Which offers more academic flexibility for undergraduates: MIT or Amherst College?

Amherst offers more formal academic flexibility for a student who is still deciding among computer science, mathematics, and the humanities. Its open curriculum has no college-wide core or distribution requirements, so beyond the requirements for a chosen major, students can build unusually individualized schedules. The Five College Consortium also expands the menu: Amherst students can take courses at Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass Amherst.

Amherst is especially appealing to a student who wants the humanities to remain an equal part of their education rather than a required complement to a technical degree. You could, for example, take advanced math and computer science while also pursuing sustained coursework in philosophy, literature, history, or a language without needing to fit those interests into a prescribed science-and-engineering core. The tradeoff is that Amherst is a liberal arts college, so its technical offerings are strong but less expansive and specialized than MIT’s.

MIT fits a student whose center of gravity is clearly quantitative or technological, but who wants room to explore beyond that center. MIT undergraduates have substantial choice in majors, electives, undergraduate research, and interdisciplinary programs. Its first-year grading policies can also make initial exploration less stressful.

However, MIT requires all undergraduates to complete the General Institute Requirements, including substantial math, science, and humanities, arts, and social sciences coursework. Those requirements provide breadth but make the curriculum less self-designed than Amherst’s.