Koko Lists
Start a new list
Log in
Sign up
← New random battle
Koko Battle
Tap your pick.
Amherst College
Amherst College, founded in 1821, has long been considered Williams College's closest rival for the title of best liberal arts college in the country, and the two schools' athletic rivalry, dating to an 1859 baseball game believed to be the first intercollegiate game ever played, is the oldest continuous college sports rivalry in the United States. The college's open curriculum, which imposes no distribution requirements beyond a single required first-year seminar, gives Amherst students more freedom to design their own academic path than almost any other selective liberal arts college, a distinctive approach the school has maintained for decades. Amherst was among the earliest highly selective liberal arts colleges to adopt need-blind admission for both domestic and international applicants, and its socioeconomic diversity relative to peer institutions is frequently cited by higher-education researchers as a model other elite colleges have since tried to replicate. The college's small size, fewer than 2,000 students, and its central Massachusetts location within the Five College Consortium — alongside Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, and UMass Amherst — give students access to a much broader range of courses and social life than the college's own enrollment alone would suggest.
VS
Williams College
Williams College, founded in 1793 through the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonial military officer killed in the French and Indian War, is consistently ranked as the number one liberal arts college in the country by US News & World Report, a distinction it has held more often than any other school since the rankings began. The college's "tutorial" system, in which small groups of two students meet weekly with a professor to debate and critique each other's work directly, is modeled on Oxford and Cambridge's teaching methods and gives Williams students a level of direct faculty engagement uncommon even among other elite liberal arts colleges. Williams's remote location in the Berkshires, in the small town of Williamstown, has fostered an unusually self-contained and close-knit residential campus culture, and the school's "Purple Bubble" nickname reflects both its physical isolation and the intensity of the community that forms within it. The college's endowment per student ranks among the very highest of any undergraduate institution in the country, funding need-blind admission and full-need financial aid, and its combination of top-ranked academics, small size, and financial resources has made it the benchmark liberal arts college nationally.
Next battle
Full comparison
About Amherst College
About Williams College
Popular Battles
1984 vs. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
1 votes
Friends vs. Curb Your Enthusiasm
1 votes
Ideogram vs. Sora
1 votes
Navy Pier vs. Bishop Museum
1 votes
Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree vs. Skittles
1 votes
George Carlin vs. Oprah Winfrey
1 votes
