Bowdoin vs. Amherst for Government

Colleges and Universities A-Z Bowdoin College
1

<p>Hi! I’m also posting this on the Amherst forum. Hope that’s okay :)</p>

<p>So I was recently admitted to both Bowdoin and Amherst (yay!) but I guess the problem is that I didn’t expect to get into Amherst, so Bowdoin has always been my first choice…
I’m interested in majoring in government, so I was really excited to be going to Bowdoin, where they supposedly have the best undergraduate liberal-arts government program in the world… but then I got into Amherst. Are there any government majors at Bowdoin that could comment on the quality of the government program there? I just don’t want to become one of those people that goes to the college just because of the name. I’m turning down a lot of other good colleges because the quality of the education is what’s really important to me, not the prestige. If it turns out that Bowdoin has the better program, then I guess I’ll turn down Amherst as well. Is there anything the Bowdoin has that Amherst doesn’t have?
Ahhhh I just don’t know what to do… I’m visiting both of them this week for the accepted students days :)</p>

<p>Thanks in advance for any comments!!!</p>

2

<p>bowdoin’s got a very good (and competitive) gov department. lots of people go to top law schools etc. amherst is a good school but i would never choose it over bowdoin. i would choose williams over bowdoin but not amherst. </p>

<p>visit the schools and see what you think</p>

3

<p>Bowdoin’s gov department really is top-notch, and I don’t recall Amherst’s being as strong (though I believe they do have a cool interdisciplinary program about justice studies). Any idea what area of government you’d be interested in? We could tune the response more directly. Bowdoin’s is broken down into four areas: American Government, Comparative Politics, International Relations, and Political Theory. Amherst probably breaks it down in a similar way.</p>