Hiya,
I’m currently a rising senior.
I absolutely love Bowdoin and everything about it, except one thing-- how small it is.
I’m considering applying early decision to Bowdoin this fall, but I wanted to hear from anyone about what it’s like to actually be in the social scene of an 1800 person school. I do love having good, close relationships with my teachers but I’m worried more about friend groups and such. Also, does anyone have any opinions or experiences with elitism/ preppiness at Bowdoin?
Thanks so much!
How big is your high school? Do you find it socially limited?
It would be nice for you to hear from current students, though lately not are many posting here. I know a few and none of them have found it overly preppy or clicky, and none of them are preppy or varsity athletes themselves. They have said there are quite a few weekends without a lot of events to attend on campus other than drinking parties, so if you’re in to that no problem, if not it can take some work to find your non-study groove.
Overall, there are people who want the vibe of a small LAC and those that want the vibe of a large university. If you are looking for a small city worth of people with limitless activities and social groups and multiple competing things constantly going on, a small LAC is probably not for you. Teachers aside, if you like the vibe that by your junior year you know almost everyone in your year at least a little, it is your vibe.
If you want a happy medium, consider Wesleyan or Vassar. I’m sure there are others but both of those stood out to me among the LAC’s in terms of the level of student activities going on every week and weekend. I’m not trying to steer you away from Bowdoin, just pointing out those two LAC’s had just tons and tons of plays, dance, music events often competing with each other every weekend.
Though Bowdoin’s campus itself may be smaller than those of some of its peers, from a historical enrollment perspective, the current Bowdoin is not particularly small. During the stages when some well known LACs developed their reputations, their enrollments were often well below 2000:
c. 1984
Reed: 1100
Bowdoin: 1350
Kenyon: 1450
Amherst: 1550
Hamilton: 1600
As an opinion, schools with enrollments above ~2000 students may begin to sacrifice some of small scale interaction for which LACs, as a class, are famous.
@merc81 I’ve seen you make this argument on other threads. I’m still sure why 1984 (other than the Orwellian implication) is such an important benchmark year or why the following colleges are not likewise classic examples of LACs:
c. 1985
Colorado College 1860
Mount Holyoke 1900
Trinity 1900
Barnard 2000
Williams 2100
Colgate 2600
Oberlin 2900
Aren’t student:faculty ratio and class sizes more important than total student population when judging the LACness of a LAC? I mean, within reason – I’d have a hard time seeing a school that has more than, say, 10,000 students, as a LAC… but isn’t the true essence of a LAC to be fairly small and, more importantly, to offer small class sizes/low S:F ratio and great access to, and interaction with, profs?
So if a LAC were to grow from 1800 to 2300 student, in order to keep its LAC card at the same level we’d hope to see an equivalent increase in teaching faculty.
Colgate was 2,872 students this past academic year and has a 9:1 faculty ratio, making Colgate very close in size to
Oberlin.
http://www.colgate.edu/about/colgate-at-a-glance
Go 'gate!
Numbers can provide historical perspective and serve to call attention to baseline creep.
Though I like a Smith/O’Brien reference from time to time, 1984 figures are simply what was available, though the year does represent the post predominant single-sex era fairly well.
The figures you posted may be no less relevant than those in post 2. Note, however, that Williams, for example, (currently ~2000 students) has avoided any increase in size since 1985.
More Generally (and in reference to some of @prezbucky 's points)
Bowdoin College is already over 12 times Dunbar’s number.
As a society, the US appears to have moved away from books/concepts such as Small is Beautiful and Walden Two and toward Super Size Me. Some colleges may be following suit with similar (at least in principle) consequences.
The 1800 to 2300 example is certainly a workable one. However, I’d say that the progression from one to the other may occur more through meandering than intention. As an example of a result of this, schools that have grown to these somewhat larger sizes then often develop “house systems” in an attempt to recapture the small scale social interactions that were once naturally present. Indirectly, this may be one indication that an enrollment of ~1800 may in fact be preferable.
@luneytunes : Overall, Bowdoin’s conspicuous statistics are their 1) 43% varsity athletics participation and 2) 30% non-test submitting students, cohorts which may overlap to a large degree. If the social scene is limited in one way or the other, I’d say it would have more to do with these figures than with the size of the college itself.
If it’s at all possible, schedule an overnight visit to see how you feel about Bowdoin’s size:
https://www.bowdoin.edu/admissions/visit/
The more time you spend at a school, the better chance you have of getting its vibe.
Friends and family of my son were worried that Bowdoin may be too small and too isolated, that he’d be bored after a couple of years, but the time went by in the blink of an eye and he wishes he had more time to explore all he missed. It’s all about what the school can connect one to….It’s not so small there!
I’m a rising sophomore at Bowdoin. One thing I didn’t know until very recently was that 1850 is the number of students on campus, not the number of students enrolled. That number doesn’t include students studying abroad, which is a huge portion of the junior class every year. The average class size is closer to 500 people apparently. As I’m aware, most similar schools do their numbers the same way.
Although Bowdoin is still smaller than my public high school was, it doesn’t feel like it. Going into Bowdoin I hardly knew anybody, which wasn’t the case for high school, so I’ve had lots of people to meet. Of course, every new class is also filled with 500 people you probably won’t know, so there will always be people you haven’t met. It’s definitely had its small moments, but the upsides outweigh the downsides.
