Hello! I’m having a difficult time deciding between Amherst and Bowdoin. I’m currently interested in majoring in math and economics, hopefully going into a career in finance. I’ve visited both campuses, and I got a great feeling at both, so I have a few questions: which school is better for finance recruiting? Is it true that recruiting is easier at Bowdoin since it’s less competitive? Which school has better math and economics majors? Thanks for your help!
In terms of the study of economics, these colleges appear as an essentially indistinguishable 17th and 18th in their category as measured by faculty scholarship:
Have you looked at the calendars for both, for recruiters coming to campus or other events?
I did a basic search for “finance” on Amherst’s and got https://www.amherst.edu/news/calendar?f[0]=_mm_text%3Afinance
…but that’s only ones in the future and wouldn’t cover specific firms coming or whatever, but poke around. I’m sure Bowdoin has something similar but I know very little about Bowdoin.
Bowdoin is far away from NYC. It would take mostly enthusiastic alumni to do on-campus recruiting. Relatively speaking, Amherst has a better location. A hard-working recruiter can do Williams and Amherst in 1 day.
Location plays a role in finance recruiting because recruiters are often revenue-generating employees who may dislike spending time on recruiting.
The major finance companies recruit at both of these schools. They aren’t going to skip Bowdoin because it’s 2 hours further from NYC. And it’s only 2 hours from Boston. It’s also 25 minutes from the Portland airport which is less than an hour flight from any of the NYC metro airports and it’s right on the Amtrak line from NYC or Boston.