by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual analyzes over 2,000 colleges and universities in its annual rankings and ranks them in a variety of ways, including most diverse, best overall quality, best for non-traditional students, and much more.
Amherst College was awarded 14 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is history.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Amherst landed the #72 spot in College Factual's 2025 ranking of best overall colleges in the United States. The higher ed experts analyzed 2,152 colleges and universities across the nation to determine this ranking. This lands it a coveted spot in the top 5% of all colleges and universities in the country.
Out of the 63 colleges in Massachusetts, Amherst is ranked at #12.
Amherst College has a very low acceptance rate of 7%, making it one of the most selective out of all the colleges and universities in the nation. It's probably a good idea to apply to other schools in addition to Amherst just in case you don't make the cut.
About 40% of students accepted to Amherst submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 700 and 760. Math scores were between 720 and 790.
At Amherst, the student to faculty ratio is an excellent 7 to 1. That's much better than the national average of 15 to 1. This indicates that many classes will probably be small, and students will have ample opportunites to work closely with their professors and classmates.
Another measure that is often used to estimate how much access students will have to their professors is how many faculty members are full-time. The idea here is that part-time faculty tend to spend less time on campus, so they may not be as available to students as full-timers.
The full-time faculty percentage at Amherst College is 94%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
The freshmen retention rate of 95% tells us that most first-year, full-time students like Amherst College enough to come back for another year. This is a fair bit higher than the national average of 68%. That's certainly something to check off in the good column about the school.
The on-time graduation rate for someone pursuing a bachelor's degree is typically four years. This rate at Amherst for first-time, full-time students is 85%, which is better than the national average of 33.3%.
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Amherst College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,745 full-time undergraduates at Amherst.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $7,895 | $11,119 | $16,409 | $21,178 | $50,853 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Amherst, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
It's not uncommon for college students to take out loans to pay for school. In fact, almost 66% of students nationwide depend at least partially on loans. At Amherst, approximately 12% of students took out student loans averaging $9,293 a year. That adds up to $37,172 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Amherst College.
Contact details for Amherst are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | Boltwood Avenue, Amherst, MA 01002-5000 |
| Phone: | 413-542-2000 |
| Website: | www.amherst.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Economics | 91 | $90,568 |
| Mathematics | 89 | $78,500 |
| Child Development & Psychology | 61 | $45,786 |
| Political Science & Government | 61 | $61,125 |
| Computer Science | 55 | $100,596 |
| General English Literature | 41 | $41,979 |
| General Biology | 31 | NA |
| Biochemistry, Biophysics & Molecular Biology | 27 | NA |
| Area Studies | 27 | $49,149 |
| Neurobiology & Neurosciences | 25 | $38,387 |
If you’re considering Amherst College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Amherst? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.