Amherst College is a private liberal arts college in Amherst, Massachusetts. Founded in 1821 as an attempt to relocate Williams College by its then-president Zephaniah Swift Moore, Amherst is the third oldest institution of higher education in Massachusetts.The institution was named after the town, which in turn had been named after Jeffery, Lord Amherst. Originally established as a men's college, Amherst became coeducational in 1975. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution; the school enrolled 1,849 students in fall 2016.Students choose courses from 38 major programs in an open curriculum and are not required to study a core curriculum or fulfill any distribution requirements; students may also design their own interdisciplinary major. For the class of 2023, Amherst received 10,567 applications and accepted 1,144, yielding a 10.8% acceptance rate. Amherst was ranked as the best liberal arts college in the country for 2018–19 by The Wall Street Journal, the second best liberal arts college in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and 16th out of all U.S. colleges and universities by Forbes in their 2018 rankings. Amherst competes in the New England Small College Athletic Conference. Amherst has historically had close relationships and rivalries with Williams College and Wesleyan University, which form the Little Three colleges. The college is a member of the Five College Consortium, which allows its students to attend classes at four other Pioneer Valley institutions: Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.