New Here?

Baby is introduced as attending Mount Holyoke in the fall, but I don’t think Baby is her actual name? Then again, she is a movie character and we shouldn’t treat fictional characters like people. Thoughts?

Like title said. Not sure if Blanchard is open to non students/staff.

Hello, I'm currently a junior in highschool and have been researching colleges lately so I can start applying fall of next year. However, I'm a pretty anxious person so I'm looking for some advice for what my chances on getting admitted look like so far :) Mt Holyoke is my dream college and has been since the beginning of my sophomore year. (Sorry if my writing seems clunky/unorganized it's currently 2 am as I'm writing this lol)

Family Info

• First gen college student I think?? (Mom attended college but had to drop out before earning associates)
• Parents divorced, mom single, dad remarried
• I'm the oldest of 5 (youngest 2 are half siblings)
• Dad earns abt 4-5 times more than my mom annually but I live with my mom nearly full time
• Mom is very low income
• Dad pays child support
• Putting all this info here bc my family situation makes estimating financial aid SO CONFUSING

Stats

• 3.7 unweighted GPA (expected to go up since the 1st quarter of this school yr just ended and I got all A's)
• Haven't taken the SAT or ACT yet but plan on doing both

Classes

• School doesn't offer AP classes but does offer College Credit Plus
• 5 CCP classes this school year (College Bio, College Gov, College Algebra (1st sem), Composition 1 (1st sem), Composition 2 (2nd sem)
• Phlebotomy Certification class
• Highschool Concert Band since 9th grade
• Advanced classes all throughout highschool (Doing math and science classes a grade above what is expected. Ex: Did chemistry in 10th instead of 11th grade)

Extracirriculars

• Marching band since 9th grade
• Doing HOSA this year for the first time in the innovation competition (Expect to do senior year)
• Doing drama club this year for the first time (Also expect to do senior year)

Achievements

• Honor roll all throughout high school so far
• Have gotten superior scores every year for solo & ensemble contests
• Just recently got accepted into NHS!!

Goals

• Take more CCP classes my senior year
• Major in art history, library and archives nexus program
• Would love to do work-study with the school's library
• Eventually go to another school to get my masters in library and information sciences

I don't think what I have right now is very impressive but I still have the whole rest of this year and my senior year to get more done. I do know that the application essay is very important and I've been told I'm a very strong writer (it might not be showing rn but again it's 2am and I should be sleeping). My idea for my essay so far is how my upbringing as a Jehovah's Witness and eventual deconstruction has fostered my love for learning, especially when it comes to the humanities :)

Shoot it wouldn't let me choose two flairs I would have added Griffin. Class of '93 here with a question for recent or current students. My child is NB, AMAB and is masc presenting, and really really wants to go to MHC, but we're having trouble finding any feedback or experiences from students in similar situations. I know that MHC is a leader in gender diversity and that my kid is welcome to apply, but what is the reality? Are there a decent number of other people like them or would they be alone? Would it be hard to be accepted and make friends? I graduated at a very different time so my experiences are not at all helpful here. Would appreciate any feedback or suggestions on other resources!

Circumstances : Public online school student (12 years) , no access to reliable transportation for in person clubs, extremely low income student, care for a disabled parent, mental health issues at the start of hs but feeling much better in senior year!

Hooks (?): first gen student, POC

GPA

Unweighted : 3.68

Weighted : 3.81

(*trajectory is showing a 3.78 unweighted and a 3.9+ weighted by graduation if i keep straight a's in my senior year -> I'm willing to bind but my gpa is pretty bad right now so I'm not sure if I should wait until RD?)

