How should I choose a major at Amherst College if I’m not sure what I want to study yet?

At Amherst, you do not need to know your major before you enroll, and you usually do not declare it until the end of your sophomore year. Amherst’s open curriculum is especially helpful here because there are no general education requirements, so your course choices can be driven mostly by curiosity and possible major interests.

In practice, students often narrow things down by taking a few introductory classes across different fields. Amherst also has first-year seminars, close advising, and small classes, which makes it easier to test subjects and get honest feedback from professors about whether a field fits your interests and strengths. If you discover a new interest late, the open curriculum makes that more manageable than at colleges with a long list of core requirements.

A good way to think about Amherst is that you should arrive with interests, not a fixed plan. If you like, say, economics, psychology, and English, you could sample all three early on and see which classes you genuinely want to keep taking.