<p>Yeah I know these two colleges are very different from each other but where would you go if you were a political science/government major with an eye towards law school. How generally do the two compare. Jumbo or Polar Bear? Thanks</p>
<p>I need help please!</p>
<p>Both are top-notch schools - Bowdoin, as you know, is in the southern-middle portion of Maine. Due to this, it's going to have a somewhat isolated location, where many things are rather self-contained. Tufts is a suburban location, w/ a proximity to Boston. Government is certainly a niche that Bowdoin is known for, but PS, IR, and History are bastions of Tufts, also. B/c both schools are so humanities-focused, you should probably look at some of the personal characteristics of the 2 respective schools when making your decision.</p>
<p>I happen to know very little of Bowdoin apart from the fact that the academics are great, the campus is in suburban/rural Maine, and it's on the small side. The Small-and-in-Maine factors were actually enough to discourage me from learning anything else about it during my college search, so I def. didn't apply or visit. In comparison, then, I like Tufts' size (roughly 5000) and location/campus better.</p>
<p>Anyone else chosing between these schools?</p>
<p>There's one other person who had to decide between Bowdoin and Tufts, but I can't remember who. You might want to search through the forum history to find it to find the analysis he made between the two.</p>
<p>Bowdoin may be a bit more respected academically as far as grad schools are concerned, but Tufts will be more known in general because of its location and size. Personally, I like the size of Tufts more, but it also has somewhat of a reputation of a less fun, second choice kind of place. That's a tough choice. What's your prospective major?</p>
<p>I've never heard of Tufts having a "less fun, second choice" reputation, especially if one considers the recent explosion of UG apps. Also, I don't believe that Bowdoin has grad schools w/ better reps, considering that the Fletcher School is on the Tufts campus (and largely integrated w/the UG experience). This is not to say however, that Bowdoin isn't a top school. It certainly is one of the US elites.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies. I think that both places are great choices and that is why it is so difficult to decide. I wonder which school has a better reputation for grad or law school? The only thing that bothers me about Bowdoin is that there are so many people who have never heard of it before. Very annoying! I like both places so I have been trying to decide which one is more academically recognized. Any thoughts.</p>
<p>I think they're basically comparable schools. While I don't like to put a lot of stock in these rankings, I do believe that they do a relatively good job of comparing national universities to LACs. On both of these lists, Bowdoin is a fair bit higher than Tufts and from my experience, in general, would agree with them at least in Tufts vs. Bowdoin.</p>
<p>Also, as posted on one of these threads, more students at Bowdoin (9.0%) go on to get a PhD than Tufts (5.7%), if that's at all meaningful to you.</p>
<p>Academic field: ALL </p>
<p>PhDs and Doctoral Degrees: ten years (1994 to 2003) from NSF database</p>
<p>Number of Undergraduates: ten years (1989 to 1998) from IPEDS database </p>
<p>Percentage of graduates receiving a doctorate degree.