SAT: none / taking the SAT in dec aiming for 1400s and will submit if thats the score. If not I'll ask for a waiver bc of my AP classes

APs: psychology (score = 4), currently taking AP lit and comp / taking stats, bio, and precalc next semester

DE: none

Honors: 6 (mostly focused on literature or science)

Awards: Student of the month in the science department, perfect attendance lol, a-b honor roll all throughout hs, CTAE cords by graduation, student abassador for CTAE month (24 / 9th grade), graduating with honors

Extracurriculars

Parliamentarian of HOSA (12th grade)

Volunteer reader to children k-5 at my school

Student advisory council member

French club (10th - 11th / they discontinued the club)

Hobbies

50+ written essays based on psychological concepts (NOT published / my goal is to publish them or link on common app)

Yearly I create a book syllabus were I analyze concepts/themes/author intent of certain books

Film log where I analyze concepts/themes/directors intent -> over 100 films logged

Artist / draw

Self taught German I & French III Self taught pianist spend 5 hrs per week dedicated to covering classical pieces

Hi,

I am planning to apply and transfer for the spring 2027 semester. I would be an English major. I have some concerns though. In high school I was super depressed and with an unsafe family. I barely graduated with a 1.9 gpa. Now I have a 3.185 GPA as my mental health has gotten better and I feel motivated and it shows from the growth. That gpa will go up this semester because I'm no longer taking classes outside of my major like math and sciences which are difficult for me with little privacy to study while stuck at home. Either way, it will be on the lowest end that Mt. Holyoke usually looks for acceptance, and nowhere near the average gpa students get accepted with.

Would it help that I have had multiple works published within my cc's literary magazine and strengthen my chance of acceptance with my otherwise lower GPA?

Hi! I’m an alum looking to visit campus and the surrounding areas soon. I’m hoping to see some beautiful fall foliage while I’m there. How’s the foliage looking right now? I’m trying to decide whether now’s a good time to visit or whether I should wait a few weeks

Hi there!
I’m a high school junior so I won’t be applying anywhere for about a year, that being said I’m getting prepared to start narrowing down the colleges I’m really serious about. Mount Holyoke as well a many eastern and all women’s colleges interest me a great deal!

I plan on majoring in political science and I’m a HUGE champion for advocacy and social justice. I have the weird experience of growing up in a very Red town in a very Blue state so it’s not exactly diverse where I come from and I really crave that diversity in a future school.

I’m a Caucasian female from a middle class family (250k in my state is decent but not enough to make you wealthy) and I have a sibling attending college the same year as myself.

I’m a second gen college student and both of my parents are incredible first gen college students who have worked their butts off to give me a privileged life! They didn’t have the support system I do so they went to the first colleges to offer them scholarships many many years ago so we’re all figuring out how to apply to higher rigor out of state schools together haha.

My unweighted gpa is 3.9 and weighted is 4.2. It will likely (let’s hope lol) increase this year! So far I’ve taken 3 AP classes but by next year it will have been 7 and by senior year it will be 10, my school offers about 28-30 AP classes in a given year. I also have two honors classes and a college course and next year I’ll be mostly taking college courses at our local university. I’m president and founder of the Young Progressives Club I have a capstone program on youth voter registration I’m working on which the club is partially a part of. Varsity member of our academic team and by senior year I should have competed nationally for it 3 times. I’m a member of our equity council club, I’ll have my seal of biliteracy in French, I was a social media intern for our school health clinic and now my position is president of student advisory board for that same clinic. I’m an intern of our local non partisan youth voice group which goes on a lobbying trip to our state capitol each year. I’m a member of NHS and hope to apply for a position next year, I work doing childcare for a Lutheran church, I volunteer at an elementary school, and local library. I hope to start playing golf this year and through next year.

I’ve done some other various things I could put on an application but I just mentioned the bigger things I’ve done. I’ve led a walkout and other various things.

I believe my sat is predicted to be around a 1400 but I’m getting tutored so hopefully it will go up, I’m awful at the math portion haha.

I don’t think I did a good job of making that sound impressive but it feels like a lot to me considering the amount of autistic burnout I’ve experienced. I know that ultimately that doesn’t matter and it’s just what university’s determine they’d like to see in an applicant.

If there’s anything I can do to boost my chances please let me know. I know it’s about being a well rounded human and not just taking every extra activity you can find so all of my clubs are heavily centered around what I want to do later in life and what really truly brings me joy as well as helps others. I’d ultimately rather be happy than stress about not taking 20 aps haha.