As someone explained to me before I enrolled, you’ll probably end up getting to know more people at a smaller school than a larger one because you’re much more likely to have friends/activities in common.
There’s a decent bit of preppiness on campus, but I wouldn’t say its dominant or overwhelming by any means. Although some students come from very priveleged backgrounds, I wouldn’t say elitist is a fair description of Bowdoin students at all.
Hope this helps!
“1850 is the number of students on campus, not the number of students enrolled” (#9)
Enrollment typically includes students studying off campus (abroad, domestically) in college run programs.
Polabeayuh is correct. There are about 500 students in each class at Bowdoin. If you were to count students studying abroad in the total student population, you would get a number about 1,950. Not sure why the school usually publishes the lower number, which does not include students studying abroad.
In principle, that’s true. However, Bowdoin officially reported an FTE (Full Time Equivalent) enrollment of 1796 (1794 full time, 5 part time) for the most recent Fall semester. So a figure arriving at 1850 may use a separate, more inclusive method.
No Merc81, you are incorrect. The school’s Web site is pretty clear on the numbers if you want to check.
BTW, the percentage of athletes at the school is basically the same as at Bowdoin’s peer schools in the NESCAC. According to the school paper, the average GPA of athletes is about the same as the student body as a whole as well. So implications that a prevalence of dumb jocks admitted without test scores somehow defines the culture of the school in some way is also off base.
Where did merc81 say that the GPA of the athletes was less than the non-athletes? I just Googled now out of curiosity and stumbled across this Bowdoin Orient article which does suggest some of the athlete recruits had below average academic qualifications (GPA, test scores), consistent with the NESCAC-wide recruitment guidelines for all the colleges in the conference. That is nothing shocking or controversial. It doesn’t mean they aren’t fantastic members of the Bowdoin community that perform just as well as everyone else.
http://bowdoinorient.com/article/9151
I don’t agree that all the NESCAC shows have a similar ratio of varsity athletes to total students, but that’s largely a factor of the overall student population size. Bowdoin reports it is at almost 43% (though Forbes says 37%). Middlebury reports it is at 27% (http://athletics.middlebury.edu/information/quickfacts). Wesleyan is at 23%, Williams is 26% (http://communications.williams.edu/media-relations/fast-facts/), etc. There’s a material different between 23 and 43%. If a college is supporting a team in a given sport, they need the same number of players whether they have 1.800 students or 3,000. The net result is the smaller the school, the higher the ratio of athletes (unless the school doesn’t support certain teams).
Yes, percentage goes down with size of student body and vice versa. Number of athletes is about the same.
On the number of athletes, Bowdoin is toward the bottom of the NESCAC. On the men’s side, it rates 8th of 11 in terms of numbers (only Hamilton, Amherst, and Conn College have fewer male athletes, with Conn College being an outlier because it does not have either a football or a baseball team). The Bowdoin women rate 6th on the NESCAC in terms of numbers. Williams, Tufts, and Bates have the largest number of athletes . . In percentage terms, Williams has 37.5% versus Bowdoin’s 34.7%. Bowdoin’s percentage approaches Williams’ only because of its smaller enrollment but it is still a smaller percentage. These numbers are based on hard numbers submitted by each schools to the US Dept of Education.
It appears that merc81’s 43% data (which I have also seen repeated on other sites and may have been pulled from one of those) is based on counting every athletic slot rather than accounting for unduplicated individuals. In other words, if you count all athletes you get ~43% but if you control for the same people in multiple sports and count unique people on campus who are athletes you get the ~35% quoted above.
Using the same unduplicated data 2015 Dept. of Ed. data, here’s how they stack up in terms of % of class:
Tufts 14%
Wesleyan 21%
Middlebury 27%
Connecticut 29%
Trinity 31%
Amherst 31%
Hamilton 31%
Colby 35%
Bowdoin 35%
Williams 37%
Bates 39%
Some non-NESCAC peer LAC’s:
Oberlin 13%
Vassar 14%
Carleton 18%
Colgate 19%
Davidson 23% (Division I)
Swarthmore 24%
Grinnell 24%
Wash & Lee 26%
Pomona 27%
Kenyon 29%
Haverford 35%
Claremont 38% (Claremont McKenna)
As expected, larger schools tent to have smaller %'s. And NESCAC schools, also not surprising, have higher percentages than their comparable-sized peers (both Haverford and Claremont have very small enrollments which drive up their %'s). On a percentage basis, Bowdoin is the third-highest in the NESCAC in terms of ratio of athletes (virtually tied with Colby for that slot). In general it appears Maine liberal arts colleges love their athletics as they occupy 3 of the 4 top spots…
If you want the benefits of a small school with the advantages of a larger campus as well, look at the Claremont colleges instead. I love Bowdoin (my nephew went there). But if you think this is a showstopper, look at other options.
Oh, and my nephew was from a very middle class background – his dad was a teacher & mom worked in a hospital lab. He didn’t seem to have any issues with elitism or preppy peers.
My kids went to a slightly smaller college, made tons of friends, had a large circle of closest friends, still had plenty they didn’t know. There was diversity of thought/opinions, interests, and more activity opportunity than they could get to.
None of the kids I knew who went to Bowdoin were what I’d call rigidly preppy. Some liked certain styles, but all brought their own individuality (in the broad sense.) I can understand the concern that there’s a “type” at any small college. But imo that happens more often at conservative colleges, where the vibe and expectations, from the top down, are more distinct.