Note: Does not include colleges with less than 1000 graduates over the ten year period</p>
<p>Note: Includes all NSF doctoral degrees inc. PhD, Divinity, etc., but not M.D. or Law. </p>
<p>1 California Institute of Technology 35.8%
2 Harvey Mudd College 24.7%
3 Swarthmore College 21.1%
4 Reed College 19.9%
5 Massachusetts Institute of Technology 18.3%
6 Carleton College 16.8%
7 Bryn Mawr College 15.8%
8 Oberlin College 15.7%
9 University of Chicago 15.3%
10 Yale University 14.5%
11 Princeton University 14.3%
12 Harvard University 14.3%
13 Grinnell College 14.1%
14 Haverford College 13.8%
15 Pomona College 13.8%
16 Rice University 13.1%
17 Williams College 12.7%
18 Amherst College 12.4%
19 Stanford University 11.4%
20 Kalamazoo College 11.3%
21 Wesleyan University 11.0%
22 St John's College (both campus) 10.6%
23 Brown University 10.6%
24 Wellesley College 10.4%
25 Earlham College 10.0%
26 Beloit College 9.6%
27 Lawrence University 9.5%
28 Macalester College 9.3%
29 Cornell University, All Campuses 9.0%
30 Bowdoin College 9.0%
31 Mount Holyoke College 8.9%
32 Smith College 8.9%
33 Vassar College 8.8%
34 Case Western Reserve University 8.7%
35 Johns Hopkins University 8.7%
36 St Olaf College 8.7%
37 Hendrix College 8.7%
38 Hampshire College 8.6%
39 Trinity University 8.5%
40 Knox College 8.5%
41 Duke University 8.5%
42 Occidental College 8.4%
43 University of Rochester 8.3%
44 College of Wooster 8.3%
45 Barnard College 8.3%
46 Bennington College 8.2%
47 Columbia University in the City of New York 8.1%
48 Whitman College 8.0%
49 University of California-Berkeley 7.9%
50 College of William and Mary 7.9%</p>
<p>51 Carnegie Mellon University 7.8%
52 New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 7.8%
53 Brandeis University 7.7%
54 Dartmouth College 7.6%
55 Wabash College 7.5%
56 Bates College 7.5%
57 Davidson College 7.5%
58 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 7.2%
59 Franklin and Marshall College 7.2%
60 Fisk University 7.1%
61 Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) 7.1%
62 University of California-San Francisco 6.8%
63 Allegheny College 6.8%
64 Furman University 6.6%
65 University of Pennsylvania 6.5%
66 Washington University 6.5%
67 Bard College 6.5%
68 Northwestern Univ 6.4%
69 Rhodes College 6.4%
70 Agnes Scott College 6.3%
71 Spelman College 6.3%
72 Antioch University, All Campuses 6.2%
73 Kenyon College 6.2%
74 University of Dallas 6.2%
75 Ripon College 6.1%
76 Colorado College 6.1%
77 Bethel College (North Newton, KS) 6.1%
78 Hamilton College 6.0%
79 Goshen College 6.0%
80 Middlebury College 6.0%
81 Erskine College 6.0%
82 University of the South 5.9%
83 University of Michigan at Ann Arbor 5.8%
84 Drew University 5.8%
85 Wake Forest University 5.8%
86 Tougaloo College 5.8%
87 Goucher College 5.8%
88 Chatham College 5.7%
89 Cooper Union 5.7%
90 Alfred University, Main Campus 5.7%
91 Tufts University 5.7%
92 University of California-Santa Cruz 5.6%
93 Colgate University 5.6%
94 Colby College 5.5%
95 Bucknell University 5.4%
96 Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology 5.4%
97 Concordia Teachers College 5.4%
98 University of Virginia, Main Campus 5.4%
99 Sarah Lawrence College 5.3%
100 Southwestern University 5.3%</p>
<p>Thanks for the information gellino!</p>
<p>That's a pretty skewed list, UPenn and Dartmouth, for example, are both after 50...</p>
<p>The thing that you have to keep in mind is that Tufts has a lot of people who are interested in IR...IR grad programs are not included in the second link that gellino provided, from what I understand, so this places Tufts quite low on that ranking purely because it attracts a lot of students (of which I am one) to its exceptional IR program. The first ranking seems to put a lot of emphasis on public perception and popularity among the general public, where Tufts does tend to take a beating. Finally, I would say that the list of percentages of students that go on to obtain doctoral degrees suffers from the same skew with regard to Tufts as the second link; Tufts produces a lot of IR-interested graduates who go on to IR grad programs of various forms and end up at non profits, NGOs, various international organizations, humanitarian causes, working as diplomats, etc -- most of these do not require a doctoral degree. I'm not saying that all students here major in IR; I'm just saying that since IR majors make up a large portion of Tufts graduates, it is likely to skew the rankings provided by gellino. Notice that I say skew. Certainly, there may be some truth to some of the rankings, but do take it all with a grain of salt.</p>