<p>Love that “tweedledee, tweedledum.” Clearly, the preference for one or the other of the three are grounded in very personal choices. The OP was asking “about” prestige which is a concept also grounded in intangibles. The OP is probably trying to validate their decision.</p>
<p>Please help me from my midwestern perspective. What other schools could they be compared to (in terms of similarity of experience - obviously I can figure out caliber of student body)? Or are they their own unique competitive set driven by the Maine experience? What distinguishes them from other well regarded LAC’s of similar size and academics? I really wish I had a perceptual map here!</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, I have no proof to back it up, Colby and Bowdion are slightly more sporty and have a larger athlete population on campus while Bates students are athletic but not as into Varsity sports and the whole sport culture.</p>
<p>I thought Bates was an awful lot like Kalamazoo College on many levels. One of the deans mentioned that also when my son was touring and he found out we were from the midwest. So if Bates is like Kalamazoo then other colleges of that ilk are similar. But Bate’s campus is also compact and “looks” like the K campus on some levels, so you’d have to think of other small competitive, red brick, compact campuses that attract smart intellectually inquisitive kids. Or on another persepctive Colby, Bates and Bowdoin reminds me of Hillsdale, Kalamazoo and Hope. All three attract similar kids (statistically) but the kids have strong feelings about one or the other and the campuses both architecturally, size-wise and student culture wise have differences. Same as Macalester, Carlton and Kenyon…similar kids statistically, different campuses, etc. That’s how I “differentiate” in my mind. Some decades one particular campus gets “trendier” than another but really the differences in academic potential are not really that impactful.</p>
<p>djordan - there you go, my son thought Bates was too “sporty” – different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>PG:</p>
<p>A lot of LAC of similar size will have some very similar characteristics if they draw from the same pool of applicants. I’d expect that this is true of NE LACs. Some are more sports oriented. Colby struck us that way, Bowdoin and Bates did not, but Colby is not as sports-dominated as Williams; some are supposed to have more drinkers than others (not applicable to C,B&B); some have lots of frats (again, I did not hear that about C,B&B). There are some differences in the curriculum, to be sure, but neither three are “artsy” like Sarah Lawrence or Vassar (both formerly women’s colleges); nor are they socially and politically very liberal like Oberlin or Wesleyan. The faculty seem to me to be interchangeable, i.e., excellent.</p>
<p>I would think the best midwest analogy would be Kenyon, Macalester, Grinnell in terms of prestige and selectivity, if not in student body. I would also list Oberlin but with the conservatory it’s a fish of a different stripe.</p>
<p>I don’t find Williams to be sports dominated. The arts have a powerful presence there.</p>
<p>Williams is a bit bigger.</p>
<p>We met the brightest kid at Bowdoin – interviewer reading Gravity’s Rainbow. </p>
<p>The kids at Bates and Colby were both very nice.</p>
<p>S’s best friend is at Bates and the kids are very nice. Less have less irony and wisecracking than his friends at Williams. Colby has integrated dorms – all four classes together, which creates a certain kind of cohesion. Bates does too. Not sure about Bowdoin.</p>
<p>Sports and arts are not antithetical.<br>
I believe most people think that Williams is sports-dominated. Amherst is not.
