<p>I had encouraged my D to look at Amherst, and we even visited during Junior year. In the end, she thought it was too isolated and small. Though to be honest, on that trip she also saw Tufts and Brown, so Amherst was the odd man out. I would have pushed her not to let the smallness sway her too much since there are a very small number of schools in the medium sized selective categories outside of the ivies (and she did end up applying to a bunch of similarly sized schools in the end, by the way). What led me to stop advocating Amherst was that they have accepted fewer than 5 students from our HS in the last 8 years, and none in the last 2. Swat, Middlebury, Carleton, Williams, Bowdoin, and Haverford (not to mention the ivies, Wash U, Duke) all have healthy numbers of admissions for our kids. The patterns seem too strong to be random, so I assumed there was either an admissions policy difference at amherst or their regional rep has something against our school.</p>