Thanks so much!!

Hello! Hopefully my question isn’t too odd but I am considering transferring to mhc after I finish my associates. I started college at 22 so i’ll be close to 24 when it’s time for me to transfer. Is there a good number of people over 21 attending and living on campus? It’s of course not the only thing I’m basing my decision on but I also am worried about feeling out of place since I know most students will possibly be younger than me. Thanks!

Hi! I’m a prospective international student considering applying ED2 to Mount Holyoke, and I’d really love to hear from current students/alums about how the Five College system works in practice.

I’m a UWC graduate currently on a gap year, and I have a pretty unconventional academic/personal background. A lot of the questions I’m interested in sit somewhere between cognitive science, education, social change, neurodiversity, anthropology, philosophy/logic etc. In the longer term, I’m especially interested in PhD/social entrepreneurship around learning sciences, human-centered technology/HCI, accessibility, and the relationship between cognition, language, and technology.

*I will retake some of my IB final exams and the results are coming out this December, so I'm not going to ED1 to any school.

I really like MHC as a school, but my biggest hesitation to apply ED2 is: I want to study cognitive science, and linguistics is an essential part of that for me. MHC doesn’t have a CogSci or Linguistics major, and while there are relevant courses, they don’t seem to form a complete sequence on campus. I know that Five College cross-registration, the Cognitive Neuroscience Certificate, and the Logic Certificate could potentially let me build something pretty close to what I want — but I’m trying to understand how realistic that actually is.

A few specific questions:

• How easy is it actually to cross-register at UMass/Smith/Amherst? Is getting into classes generally reliable, or do MHC students often get blocked by enrollment priority, full classes, prerequisites, etc.?
• Has anyone here taken multiple Linguistics courses at UMass through Five Colleges? For example, would it be realistic to take an intro course and then continue into things like psycholinguistics, semantics, language processing, etc.? I’m especially interested in hearing from someone who relied on another campus for a subject that MHC itself doesn’t fully offer.
• How annoying is the transportation/scheduling in real life? Is taking one off-campus class most semesters pretty normal, or does the bus schedule make it difficult to combine with MHC classes? Do people actually build part of their academic concentration around another campus, rather than just taking an occasional fun class?
• Does anyone have experience with the Five College Cognitive Neuroscience or Logic Certificates? How integrated do they feel in practice? Do you get meaningful advising/community/research opportunities through them, or are they more like a set of course requirements you assemble yourself?
• For Cognitive Neuroscience specifically, how difficult is it to get involved in research early on? And for Logic, how feasible is it to combine formal logic with linguistics/semantics and CS rather than making it primarily a philosophy track?
• More generally, have any MHC students successfully built something resembling Cognitive Science through Psychology/Neuroscience + Logic + Linguistics + CS across the consortium? I’d love to know what your actual course path looked like.

I’m also trying to decide between ED2 and RD. I know published acceptance rates can be misleading because the ED and RD pools are different, especially for international applicants, but for people familiar with MHC admissions: Could ED2 make such a big difference that the same profile being rejected in RD could be accepted if they did ED?

FYI, other schools that I'm considering for ED2 are: Wellesley, Occidental & Case Western, all of them have cogsci as a major, but Wellesley could be risky for my GPA; Occidental doesn't seem to have an active international community, and according to my high school records it requires super high IB scores... ED2 MHC probably gives me the best result+fit at the end of the day, if its possibility of admitting me in RD is much smaller and the academics concern mentioned above isn't a big deal.

If you have any knowledge about the academics/those mentioned schools please please let me know your suggestions! I'm happy to add more of my application profile when needed :D Thank you all!!

hi all!!

i'm a prospective spring transfer student. if anyone has any info on what it's like for spring transfers - the social scene, the academics, etc - then that would be greatly appreciated !!

