Hampshire College Acceptance Rate and How to Get in Easily

The wonderful thing about Hampshire College is the capability to pursue whatever you want. There are no majors or curriculums set out for you; you develop your own academic path. The Hampshire college acceptance rate has been covered in this article.

At Hampshire, there’s a board of teachers ready to work with you, to help you build your education, no matter what it might be. Also, since the university is part of the Five-College Consortium, classes can be taken at any of the five colleges to fulfill academic needs, notwithstanding if they are grad-level courses. 

Hampshire College’s acceptance rate and how to get in easily are the main focus. Moreover, you’ll get to know about Hampshire college, its history, academics, schools and programs, admissions, and lots more.

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Hampshire College Acceptance Rate and How to Get in Easily

About Hampshire College

Hampshire College is an amazing private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. The institution was formed in 1970 as an experiment in alternative education, partnering with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley which include: Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Jointly, they are known as the Five College Consortium.

The campus also contains the National Yiddish Book Center and Eric Carle Museum, and homes the annual Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics. The college is known for its alternative curriculum, self-governing academic concentrations, gradual politics, focus on portfolios rather than distribution requirements, and its dependence on narrative assessment instead of grades and GPAs.

Sixty-five percent of its alumni own at least a graduate degree, and one-quarter have established their own business or organization. Alumni include people that received the Pulitzer Prize; the National Humanities Medal; Emmy, Academy, Peabody Awards, and MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships; including Tony and Grammy Awards. The college is among the top producers of Fulbright Students and alumni that earn a doctorate.

At Hampshire, there’s a board of teachers ready to work with you, to help you build your education, no matter what it might be. Also, since the university is part of the Five-College Consortium, classes can be taken at any of the five colleges to fulfill academic needs, notwithstanding if they are grad-level courses. 

In January 2019, after the announcement that the college would seek unification with another institution, the college obtained backlash from the student body and faculty and announced a re-envisioning project to guarantee the college remain independent and long-lasting. As a result of the controversy, President Miriam Nelson stepped down; Hampshire employed its tenth president, Edward Wingenbach, and initiated an effort to revise the curriculum to boost interdisciplinary, collaboration and access.

History of Hampshire College

The concept of Hampshire College evolved in 1958 when the presidents of Amherst, Mount Holyoke, Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst, designated a committee to assess the assumptions and practices of liberal arts education.

Their report, “The New College Plan”, proposed many of the attributes that have since been achieved in the Hampshire curriculum: welcoming students to self-design their program of studies; teaching students to be able to educate themselves through their existence; priorities on each student’s curiosity and motivates; schooling among and across multiple disciplines; and close supervision relationships with teachers.

In 1965, Amherst College’s past student Harold F. Johnson, stirred by the New College Plan, donated $6 million toward the creation of Hampshire College. With a corresponding grant from the Ford Foundation, Hampshire’s first trustees acquired 800 acres (3.2 km2) of orchard and farmland in South Amherst, Massachusetts, and building began.

One of the most notable founding documents of Hampshire College is the book “The Making of a College”, co-written by the College’s first president, Franklin Patterson, jointly with Hampshire’s founding employee of Amherst College who went on to become its second president, Chuck Longsworth. The Making of a College is (as of 2003) out of print, but accessible in electronic form from the Hampshire College Archives.

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Hampshire accepted its first students in 1970. For multiple years immediately after its creation in the early 1970s, the extensive number of enrollments for matriculation caused Hampshire College to be among the most selective undergraduate programs in the United States. The school has been financially handicapped through much of its history, in extensive part because it lacked an established endowment to rely on for constancy of income, and it has relied significantly on tuition revenue from operations.

In recent years, the college has been on a stronger financial footing, although still lacking a considerable endowment. In the mid-1990s, the college embarks on creating a “cultural village” achieving the residence of independent non-profit organizations on its campus. The cultural village is the National Yiddish Book Center, The Hitchcock Center for the Environment, and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Adele Simmons was the College’s third president, from 1977 to 1989. Gregory Prince later became its fourth president, from 1989 to 2005, which is the longest tenure of any Hampshire president. On April 1, 2004, Prince reported his retirement, efficient at the close of the 2004–2005 academic year. 

Hexter was appointed as the school president on October 15, 2005. The appointment made Hampshire one of a few colleges and universities in the United States with a publicly gay president.

