<p>One thought to put in the mix–does OP’s son want to be locating on the east coast or west coast after graduation? Bowdoin and Colby are both very well recognized and respected with extremely strong networks in the Boston –> New York corridor. My current Colby kid chose it over staying in a very “likely” spot on the Bowdoin waitlist, partly for financial aid reasons, and I have to say that her experience at Colby has been fantastic, and that every third person we meet in the New England/NYC region seems to have a Colby connection! What does this son want to study? Which school has the better opportunities in the field? Remember, it’s school that they’re going for! :)</p>
<p>Choose Bowdoin. You will not be disappointed.</p>
<p>What’s the cost difference between Bowdoin and Whitman?
Has he visited Whitman? What did he think of it? These are two similar schools, with some advantages going to Whitman (it has a sunnier climate and an interesting “Semester in the West” program). Has he considered the Whitman Outdoor Program?
[Whitman</a> Outdoor Program](<a href=“http://www.whitman.edu/content/outdoor-program]Whitman”>http://www.whitman.edu/content/outdoor-program)</p>
<p>Thanks everybody, I appreciate the input. My S is a hockey player at a club team level, but really enjoys it! All the colleges he was accepted to are very good institutions, he’s incredibly lucky to have such a wealth of choices. His philosophy was to apply to a variety of colleges, both near and far, but the common theme is SLACs and smallish universities. The UCs are the exception, they are our home state flagships, just to cover all the bases. Several of the eastern colleges he had only seen in August, so we had to go back to visit while the colleges were in session.</p>
<p>I don’t think most people make college decisions solely on the on the academic reputation. It’s the feel of the campus, the dorms, the food, the other students and the environment. For some heartfelt reasons, he just connected with Bowdoin. I wanted to hear what all of you had to say about it, and as always you came through! I have learned a great deal from the CC community about every aspect of the college experience, I can’t thank you enough for being so willing to share your experience and opinions.</p>
<p>I don’t know yet exactly what we’re going to do, but heck we have six days to figure it out! Thanks again.</p>
<p>Bo- I agree with you that the feel of the campus is important, but bear in mind how many variables go into that on a given day. You can visit a place when the sun is shining, the students are out on the main campus sunbathing and reading, playing frisbee, drinking coffee, smiling, and you feel, “Wow, what a great place”. You can visit on a Saturday morning at 9 am and there’s nobody in the cafeteria and you think, “gee this is a suitcase school”. Or you show up in the middle of exam period and everyone is scurrying to and from the library, the labs, or scowling as they run back from 7-11 with a bag of junk food.</p>
<p>This is every college. There are days when the pace is perfectly suited to your kid and days when you’d think, “who’d be crazy enough to want to go here”.</p>
<p>So fit is important, no question. But I would need my kid to articulate some solid reasons why option A is preferred to option B-- especially if option B is both academically superior and cheaper. My kid preferred a private U to our State U. It was more expensive. But our State U can’t graduate its engineering students in 4 years (or at least none of the ones from his HS have managed it); it has been on a spiral of investing in sports, buildings and facilities at the expense of faculty and library, lab, research; it is well regarded locally but is not a national “name” in terms of employment.</p>
<p>So we were able to rationally understand why option A, more expensive, was better than option B, less expensive. Made sense. Other people might make the opposite choice but this we understood. We would have been less open to the discussion if the criteria had involved the food, the dorms, or a raft of subjective impressions. Although “academic reputation” is a slippery concept, it has been a pretty concrete factor in our son’s success post graduation. </p>
<p>Good luck. Some fine options on the table.</p>
<p>Bowdoin is a special special place. If you can swing it, I’d suggest you send him. It is different from all his other choices in subtle but definite ways, and I think he felt that. Good for him!</p>
<p>[blossom] said something about finding it hard to choose bowdoin over tufts?</p>
<p>i dont understand why … is name recognition that important? would a tufts grad automatically have better opportunities than a bowdoin grad?</p>
<p>explain yourself</p>
<p>siliconvalleymom notes,"An elite LAC can make it easier to get into a great graduate program.</p>
<p>Response: This is sadly one of the biggest myths perpitrated on the American public. Expensive top schools certainly lead folks to believing this. The fact is that tha name of the school is almost irrelevant for grad and professional schools!</p>
<p>Don’t believe me? Ask any admission’s officer. At most professional schools such as law, medical etc. the main factors for admission are GPA and test scores! The name of the school is usually irrelevant.</p>
<p>For grad school it is GPA, test scores, research, and letter of recommendations. Also, making conntections with potential professors at grad programs is very important. Again, the name of the school is irrelevant. I wish I could blast this information all over the web.</p>
<p>But if you look at the WSJ ranking of top-grad school feeder, a lot of the schools in the top 20 list are really “prestigious.” Wouldn’t your chances of getting into a top grad school be higher if you went to one of those schools opposed to the University of Alaska?</p>
<p>Wouldn’t you agree that being forced, unwillingly, into going to a mediocre school when a better school was available could have a negative effect on GPA and test scores?</p>
<p>Yes, folks from top schools have higher numbers of admitted aplicants into other top schools. However, this could be a result of test scores. They tend to do better,which is why they were in the top school to begin with.</p>
<p>As for going to a better school in order to improve test scores over that of a state university, no such relationship has every been proven. There is no study to this effect that I know about.</p>
<p>You are the best judge of your family’s situation. For me, if I knew the kid had a reasonable chance to going to grad school, if money were an issue I simply will not stretch myself thin for the undergrad degree. I have seen tons of kids from low-ranked schools get free rides as grad students in top notch schools. So my advice would be not to incur the financial hardship.</p>
<p>This may not be very helpful, but, I just wanted to throw it out there:</p>
