<p>Bowdoin is harder to get in to and considered better than Bates and colby.</p>
<p>To the OP:
You asked about my son; he applied ED to Whitman, but did not get in. He is happily enrolling at Willamette, which has a much stronger Japanese program, so it’s all good in the end (he wants to double major in Japanese and English). But Whitman is truly a lovely, lovely school. And all the online student reviews, as well as the student reviews captured in print material, suggest that students are very happy there. If it were me, and the choice were Whitman with some money, and Bowdoin with none, it would be Whitman hands down. </p>
<p>You know, as one Californian to another, no one on the West Coast has really ever heard of Bowdoin, so although it’s higher in the US News & World report rankings than Colby (which no one out here has ever heard of, either), that hardly matters, if your son expects to return to the West Coast after college.</p>
<p>I spent 60 seconds this afternoon and found that Whitman indeed has a hocky club sport.</p>
<p>Overall, you have a wide range of opinion on this board. It wouldn’t help me make a decision, so I will just sent you my best wishes. Good luck!</p>
<p>I’d like to chime that if your son is interested in graduate school, graduate schools don’t care about name recognition of your undergraduate college. They care about what kinds of experiences applicants have had at those colleges. Given the wide range of fantastic places your lucky son has been admitted to, any of those would be a fine choice for gaining admission to graduate school, with the resources and professors and research going on there that the schools would be looking for. So that shouldn’t be a consideration when comparing Bowdoin to those other places.</p>
<p>I’m a college graduate from a second-tier SLAC; I graduated in 2008 and I’ve spent the last year at an Ivy League graduate school earning my PhD. I’ll tell you, honestly, that the “college experience” even this short of a time out has faded into a few fond memories. But honestly, the work, connections, and relationships I’ve built at my graduate school are far more salient and important to my future career than my undergrad. Not that my alma mater didn’t help me get to where I was going, but it’s far less prestigious than any of the schools your kid has to choose from, and I still managed to get a great education there and get into a great graduate program, mainly because of the work I chose to pursue there (started doing research in my second year, wrote papers, did a research fellowship, did an REU, etc.)</p>
<p>Honestly I think your son can’t go wrong here, and unless he’s going to be absolutely depressively miserable anywhere besides Bowdoin (which I doubt) I would look more closely at the more fiscally possible/easier options.</p>
<p>“Bowdoin’s need calculations are very different from the rest.”</p>
<p>OP, that was also our experience. Bowdoin was one of my son’s top three, but we crossed it off his list when we got the financial aid decision. Basically, Bowdoin offered us between $16K and $23k per year less than its peers. After comparing the offers, and factoring in the respective sticker prices, the cost to our family to send our son to Bowdoin for four years would be $104K more than Whitman; $96K more than Carleton; $80K more than Grinnell; and $64K more than Brown, with the difference to be financed entirely through loans (assuming we could get them). </p>
<p>So, is Bowdoin worth it? Well, it’s a great school, but in our case its FA was so far out of line with the competition that the answer was a resounding “no”.</p>
<p>Tufts and Colby are comparable experiences. I don’t know how much the difference in financials is, but the first thing I’d do is ask Bowdoin to meet the offers of Tufts and Colby. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t.</p>
<p>If they won’t I’d ask S to seriously reconsider Tufts and Colby.</p>
<p>If all remains as is, I guess then you are a difficult choice, but no one else can make it for you.</p>
<p>Bopambo - can’t tell from your posts as to whether your S is good enough to play college hockey and is planning/hoping to play college hockey or whether he just wants to be at a school where hockey is important. The answer to the question of whether he is an apsiring college hockey player is pretty important to his college selection process as hockey is likely to be very central in his thinking. If he is good enough to play college hockey and has his heart set on playing college hockey, Bowdoin should be head and shoulders above the other schools on the list of schools to which he was admitted regardless of the difference in costs (facility quality, history, student and community support/interest, etc). The only other schools on your list with college hockey programs are Colby, Tufts, and BC (contrary to some poster’s claim, MacAlester does not have a hockey program regardless of its location in Minnesota). In hockey terms, Colby would be next after Bowdoin (solid program but eccentric coach and older facility) and Tufts (off-campus rink; little-to-no interest on the part of the student body) would be a very distant third. I’m guessing that he is not good enough for D1 hockey (BC). Bottom line is if hockey is a central part of his life than you should probably try to scrape together the $42K.</p>
<p>What! $42K extra so that son has a chance to play hockey? Plus whatever other costs students on the hockey team end up spending in order to be on the team? </p>
<p>Not in our household. I’m willing to support some amount of extracurricular expense, but the purpose in going to college is to get an education, not have an all expenses paid by mom and dad four year hockey experience. If the hockey experience is so overwhelmingly important, go to one of the hockey programs, not college.</p>
<p>There are a lot of things that are a central part of life. But $10.5K+ on top of other ed expenses for the privilege of playing hockey – no way. None. Nada.</p>
<p>Telling a young hockey player to lose his interest in hockey is easier said than done . .</p>
<p>torasee, I get that but wouldn’t this student have been an ED1 or ED2 accept if a recruited hockey player likely to play, particularly at Bowdoin?
