College Consortiums

Do you want to go to a small liberal arts college but still have access to graduate courses at a university? Want an education at a women's college but still want to be near lots of male students? Would you like to attend an innovate college with a do-it-yourself curriculum but still need access to upper-level math and physics? Can't afford a private college but still like small liberal arts classes?

If any of these questions describe you, you may want to consider attending a college that is part of a consortium. Consortiums bring a group of colleges together and enable students to take advantage of courses, libraries, athletics, activities, and social opportunities at colleges other than their own. These arrangements vary from the one between Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Wellsley College (which enables cross-registration for courses unavailable at the student's home institution) to the one between Columbia University, Barnard College, and the Jewish Theological Seminary (which retains separate housing facilities and some separate professors but complete integration of academic and social life).

For those who want to attend a specific separate college but still take advantage of the resources of a consortium, two specific groupings provide the best answer.

This consortium brings together Mount Holyoke College (http://www.mtholyoke.edu), the nation's oldest institution of higher education for women; Amherst College (http://www.amherst.edu), one of the nation's highest-ranked coeducational liberal arts colleges; Hampshire College (http://www.hampshire.edu), a small coeducational college with an innovate self-designed curriculum and unique classes; Smith College (http://www.smith.edu), a women's college offering a unique women-only school of engineering and coeducational graduate programs in art history, dance, and social work; and the University of Massachusetts - Amherst (http://www.umass.edu), a world-class public university offering undergraduate, master's, doctorate, and certificate programs in nearly everything under the sun.

Students at any one of the five colleges are able to register for up to half of their classes at other colleges without special permission (and even more with a signature from the dean). They have borrowing privileges at each other's libraries and can request books to be send to them within just a few days. Students are invited to participate in each other's activities and a calendar of events at all of the colleges is printed once a month, as well as being available online. Several innovate certificate programs which require coursework at more than one college are also available, in areas like health science and policy; Middle Eastern studies; and peace and world security. The dance and astronomy departments are even combined for all five colleges!

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