Hi all! I know the blog site is buzzing right now with Be A Mammoth posts, but I have nothing to contribute! I entered college during Covid closures, and so had an online Be A Mammoth where I attended a class on Zoom and a couple of Webinars—not nearly as interesting as visiting campus. So I’ll entrust the campus visit tips to other bloggers and share instead my experience with the Five College Consortium, which may be a selling point for some of you who are hesitant about Amherst’s small size.
Every semester from sophomore-senior year, I’ve taken one Portuguese class at UMass, which has truly been a highlight of my Amherst experience. To show you how easy it is to tap into the consortium, I’ll walk you through the process of registering and getting to a class at another college, and share why it’s been so great for me.
Registration
All the colleges’ schedules are mostly aligned for ease of cross-college registration, including course release and registration dates. When pre-registration came along, either in October or April, I’d make sure to also check the UMass Portuguese catalog to see what I was interested in taking. This became easier after my first semester of Portuguese, because UMass gave me my own university email and Spire account (where they do registration logistics), so I could get all registration details even earlier. Once I picked a course, I’d send a quick email to the professor, to introduce myself and make sure that they were okay with me registering from Amherst College. Then, I filled out a course request form, got my advisor’s signature, and sent it to the Amherst registrar. Our registrar would share the form with the UMass registrar’s office, who would approve the request. I’d register for 3 Amherst College courses as normal, and the registrar would place a block 4th course in my schedule. And that’s it!
The commute
UMass is the closest campus to ours, which in no small part is the reason why I kept going back, despite Smith College also offering Portuguese. By bike (my preferred method of transit), UMass is about 10 minutes away. It’s a 25 minute walk and a 15 minute (free) bus ride, with really regular routes running all day. I drove a few times, but almost always regretted it, because parking can be kind of a pain (and you have to pay). My classes were always in Herter Hall, which is right next to the main bus stop, convenient for freezing or rainy days.
The perks
UMass has famously good food, and I’ve definitely taken advantage, especially during semesters when my class was right around lunch time. If you take a class at another college, you can get access to meal swipes on that campus if you can’t make it back to Amherst in time for a meal. I never was organized enough to figure that out, so I’d rely on the kindness of UMass students, who were really lovely and often willing to use a guest swipe for me.
The Portuguese department is pretty tight-knit, and since I was essentially a Portuguese major going through all the upper-level classes, I’d try to show up to events like cafezinho, where there was usually good music and food. They also host an annual Lusophone Film Festival, a week in September with a new film screening each night—the directors would sometimes come for a Q&A, which was very cool.
Taking a class is also a nice way to meet people outside of the Amherst bubble! Since I was a regular in the department, I’d end up repeating classes with the same few people, and it was nice to have a bit of a cohort outside of Amherst College.
To sum it up
Cross-registering does, of course, involve a bit more advanced planning and a willingness to commute, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not that much more effort compared to the payoff. If you’re considering Amherst but worried about its small size, the Five College Consortium really does expand your academic and social opportunities. Whether it’s taking a language, exploring a niche subject, getting involved in extracurriculars off campus, or just wanting a change of pace, cross-registering can be a great way to diversify your experience (and I didn’t even begin to touch on all the cross-college events that happen outside of academics). The benefits just of taking a class off campus—new friends, new professors, and even great food—make it well worth the jump. There’s kind of a pattern of more students from other colleges coming to Amherst than vice-versa, and while that says something about the quality of education we have here, I think there’s a lot to gain from venturing out.
For anyone nervous about navigating the process, don’t be! The registrars are helpful, professors are welcoming, and lots of students have done it before. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out—I’d be happy to share more about my experience.