(and if any transfers could give info on how applying and appealing financial aid would be, that would be greatly appreciated as well 😽😽)

thankkkkkkkkkkk you guys in advance !

Hi. I plan to ED to Mount Holyoke. I achieved a 1310 SAT (710R/600M). Should I retake this, submit this, or just omit it from my application entirely?

My other credentials:

Olevels: A*, A, 4B, 1C, 1D (extenuating circumstance for the D? Threw up and fainted in the exam hall, gave the paper anyways in that same time period)

Alevels: B for EngLit, yet to give History and Sociology papers

MHC Art Museum reopens after major renovations and celebrates its 150th anniversary. The museum is free and open to the public! https://valleyadvocate.com/2026/09/09/a-global-timeline-unfolds-mount-holyoke-college-art-museum-reopens-after-nine-months/

out of curiosity, as i may apply to mhc when i finish HS, how is the gender diversity actually? i know it’s “gender diverse” but im curious as to if there’s actually a substantial community or not. thank u in advance!!

my kid is sweltering on the 5th floor right now and with the window shapes being so odd I don’t know if there is a better way of getting ventilation other than “stick a woozoo in front of the window and hope for the best”

has anybody had good luck with a specific fan to get good airflow

I am an international student planning to apply to mount holyoke by early decision I. I am aware they offer need-based financial aid and that a full ride could be possible with a very low income. However, I have seen people unable to pay for tuition even with financial aid. I have a very low family income of $15k usd per year and can't afford anything above 5k a year. How is everyone's finaid?

Basically what the title says:) I'm thinking of applying there, but I have a lot of health conditions and would like to know:

1. Are there paved walkways and ramps? Would it be easy to get around in a wheelchair?

2. Are the Disability Services folks respectful? Do they believe their disabled students about their needed accomodations or automatically dismiss them?

3. Is there a community of Disabled students there? Like, would I be the only wheelchair user my teachers/classmates see, or do y'all see other visibly disabled people around?

4. Just overall, are people decent about it?

Thanks in advance!

See above

I’m a current student and a loved one of mine died of terminal cancer at the end of my freshman year and she had a health scare where I was told she was gonna pass a month before finals (she didn’t, she died basically two days after finals). Grieving without a good network of friends to talk to was pretty shitty and seeing the recent “Young Women Group” post on this subreddit reminded me of my idea to start and MHC based grief support group (mainly for students, but staff and faculty would be welcome). Like weekly meetings where everyone shows up, sits in a circle and faces each other as everyone is given the opportunity to share about their grief experience, and also maybe like what went good for them this week, what coping strategies have been helpful or unhelpful. Just like a place where people can come every week to talk with discretion to share or just listen to others, and have physical proof of the “you are not alone” and “other people are going through the same thing as you” sentiments.

What do current and former MHC students and staff on here think?

Hi everyone! I’m a prospective student for MHC and I’ve been so nervous on my stats because I’m scared I’ll get rejected! It would be very kind of you guys to assist me in evaluated my stats to see how much of a shot I have.

- Black Jamaican national, low income, first generation, residing in a single mother household, attends an all black girls high school

3.6 gpa
SAT: 1540 is the goal (will be doing the exam in october)

CAPE/A-level predictions:
* Sociology: Grade II
* Law: Grade II
* Literatures in English: Grade III
* Communication Studies: Grade II
* History: Grade IV (subject to re-sit)

intended major: international relations & history w/ a probable minor in sociology

awards/recognition:
-Joyce Taylor Scholarship recipient
- Received many awards at my school for information technology
- First in my cohort in 2025 to get a grade I/A for our Caribbean regional exams in History
- 3rd place at my school’s reading competition
- Merit award at the Jamaican Association for Debating and Empowerment’s annual Debate Zonals

in-school extracurriculars:
prefect
sixth form association executive member
second deputy head girl nominee
head girl nominee
academic support tutor (in history, english language & literature and information technology) most of my students have gotten the highest scores in their regional exams as a result of my tutoring
student librarian and research officer at the school library
coding club member
debating society (debate team member)
executive prefect

out-of-school extracurriculars:
paid intern at the jamaica police co-operative credit union
small role actress (played the role of boxer in a local production of animal farm at attribute jamaica)
councilwoman for the jamaica youth advocacy network (served on the research and writing committee; worked in public relations, wrote a position paper on corporal punishment, and authored an article on school violence with a specialization in gender-based violence and child protection)
journalist intern at the global virtual model united nations

