Hi @RoundGenius Congrats on two amazing choices. I recall your journey on this forum and posted a few times on your early chance topics way back and glad to see it worked out so well. I know a fair amount about both choices, so happy to weigh in. But as others have said, I am confused why it isn’t an easy decision if by your own statement Yale remains your first choice? I guess the question is, if after everything it’s your first choice, what is holding you back from an easy commitment?
In terms of a few of the specifics you said, having spent a lot of time on both campuses, here’s a few thoughts:
– Coming from San Diego (I am originally from CA myself), any of the Northeast locations will seem crazy cold in the winter. Having said that, Brunswick Maine is not that bad, and certainly not “brutal.” Maine is a huge state and Brunswick is near the southern, warmer portion and it’s close to the ocean which moderates the winter temperatures versus more inland paces comparably north. So Maine is way less cold than, say, Middlebury in Vermont. We live near Princeton, New Jersey where my son grew up and he goes to Bowdoin now and while it was slightly colder than here and when it did snow it snowed more and stuck longer, he said the weather was a non-issue in the end – and he had been worried about it. Besides, the Bowdoin campus is so proportionately small that you don’t have to be outside much except when you want to for winter activities. So this is a long way of saying I don’t think the weather will be materially different enough to make it decision point between the two.
– If you are really into theater, as in you may want to do something with it professionally, it’s hard to argue with Yale. One of the best theater programs around; highly respected. Bowdoin is a small department. Currently only offered as a minor and there’s fewer official college productions… That said, my son was into theater in high school too and has turned out to love theater at Bowdoin. They have a great facility (both a traditional stage and a black box, plus a separate concert hall) which is also the summer home to the best equity-level musical theatre company in the state/region. They put on ambitious shows and invite visiting professionals to teach students. And there are at least three different student-run organizations that produce their own shows on campus in addition to the official college/faculty-led shows, with one of them dedicated to musicals. When you combine all this with the fact that the student population is only 1,800, it is incredibly easy to get stage time and/or crew experience. If you want to, you’ll be directing your own show probably by sophomore year. And they pay their crews (for the official college productions) as a campus job. My son’s thrilled to be getting paid to do what he’d do (and has done before) for free. And they provide the crews a lot of official training too. He’s had so many opportunities to crew (in many different capacities), he’s had to turn some down because he doesn’t have time or they overlap in timing. So overall there’s a bit of a small fish in big pond or bigger fish in smaller pond decision here with theater. Also, they are in the process of expanding to offer a full theater and dance major and it’s ridiculously easy to multi-major at Bowdoin. My son went in with no intent to do theater beyond an extracurricular and now plans to double major in it.
– In terms of isolation and “too small,” that totally depends on your personality and no one knows you as well as you. My son loves the smaller size and mostly sought out LAC’s as a result. He wasn’t interested in urban. If you want to be in a real “city” as opposed to a town, you should go to Yale. Yale is a very large campus, directly integrated into downtown New Haven. So it is urban – not quite NYU urban, but close enough. Bowdoin is a nice college town/village. It’s very accessible to Portland, Maine (a small city by California standards but major for the region, and with a great waterfront downtown scene). There’s an Amtrak station right next to the Bowdoin campus and Portland is 30 minutes away (Boston 2.5 hours) by that or bus or Uber. Not the same as walking out of your dorm and across the street in New Haven, but not very isolated by LAC standards. Totally different league of accessible than Williams for example.
– The one other thing you didn’t note was the fundamental different between and LAC and a University – undergraduate focus. There are no grad students at all at Bowdoin, so all the research opportunities, all the parts in plays, etc., are filled by undergrads, and 100% of the learning is directly with the professors. Half my son’s classes have 16 people or less. He’s in a theater class now with 8 people, as an undergraduate Freshman. He knows all his professors personally, some by first name or nicknames. And it’s incredibly common to have meals with the professors and discuss anything (Bowdoin encourages it by making the cafeterias free for profs when they eat with students – so they usually are actively soliciting students inviting them to eat.)
I think Yale’s world-renowned quality speaks for itself, so nothing I am writing in any way is negative on Yale – just filling in on Bowdoin for your particular interests. If your heart says Yale, you should absolutely listen to it.
Good luck in any event and, again, congrats.
