<p>This is just b/c I’m curious. Not b/c I think this is a good overall determining factor of quality of education you can get at a college, success afterwards, etc. But Bowdoin accepts about 22% of its regular admit students, which is about the same as AWS, and a smaller % than Carleton. Yet, Bowdoin’s stats are generally lower than these other schools, and it (perhaps?) is not considered quite as rigorous a place (although any differ is small compared to schools nationally, I’m sure). Do you think the applicant pool of Bowdoin tends to be different (ie the applicant pool has slightly lower stats to begin with). Actually, what % of Bowdoin students were in the top 10% of their class? I know in an old Princeton review it said something like 88%, which would be more than Carleton AND UChicago, but that was the Princeton Review with a lot of typos so I wasn’t sure. I guess I’m just curious what people think is the best way to determine abilities of a student body, and how well the school is looked upon by very competitive grad schools like the environmental school at Yale. (although I’m sure Bowdoin does fairly well in both those categories, I guess I’m interested in minute differences if forced to compare schools)</p>
<p>i think the stats for bowdoin are a little weaker because, while they admit the same or similar people, some of the strongest admits to bowdoin will often (although certainly not always) go to larger schools or ivy league universities. i think the acceptance rate says little about the school other than where it is. i think bowdoin and carleton, say, are pretty commensurate places, but bowdoin is surrounded by 12 schools that are all rather similar and offer similar things, whereas carleton is not. now that kids are applying to upwards of 14 schools, bowdoin gets more applicants and has a lower acceptance rate than carleton, but has a similar student body. </p>
<p>i think the quality of students, relative to a place like pomona, another very similar school to bowdoin with higher SAT scores, suffers a bit from bowdoin's proximity to similar schools, and the fact that bowdoin is ranked a bit below AWS. </p>
<p>finally, you do have to keep in mind that bowdoin's optional SAT policy must, in some way, affect their numbers to make them lower (at least testing wise) than their peers, and, perhaps, inflate (relative to their peers) their GPA stats, since they consider those more heavily (i.e., someone who doesn't submit their SAT scores has a greater chance of admittance if their GPA is unimpeachable). </p>
<p>not sure if i answered your question, but i think there are some reasons for a low acceptance rate, a high GPA %, but lower SATs than its peers. </p>
<p>and, again, although bowdoin ordinarily loses students to ivies, or williams, it is not uncommon for students at bowdoin to have chosen it over those places (more typically AWS than, say, brown, dartmouth, or yale).</p>