From Wikidepia:</p>
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<p>Thank you. That’s exactly the type of analogy I needed to place it in a context that I understood better!</p>
<p>Pizzagirl:</p>
<p>My subjective account: All three Maine colleges are part of the tier of northeastern LACs with lots of old-fashioned preppy prestige, but a little less than places like Williams, Amherst, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, which cater to somewhat more intellectual and/or athletically accomplished kids. Because of their relative isolation, their vibe is similar to that of places like Middlebury, Hamilton, Colgate, Bucknell, Kenyon.</p>
<p>Maine is a very popular old-money summer destination in the Northeast. Kids go to camp there, visit their grandparents there. So a certain percentage of preppy kids here feel a lot of connection with Maine, and think of it as a great place to be, a great place to go to school. Other kids, of course, are just looking for a good college where they can get accepted and get a good education, and if someone is looking at LACs and doesn’t have 2200+ SATs and a single-digit class rank, the Maine schools are going to show up on his or her radar screen (and even if they do have those qualities may show up as potential safeties or safe matches).</p>
<p>In terms of reputation, Bowdoin has traditionally had a slightly stronger one overall, and especially for science (attractive to pre-meds) and sports. It is probably roughly equivalent to Middlebury – based on my own prejudices, I would have considered Bowdoin somewhat superior to Middlebury a few years ago, but Middlebury has played the USNWR game extremely well and become much more popular with good students in recent years, so I suspect it wins most of the head-to-head battles with the Maine schools now. Middlebury is significantly larger and less intimate than any of the Maine colleges, though.</p>
<p>Bates is traditionally the artiest and most politically liberal of the three. Colby always seems to sit in between Bowdoin and Bates – preppier and sportier than Bates, less competitive than Bowdoin. </p>
<p>In this age of lots of kids having cars, Bates and Bowdoin seem a lot less isolated than they used to. Both are within 30 minutes of Portland, which has a lot more going on than it used to, too, and easily within two hours of Boston. Colby is a good hour-plus farther from anything (other than Augusta), but it sits in a picture-perfect New England town on a gorgeous lake. I think a kid who does not appreciate the Maine woods experience is never really going to like Colby, but a kid who does appreciate that is going to find Colby very attractive.</p>
<p>Kenyon and Grinnell are known for putting a lot of emphasis on writing. Macalester is known for its international dimension (Koffi Anan, the former UN Secretary-General, went there). Oberlin has a long history of missionary work in China and has a reputation for being very liberal. By contrast, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin are more “New England preppy” in their student make-up.</p>
<p>Edited to add: I agree with JHS’ characterization.</p>
<p>Thank you, marite and JHS. Extremely helpful. Yes, having grown up in Philly, I do get the Maine / prep connection, though I was not to the manor or even Main Line born :-)</p>
<p>Marite, Amherst has as many sports teams as Williams, with a slightly smaller student body. In terms of a “sports culture” these two schools are very similar.</p>
<p>Oh sorry, I didn’t interpret Pizza’s question correctly. I was trying an analogy of 3 schools in the same state or close by that were different but had similar student bodies academically.</p>
<p>Marite: Amherst has a larger percentage of the student body that competes in varsity sports.</p>
<p>I wasn’t comparing these schools to the exact pedagogy of the schools I mentioned, i was situating them in the “pecking order” so to speak. Just to give an idea of how highly regarded these schools are and what level of student thinks about going.</p>
<p>Bates has a strong debate team. Colby has a strong theater program (which I know from my friend’s son who is a playwright and attends and has been very, very happy with his experience.) Bowdoin’s emphasis is on government and science.</p>
<p>It may be so, but Williams has the reputation and Amherst does not. Williams also has the reputation for having more of a drinking scene. Don’t tell Interesteddad and Mini, however, two Ephs who used to rant about underage drinking.
When we visited Williams and Amherst, we were told that if S1 was not into sports (which he was/is not), he might feel a bit of a misfit. Nobody told him any such thing at Amherst. At Swarthmore, the guide took a delight in telling us about the non-sportsy atmosphere (that was after Swarthmore decided to get rid of its regularly losing football team so that it would have to admit fewer athletes). These three schools regularly compete for #1 spot on USNWR.
Williams, Amherst and Wesleyan are sports competitor, but one does not usually associated Wes with sports.</p>
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<p>Yours was helpful as well!</p>
<p>Gulp, then I’ll ask the next question. There’s prep and then there’s prep. Would an upper middle class, public hs kid from the midwest be able to handle the New England prep? I mean in terms of … potentially having the same amount of money / exposure to “nice things” and travel (not the proverbial country bumpkin) but not having the high society or WASP bona fides. Or have I taken the Preppy Handbook too seriously? LOL.</p>