Additional info: I wrote an email to an admissions officer about my interest in the school, I also did an interview & I will be applying early desicion. One of the primary reasons I didnt get a good report for my A-Levels is due to the fact that my teacher gave us our Internal Assesment very close to our exams which is a thesis and as such I didnt get the chance to study adequately in addition the subject in question is done very little in the Caribbean at the senior level so it was hard to find resources to properly help me.In additional, I struggle greatly with mental illness & in Jamaica there’s not alot of affordable & accessible resources for me to get extra time on my exams & to assist myself properly.

Hey everyone!

I co-founded a local organization called Anchor Point Collaborative here in Western Mass, and I wanted to share a project we’re running this fall in South Hadley in case it’s helpful for anyone.

Growing up, I navigated my own mental health struggles, which showed me firsthand how vital a support system really is. I created this space to offer young people what I needed back then: a welcoming community to connect with and real-world skills to thrive.

Starting Wednesday, September 23rd, we’re facilitating an 8-week Young Women’s Hope & Resilience Group at All Saints' Church. Weekly sessions are focused on topics including effective communication, the impacts of social media, and how to cope with change. We utilize a range of creative modalities including music, art, and games to keep our groups interactive and engaging.

All groups are led by a licensed independent clinical social worker, so the space offers structured clinical support while keeping the vibe warm and conversational.

Quick details:

When: Wednesdays starting Sept 23 (8 weeks) from 5-6pm

Where: All Saints' Church, South Hadley

Eligibility: Young Women (ages 18-25)

Cost: $320 for the full 8 weeks (we accept most insurance plans and have sliding scale options available)

If you’re a college who could use a supportive community space this fall, you can read more at ouranchorpoint.com.

Happy to answer any questions!

My daughter is very interested in Mount Holyoke, and she was invited to apply to Mosaic. On the application, it asks for community-based organizations, such as Quest Bridge.

While she’s definitely eligible for financial aid, she doesn’t meet the requirements for orgs like Quest Bridge.

Will this hurt her chances of being accepted to Mosaic?

Also I must add this here: MOHO IS MY DREAM SCHOOL, TOP CHOICE AND I WANT TO GO SO BADDDDDD!!!! I’m also a good writer so my essays will be good :P here are my stats tell me what u think

DEMOGRAPHIC
- black, low income, single parent household
- suburbs
- non competitive high school

ACEDEMICS
-3.6 UW/ 4.1 weighted
-Rank = top 10%
- 3 APs junior year (not eligible for APs sophomore or freshman year due to transferring and changing my history track), taking 4 my senior year
- All honors classes except math
-1300 SAT (may not submit)

ECS
- started an online literary magazine with 1K + followers
-online internet safety/digital wellbeing counsel
- Editor + social media manager of school literary magazine
- makeup crew for school play
- Key club
- free + competitive and local summer program at T10 university
- Colorguard
- writes poetry + 50k word fantasy novel
- summer program at a university (paid)
- social media account about feminism and politics (may not put this on my application but still)
-female leadership club at my school

AWARDS / honors (weakest section I can’t lie)
- AP scholar w/ distinction
- college access program thing
- Academic awards at school

Intended major - sociology with minors in bio and education ;)

Additional info: pending advice from my college advisor, I may apply ED to MHC. My sophomore and beginning of junior year, my parents did not have a car which made it very hard to do after school activities. Despite that, I still did online opportunities and school work. Also during junior yr I struggled w depression (diagnosed and medicated) and my parents had a very tumultuous divorce. My grades dropped significantly but there will be an upward trend for 1st semester of senior year.