Jonathan Lash was pronounced the College’s sixth president in May 2011, connecting Hampshire as an internationally recognized expert on global sustainability, climate change, and environmental challenges and solutions. Lash performed until 2018 and was backed by the College’s seventh president, Miriam Nelson, who started her appointment in July 2018 but left office in April 2019 after the failure of her plan for Hampshire to combine or partner with another institution.

The Hampshire College Archive in the Harold F. Johnson Library has extensively documented the College’s record between 1965 and 2005, available on the College’s Website. On August 23, 2012, the school proclaimed the founding of a scholarship fund committed to helping the undocumented student body get degrees. It would render more than $25,000 each year to help undocumented undergraduates pay for the $43,000-plus tuition.

In September 2019, there was a new class of 13 students and total registration was projected to be 600 students body (about half of typical enrollment) owing to decreased holding rates. However, approximately 750 students ended up returning for the fall 2019 term.

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Academics

Hampshire College is licensed by the New England Commission of Higher Education. Hampshire College, characterizes itself as “experimenting” rather than “experimental”, to point out the evolving nature of its syllabus. From its commencement, the curriculum has typically had certain non-traditional features:

  • An emphasis on project work and courses
  • Detailed written evaluations (as well as portfolio evaluations) for completing courses and projects, instead of letter or number grades
  • A curriculum focused on student interests, with students playing active roles in designing their concentrations and projects
  • An emphasis on independent motivation and student organization, both outside and within the college’s formal curriculum

The curriculum is split into three “divisions” instead of four grade years:

  • Division I: Exploration and Working Across Disciplines
  • Division II: Concentration
  • Division III: Creating Knowledge

Schools and Programs

The Hampshire College faculty is organized generally into formative Schools of thought:

  • Cognitive Science (CS): comprises linguistics, most psychology, some philosophy, neuroscience, and computer science.
  • Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (HACU): comprises a film, some studio arts, literature, media studies, architecture, art history, dance, music, and most philosophy.
  • Critical Social Inquiry (CSI): comprises most of sociology and anthropology, economics, history, politics, and some psychology.
  • Natural Science (NS): comprises most traditional sciences, mathematics, and biological anthropology.
  • Interdisciplinary Arts (IA): comprises theater, some studio arts, creative writing, and social entrepreneurship.

The manager of The Five College Program in Peace and World Security Studies (PAWSS) located in Hampshire is Michael Klare. 

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The national reproductive rights organization Civil Liberties and Public Policy (CLPP) works on Hampshire’s campus, where they are hosting an annual conference.  In 2014 Hampshire advertised the development of a new concentration, in Psychoanalytic Studies.

Five College Consortium

Hampshire College is the youngest amongst the schools in the Five-College Consortium. Partnering with four other colleges in the Pioneer Valley, which includes: Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Students at each respective school may offer classes and lend books to the other schools, completely without making any payments or additional fees. They are qualified to use resources at the other schools, which include internet access, dining halls, and more.

The five colleges collaboratively offer over 5,300 courses, and the five libraries possess over eight million books. The Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA) manages bus services in the schools and the greater Pioneer Valley area. There are two collective departments in the five-college consortium, which include: Dance and Astronomy.

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Admissions at Hampshire College

Hampshire College ceased accepting SAT and ACT scores of aspirants in 2014 both to eliminate income and ethnicity influence in standardized testing and focus evaluation of data better linked with college success and to a prolonged period instead of a single high-pressure test.

As a result, it was withdrawn from the U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking. The following year, the college said this move reduced the quantity, but increased the quality and diversity of candidates, and removed the incentive to “game” the U.S. News & World Report ranking by allowing less-qualified students with improved quantitative scores or encouraging unqualified students to apply.

Hampshire College Acceptance Rate and How to Get in Easily

Admission Requirements

To build a strong application that will get you into Hampshire College easily, the important requirement you should consider is:

  • GPA requirements
  • Testing requirements e.g SAT and ACT 
  • Application requirements

Keep reading to know the admission requirements based on the  Hampshire College acceptance rate. 

The acceptance rate is the first criteria you must consider before applying to Hampshire College. You will get to know the school’s competitiveness and the requirements you must meet. 

Hampshire College Acceptance Rate

The Hampshire College acceptance rate is 62.8%. Out of 100 applicants, 63 are selected.

