to Amherst (yes, I know their collective history). In fact, I found Williams to be a bit more funky and eccentric than Amherst and maybe a bit more creative and artistic as well. Amherst has a much better location (I found Willamstown isolated, but it IS beautiful in the Berkshires) right next to Amherst Town Center, which I found enviable, since Hampshire's campus was a bit isolated also, being 4.5 miles away from the town of Amherst itself. Except for the convenience of where Amherst's campus was located, I preferred Hampshire in pretty much EVERY other way to Amherst. Although, in certain aspects, Amherst surprised me. It's NOT the kind of college I would have EVER applied to on my own though.