<p>If Bowdoin were to be ranked within the US News and World Report of schools, where do you think it would be placed? My friend and I were discussing this today. Interested in your views.</p>
<p>Not sure I understand your question. Bowdoin IS ranked at #6 in US News’s LAC rankings.</p>
<p>[Liberal</a> Arts Rankings - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/liberal-arts-rankings]Liberal”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/liberal-arts-rankings)</p>
<p>I think he means on the National University List:
I think it would be ranked right between UVA and USC at the number 25 spot</p>
<p>This is a pretty hard question to answer. I mean, it’s impossible to compare colleges that have grad schools and those that do not. If it’s only undergrad, I think liberal arts school will ace the 1~10 rank spots.</p>
<p>i agree that it’s too tough to try to compare lac’s and universities with ungrad and grad parts.</p>
<p>if you do a little searching you can find some stuff, forbes for example ranked bowdoin 15 on a national list: [America’s</a> Best Colleges - Forbes.com](<a href=“Forbes List Directory”>Forbes List Directory)</p>
<p>but then again…the united states military academy and california institute of tech is ranked above yale? stanford is ranked below smith and centre college? pretty much no one cares about doing these types of rankings because it ends up making no sense. no point is trying to compare two diff. types of schools</p>
<p>why is it that shocking for those colleges to be ranked below, just because it doestn fallow us world news report?</p>
<p>it’s not shocking. each rank has so many different ways of going about doing it. lots of people don’t even like rankings and are against it. but if you want to do it, i guess it just makes more sense to rank each university or college while trying to make them comparable, which is what the us world news report does.</p>
<p>i think theres a pretty clear difference between a small LAC versus a big uni or state university, and im sure high school juniors think about this difference as they start their apps</p>
<p>tufts and bowdoin are pretty much at the same level, with tufts having more name recognition. they’re both great.</p>
<p>wait what? i don’t understand where does tufts factor in to this</p>
<p>hahahah i typed this into the wrong thread! they posted one asking about tufts vs bowdoin and i meant to reply to that one</p>
<p>^^ hahaha hpgirl2010 i just laughed out loud</p>
<p>What do you guys think about this? [America’s</a> Best Colleges - Forbes.com](<a href=“Forbes List Directory”>Forbes List Directory) Do you find it credible? Would you agree Bowdoin’s positioning in it or not?</p>
<p>It’s from the students’ point of view…</p>
<p>hahaha summerspirit i did too when i realized what i did.</p>
<p>and light10491… if rank is so important to you then i dont think bowdoin’s the place for you. if you can’t realize that rankings aren’t the most important thing in the world… then don’t go to bowdoin. you should go to a school based on whether or not YOU like it not what the us news thinks of it. i dont think polar bears like elitists.</p>
<p>there are a fair share of elitists at bowdoin though</p>
<p>light, to be honest i don’t think the forbes rankings or any other rankings are taken as seriously as the usnews rankings. </p>
<p>anyone who is serious about college rankings (however ridiculous that might be) usually accepts usnews rankings. and even though tons of people are against ranking colleges, if you have to do it, usnews does it pretty well</p>
<p>Agreed cilyboi. Bowdoin and Middlebury used to be places where preppy Ivy rejects congregated to party, but they have since transformed themselves into serious academic institutions, and their recent surges in ranking attest to this. If it weren’t for the rankings, Bowdoin and Middlebury’s improvements may have gone largely unrecognized.</p>
<p>Coming from a Bowdoin student, I would say that most people don’t really care much about those rankings here. While there are some yes, the majority of people just go about their business and work hard. There are people here who came because they didnt get into their top Ivy choice, but there are also others, like myself, who had no interest in going to an Ivy but instead a solid smaller school. there are even kids who came here over ivies. So, at the end of the day, it is a good school and is recognized by grad porgrams and employers as being up there with ivies and other top universities.</p>
<p>so if we are to play the perilous game of ranking liberal arts with Universities, where do you think Williams, Amherst and Swarthmore would be?</p>
<p>1) firstly, just re-stating that no one compares LACs to universities schools, and that rankings that do attempt this fail and lose credibility.</p>
<p>2) if you had to do it, any top ~8-10 liberal arts schools would correlate to the top universities. employers recognize them as being different, but increasingly value them the same. ivies have always been nice, and as drought said, more people are seeing comparable grad school, med/law school admissions and even better recruiting opportunities from top banks. </p>
<p>3) trying to distinguish between williams, amherst, swat, wells, midd, bowdoin, pomona is like trying to distinguish between stanford, harvard, princeton, yale, mit, dartmouth, columbia. it doesn’t make any sense to. though i can tell you right away that MIT and swarthmore are FAMOUS for being unbearably nerdy. wells is an all girls school. other than that, your’e good to go</p>
<p>
I suppose Longfellow and Hawthorne whiled away their 4 years at Bowdoin back in the day by throwing down brewskis on the lawn in front of Mass Hall and commiserating with each other about life as Harvard rejects who ended up at party central. .</p>