<p>Colby is an amazing LAC, with amazing connections, amazing professors, amazing facilities. Amazing. I found that my Colby education fostered a strong work ethic, a gusto for life, and healthy appreciation of genial professor-student/ peer-peer interactions while opening seemingly-innumerable doors for the advancement of my intellectual and career interests. Specifically, I was awarded a full-tuition + stipend scholarship to a professional degree program at Yale, admitted to a Harvard masters of science program, and flown out to the University of Washington for an interview for a full-ride MS (a program from which I later withdrew). A couple of times during my Yale interview, I was directly told that Colby was looked very highly upon by the admissions committee and that my pedigree, so to speak, would work in my favor, and I believe the same would be true of any of the schools to which your child has been admitted. Don’t get me wrong, I seriously believe (and have heard straight from the horse’s mouth) that grades, experience, and test scores (though usually the first two more than the latter one) are by far the biggest factor in gradmissions.</p>
<p>I guess what I’m trying to say is that I believe your child would likely receive virtually indistinguishable academic experiences at Colby, Bowdoin, BC, and Tufts (with the exception of more city-life/street experiences at Tufts and BC) if they feel comfortable (“fit”) there and put the effort in and any of those schools would be marvelous stepping stones for any grad school or career paths.</p>
<p>That said: Bowdoin may be willing to match a Colby/Tufts/BC offer, as they usually compete with these schools pretty strongly for matriculation.</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>nice thoughts, werd814, and congrats on life after Colby!</p>
<p>There’s some curious advice being given out here. </p>
<p>(1) Nobody knows what kind of grad school the kid may ultimately attend. Yet the cost component to graduate study differs greatly depending on whether it’s a doctoral program or a professional program of some kind. A graduate with a very good record from an LAC like Bowdoin would have a very good chance of admission to a doctoral program if that’s what he wants; and in such a case HIS costs would be negligible, because admittees to good PhD programs generally qualify for full support (fellowship or assistantship). There is NO expectation of a parental contribution to support doctoral studies.</p>
<p>In contrast, admission to an MBA or a JD program or other masters or professional programs MAY come with an expectation of parental support; this is much more likely for law than for MBA for the simple reason that the better MBA programs expect the graduates to have 3-5 years of work experience after their undergraduate degree, while the better law schools most often take students right out of undergraduate college. In both cases, however, the student is likely to be expected to take out loans to support his studies. At the university where my daughter is currently enrolled in an MBA program, there was no “parental contribution” in the financial aid calculation (though we are providing a partial subsidy). But were she a few years younger, there WOULD have been an expectation of a parental contribution had she been admitted to the law school at that same university.</p>
<p>MD programs are an entirely different consideration. Students end up with massive loans, for the most part.</p>
<p>Thus, as a general consideration, I don’t think it’s always important to think of going to a cheaper undergrad college mainly on order to save money for grad school – unless you have a pretty solid idea what kind of grad school it’s likely to be. And who does? But of course there’s reason to go to a cheaper undergrad institution if that’s all you can afford! Life isn’t over if you have such financial constraints.</p>
<p>(2) Graduate schools of all kinds are aware of the differences in quality among undergraduate colleges and universities. And so are employers at larger firms of all kinds, ones that recruit on a national or regional scale.</p>
<p>Bowdoin, among other top LAC’s, is known as a very good college with a demanding curriculum. This also means that many of grad schools and employers will make informal or formal adjustments for the “difficulty” and quality of the program or for the degree of grade inflation at the undergrad institution. Some professional schools, such a law schools, tend to be a strictly grades and test scores (LSAT) proposition, and thus a student at Cucamonga State might have as good or better a chance as one at Bowdoin to get into a top law school – IF the students have similar LSAT scores.</p>
<p>Large employers – ones you might approach right out of college – are going to look at GPA’s and in some cases even test scores. My son took a job with a major consulting firm out of UChicago. Even though he graduated “with honors,” they wanted to know his GPA and also his SAT’s (yes), his aptitude in math and statistics, and even his LSAT score. In that sense, grades and tests matter even in the real economy. </p>
<p>But employment possibilities depend on much more than that. Employers are often looking for specific skills and training. But beyond such skills, they may also be looking for work experience, foreign language knowledge, international experience, writing ability, research experience, internship experience, teamwork experience – these may all be important considerations by job recruiters for larger employers. And employers also know where they are more likely to find applicants with the backgrounds they’re looking for, which is one reason why the reputation and quality of your undergrad school matter. All of these factors are reasons why employment isn’t just a grades and test scores proposition – even if employers ask for that kind of information.</p>
<p>Whoa, mackinaw, that’s very useful. Thanks. By the way, my husband and I spent the morning figuring out just how we could go about paying the extra money to send S to Bowdoin, and came up with a plan. It means sacrifice of more than “a few family vacations”, but our S has worked his butt off at a small rural public high school in preparation for applying to these places. The fact he’s been accepted is mind boggling. We’ll do everything we can to make it happen. So, now he’ll have to decide. I feel good about this.</p>
<p>^Sounds like you’re in a great place. You’ve figured out how to make it work financially so that your son can make his decision. And as another parent who has also given up the vacations to Hawaii, I can tell you that sometimes the simplest vacations can yield just as much – if not even more – rest, relaxation, and enjoyment.</p>
<p>Thanks, CalAlum, for all the good information and encouragement. Willamette is a terrific school and I hope your son has a great time. Very true about the Japanese connection. We have friends whose daughter is there and loves it madly.</p>
<p>Bless you, bopambo–it’s great to hear from parents who recognize and appreciate the hard work their kids have put in. Good luck to your son, wherever he decides! Seems like he’s well set up for a great future.</p>
<p>I live in the NE and don’t think Bowdoin is very well known at all except to people like us here on CC. I wouldn’t make this decision based on reputation or rankings.</p>