If he likes watching hockey, BC would be fun. While I love hockey I don’t think that’s a good reason to pick a school.</p>
<p>I can’t tell from what the parent said about him whether or not he is a serious hockey player but the parent did mention that he was a hockey player. . . If he is fixated on Bowdoin, my guess is that hockey is a big factor. Some Bowdoin hockey players do come through the RD process, especially those who are not from New England, and Bowdoin does carry a big squad (and therefore has room for walk-ons as well as recruits).</p>
<p>Based on the way Bowdoin calculates aid, I think your son will find a large number of wealthy students with deep pockets for spring trips, ability to accept internships as opposed to needing to get a summer job etc. He may not fit in with the student body as well as he thinks he will.</p>
<p>I know at least 5 kids currently at Bowdoin and none of them are wealthy. All of them have summer jobs, and some have work-study jobs. </p>
<p>Frankly, you will find a number of wealthy students with deep pockets at any top LAC or good private university. Including Tufts and Macalester and BC. Bowdoin is rather preppy, but I’m told that Colby is even more so.</p>
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<p>I would take advice like this with a grain of salt. Yes, it might seem frivolous to spend this much if you only look at numbers when deciding a college, but there is so much more that goes into college selection. From your original post, it seems like Bowdoin is the best fit for your son, both athletically and academically. To automatically shoot it down based on relatively petty financial considerations would be doing a disservice to your child’s future professionally as well as creating a miserable 4 years if he has to go to a lesser school. </p>
<p>I don’t want to denigrate the other options that your son has, but I have to point out that Colby is significantly lower ranked and it is cheaper for a reason, and UC-Berkeley is a public school. Do you really want that for the next four years (at least!) of your son’s life? You might save money now, but the damage that this decision could do to him academically is immeasurable. </p>
<p>We’ve all heard stories of kids who were accepted to top-ranked LACs who went instead to state schools with students who were quite less than the cream of the crop and ended up crashing and burning because the school just wasn’t a good fit for them. That’s not to say that these schools were bad for everyone, but if someone qualifies to go to an institution like Bowdoin, it would be remiss to turn that opportunity down in favor of pinching a few pennies at UC-Berkeley or Colby instead. Just my two cents… :D</p>
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<p>Really, I question the use of your word “significantly”. Please substantiate. This is a student that is coming from the other side of the country. Even if there were tiny differences in NE regional perspective between Bowdoin and Colby I highly doubt those small differences mean much everywhere else in the country. Cheaper is good. The OP is looking for a better cost/value.</p>
<p>Not only that. Since both Colby and Bowdoin offer only need based aid, Colby is not cheaper for a reason unless that reason is that it calculates need differently.</p>
<p>I have a dear friend with a son at Colby and I must say, we’re all in awe of the college experience he is having. He is a sophomore and winning national awards in his chosen field.</p>
<p>Colby is an excellent school, but if you prefer Bowdoin then it would be frivolous to dither over “tiny differences” in cost. Bowdoin is a bit more expensive but the indirect costs of turning down an offer to go there is far greater than the difference in cost between the two colleges. At the same time, the constraints of living somewhat less extravagantly for a few years (fewer family vacations per year, etc.) is more than worth it for an opportunity like the one that you can find at a top LAC. That’s not to denigrate Colby, or to say that Colby is never a better choice than Bowdoin or another college, but if the OP’s son belongs at Bowdoin then that’s where he should go if it’s at all possible (which it seems to be, with some scrimping).</p>
<p>I’m gonna have to agree with blossom…This seems like a head-scratcher to me as well. If we were talking about Bowdoin versus Podunk U, it would be one thing. But your S has some very fine options, including some comparable (and very desirable) LACs. There’s an important life lesson for him here: Debt is not a good thing! It’s important for your S to understand that “financial fit” is important too.</p>
<p>“…and UC-Berkeley is a public school. Do you really want that for the next four years (at least!) of your son’s life?”</p>
<p>^^ Oh, please…</p>
<p>“We’ve all heard stories of kids who were accepted to top-ranked LACs who went instead to state schools with students who were quite less than the cream of the crop and ended up crashing and burning because the school just wasn’t a good fit for them.”</p>
<p>Really? I don’t know any such stories. To the contrary, I know plenty of people who were accepted at Ivys and top LACs who went to state schools and did just fine. In fact, the caliber of acceptees to Ivys and top LACs is so high that they generally excell wherever they land. If they do “crash and burn” at a state school, my guess is that there are other issues going on, and it’s not because they were forced (god forbid) to rub shoulders “with students who were quite less than the cream of the crop.”</p>
<p>Oh my gosh, so much noise on this thread. Berkeley is a high ranking university known globally. You cannot even compare Berkeley to a selective regional private institution is “apples to oranges.” It is an outlier in the OP’s son’s list since it is large and globally known and not small and regionally known, but to dismiss it as “public” as opposed to “sniff” private is ridiculous.</p>