A notable statistic among the myriad figures bandied around at this time of the year was the sharp drop in the percentage of applicants to admitted students. "Ten years ago when the class of '41 was selected, only 31% [of applicants] were rejected; 75% of the applicants for the present class were refused," The Amherst Student reported. This perhaps represented the birth of ever more selective admissions trends, which have endured to the present day when, on average, four of five prospective students are turned away.
Diversity considerations, too, were also only in their infancy as the U.S. prepared for the Cold War and a decade of political paranoia. In spite of The Student's proclamation, with a hint of pride, that "while neither the class of '45 nor the class of '41 had members from any foreign country or territory, the new freshman class has one each from China, Hawaii and Puerto Rico," this improvement was still a far cry from the keenly competitive international admissions the College sees in recent times. Undergraduates from over 40 different countries today lend 21st century Amherst a cosmopolitan look and feel.
The Class of '51 was, in addition, the first cohort of first-years to tackle the College's revised curriculum, which primarily consisted of a shift from five courses to the now-familiar four. (Of course, many a daring–and foolish–freshman juggles five courses these days). As opposed to the open curriculum students currently enjoy, the freshmen in 1947 found themselves plunged headlong into a mass of electives and required course sequences.
As worn soldiers and fresh-faced young men came to terms with collegiate demands in post-war America, Eugene S. Wilson '29, director of admissions, found time to pronounce that most time-honored of admissions utterances, that "the freshman class is the ablest, academically speaking, to enter Amherst since College Board entrance examinations [were] used."