The school admission process is competitive. The school’s GPA and SAT/ACT score requirements are more flexible than other schools, so you must meet these requirements to stand a better chance of getting in.

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Hampshire College GPA Requirements

Hampshire College’s average GPA is 3.71.  The school is very very competitive for GPAs.

The minimum GPA requirement is the bare minimum score required to submit an application that won’t get rejected immediately.

If you get a GPA of 3.71, you are expected to be above average in high school, with A’s and B’s on your high school transcript.  

SAT and ACT Requirements

Hampshire College has requirements, including SAT or ACT scores are required for standardizing tests. 

Before you apply to Hampshire, you must take either the SAT or ACT and perform well in the tests to have a strong application. 

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Hampshire College SAT Requirements

The average SAT score composite is 1290 on the 1600 SAT scale; a very competitive SAT score.

The 25th percentile New SAT score is 1200, while the 75th percentile score is 1400.

Below is the breakdown of new SAT scores by section:

SectionAverage25th Percentile75th Percentile
Math610560670
Reading + Writing680640730
Composite129012001400

Hampshire College Requirements

Just like for the SAT, there’s no known hard ACT cutoff mark based on the Hampshire College acceptance rate. However, if your score is low, you won’t stand a chance of getting an admission letter.

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The average ACT score at Hampshire College is 27. The 25th percentile ACT score is 25, and the 75th percentile ACT score is 31. In other words, 25 means ya below average, while 31 means above average. Hampshire has no absolute ACT requirement, but you must have at least 31 in your ACT to be considered.

If your ACT score is 25 or below, you won’t get accepted into Hampshire College.

Therefore, you should prepare for the ACT and retake it if your ACT score is 25 or below.

ACT Score Sending Policy

You can decide which ACT scores to send to Hampshire College if you’re taking the ACT. You can take a maximum of 10 tests, and send only your highest one.

With this, you get several chances to improve your ACT score. Therefore you should aim for an ACT score of 31 and above. Once you get the highest score that meets the average required ACT score, you can send it to Hampshire.

SAT/ACT Writing Section Requirements

The Hampshire College SAT and ACT have an optional essay section.

The SAT Essay/ACT Writing section is optional. It may or may not be part of the school’s admissions consideration.

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SAT Subject Test Requirements

Different schools may require SAT subject test requirements. Competitive schools in the US mostly require SAT subject test scores, while other schools do not.

It is unknown if Hampshire College requires SAT subject tests. It is most likely that it does not. Yet, check at least 6 months prior b, just to be sure, so that if the university requires SAT,  and have enough time to take the test.

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Conclusion

This Hampshire College acceptance rate will greatly benefit anyone seeking to know about the university’s GPA and SAT/ACT requirements. Hampshire College is an amazing private liberal arts college known for its alternative curriculum, self-governing academic concentrations, gradual politics, focus on portfolios, and its dependence on narrative assessment.

This College is amongst the most inventive colleges in the country and is licensed by the New England Commission of Higher Education. Students at Hampshire follow up on their passions with no barriers. The acceptance rate is the first criteria you must consider before applying to Hampshire College. You will get to know the school’s competitiveness and the requirements you must meet. 

FAQs on Hampshire College Acceptance Rate and How to Get in Easily

1. Is Hampshire College hard to get into?

The acceptance rate at Hampshire College is 62.8%. Out of 100 applicants, 63 are selected. The school admission process is competitive. It is recommended you prepare your academic scores well to have an excellent chance of being accepted.

2. What GPA do you need for Hampshire College?

Hampshire College’s average GPA is 3.71.  The school is very very competitive for GPAs. If you get a GPA of 3.71, you are expected to be above average in high school, with A’s and B’s on your high school transcript. 

3. Why does Hampshire College have such a low acceptance rate?

Hampshire is located in Amherst, MA, a very suburban area. With a small size of enrollment of just 800 students, smaller class sizes can be provided.

4. What are Hampshire College ACT Requirements?

The average ACT score at Hampshire College is 27. The 25th percentile ACT score is 25, and the 75th percentile ACT score is 31. In other words, 25 means ya below average, while 31 means above average. Hampshire has no absolute ACT requirement, but you must have at least 31 in your ACT to be considered.

5. Does Hampshire require SAT?

The average SAT score composite is 1290 on the 1600 SAT scale; a very competitive SAT score.
The 25th percentile New SAT score is 1200, while the 75th percentile score is 1400.

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