<p>As a Bates grad and the parent of a freshman I can answer some of your questions but I’ll leave others to be tackled by current students.</p>
<p>1) Some of the things I loved about Bates.</p>
<p>-The school culture. Friendly students and faculty. I know you’ll hear this about most schools but I think Bates really does have a warm campus culture. Not only did I make lifelong friends there, but I got to know my professors quite well. When I applied to graduate school seven years after graduation both of the profs I asked for recommendations remembered me and the work I did. I’d love to say it was because I was a stellar student, but that really wasn’t the case. </p>
<p>Many aspects of Bate’s culture make it a friendly place to be. It has no fraternities and sororities and campus clubs are open to everyone. There’s one dining hall where everyone eats. When I was on campus for parent’s weekend in September one of the things I noticed was how little racial self-segregation I saw. The tables in the dining commons were almost all filled with racially mixed groups of students. My husband joked that they looked like a Benetton ad, but I saw it as evidence that the kids I was seeing were comfortable in their skins (no pun intended). In other word, kids seemed to form their friend groups based on common interests and personalities, not race.</p>
<p>Lots of people play sports but there isn’t a jocks vs. non-jocks divide. My son doesn’t play team sports but some of his close friends are varsity players. An aside-my husband still tells the story of when he arrived on campus as a nervous international student. He had heard that American football players were known for being partiers and bullies so he wasn’t delighted when the first people he encountered at Bates as he lugged his suitcases from the bus stop were two beefy football players. He was a bit taken aback when they welcomed him, asked him what dorm he was in, and without being asked grabbed his bags and hefted them up to his 3rd floor room. They weren’t on any sort of welcoming committee or anything, they’d just spotted him on their way back from practice and thought they should help him.</p>
<p>-Short term, an incredible opportunity to do something interesting at a time of year when you can roll it into a summer job, travel or research internship. Many schools have a January plan, but as far as I know Short Term is unique to Bates (do a search for Short term in the Bates forum)</p>
<p>-The thesis. Loving a monster research paper may seem counter-intuitive, but because virtually every student does a senior thesis the supports for this kind of high-level work are built into the system. At many schools students have to apply to write a thesis and work directly with a faculty advisor but at Bates this is open to every student.</p>
<p>-The least? Lewiston. It’s just not a very appealing city. It never felt at all dangerous to me and I didn’t feel the need to avoid it, I just didn’t think of it as a cool place to hang out, unlike some college towns. Portland Maine, on the other hand, is a beautiful small city and a place I’ve recommended to people as a great weekend getaway. Portland is about 40 minutes from Bates so students need to have a friend with a car to take advantage of it.</p>
<p>2) My son fell in love on his first visit. Not sure what it was that sparked with him other than that he felt both comfortable and invigorated there. I believe his second choice was Wesleyan, his third Dickinson.</p>
<p>4) Good need-based financial aid but no merit awards. None of the Ivies or the NESCAC schools (Amherst, Bowdoin, Wesleyan, Williams, Bates, Colby, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Connecticut College) give merit money with the exception of a few small summer research grants or outside alumni scholarships. Bates covers full need and has a no-loan policy for international students. The entire financial aid package is made up of the parent and student contribution, grants and work study. Of course your definition of need and a college’s can be quite different.</p>
<p>5) Varsity sports teams. I hope some current student will comment on this, but I would say that it probably depends on the team. In some sports walk-ons are quite common. For instance a recent captain of the men’s crew team arrived on campus never having rowed and was encouraged to learn the sport as a freshman. I would imagine it would be harder to get a spot on something like the football or soccer team without some solid experience but even then I don’t think the rosters are set before the practice season starts. If your son is interested in playing for Bates I would encourage him to contact the coaches even if he’s not of recruiting caliber. It may be tough to get a response at this time of the year, particularly if he plays a fall sport, because the coaches are both recruiting for next year and coaching their current teams, but he can certainly ask to be invited to preseasons.</p>
<p>6) The campus is beautiful, the town not so much.</p>
<p>7) My sense is that career services are currently good but not excellent. I know from speaking with the college president that one of her near-term goals is to beef up and reshape the career services area. Clayton Spencer’s a vibrant, innovative, out-of-the-box thinker, so I’m excited to see what she does with career services in the next year or so. I know there are many resources for summer research. Short Term provides an excellent opportunity for on or off campus research. One program I participated in back when I was student sets kids up with internships with the possibility of a summer job to follow. </p>
<p>[About</a> LADD Internships | Career Development Center | Bates College](<a href=“http://www.bates.edu/career/experiential-learning-internships-and-job-shadowing/ladd-internships/]About”>http://www.bates.edu/career/experiential-learning-internships-and-job-shadowing/ladd-internships/)</p>
<p>[Homepage</a> Images | Bates College](<a href=“http://www.bates.edu/all-homepage-sliders/]Homepage”>Homepage Images | Bates College)</p>
<p>A note on Clayton Spencer, the president current who in 2012 came to Bates from Harvard, where she’s served as a dean and vice president. This is one smart cookie. Cobbled together from Wikipedia:</p>
<p>She received a bachelor’s degree from Williams College in 1977, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, with highest honors in history and German, then earned a B.A. in theology from Oxford in 1979 as recipient of the Carroll A. Wilson Fellowship awarded by Williams. She received a master of arts degree in the study of religion from Harvard in 1982. She earned a J.D. from Yale in 1985. While at Yale Law School, Spencer was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, winner of the Moot Court competition and chair of the Public Interest Council. Spencer served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Boston from 1989 to 1993 until becoming chief education counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources from 1993 to 1997.</p>
<p>Spencer has served as a trustee of Williams College and Phillips Exeter Academy and has lectured and written on higher education issues. In 1997, she received a Bicentennial Medal for achievement in the field of education policy from Williams College.</p>