Colleges Bowdoin College

Bowdoin College www.bowdoin.edu

Bowdoin College is a private institution that was founded in 1794. It’s set on a 207-acre campus in the coastal New England town of Brunswick, Maine. In addition to its Brunswick campus, Bowdoin owns a 118-acre coastal studies center on Orr’s Island and a 200-acre scientific field station on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy. It has nearly 100 student organizations. One of the largest and most active groups is the Outing Club, which offers 150 excursions each year. Peucinian Society, founded in 1805, is one of the oldest literary and intellectual societies in the country, with alumni including poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. More than half of Bowdoin students study abroad for a semester through more than 100 affiliated academic programs. Freshmen are required to live on campus and are assigned to a college house that provides residential social activities.

Academics

The college offers 35 majors and 40 minors, as well as several joint engineering programs with Columbia, Caltech, Dartmouth College, and the University of Maine. Current distribution requirements for students include one course each in natural sciences, quantitative reasoning, visual and performing arts, international perspectives, and difference, power, and inequity. A small writing-intensive course, called a first-year seminar, is also required. The student-faculty ratio at Bowdoin College is 9:1, and the school has 64% of its classes with fewer than 20 students. Popular majors include Political Science, Econometrics, and Mathematics.

Special Highlights

History & Traditions. Bowdoin’s long-standing traditions help us build and maintain our welcoming community. The Bowdoin Hello: This might be something you experience on your campus tour—before you even apply. Greeting each other on campus doesn’t sound like something with a rich history, but thanks to our small campus and network of paths, you’ll end up doing it a lot. Dinner with Six Strangers: Residential Life had an idea: let’s use food to bring together people on campus that may not have otherwise interacted. Now, “Dinner with Six Strangers” has traveled out of the Brunswick border, and has been adopted by Bowdoin alums all over the country. Summer Send Off: All around the country, Bowdoin families throw send-off parties for incoming first-year students, their parents, and families. It’s a chance to meet “Polar Bears” in your area, and to feel that Bowdoin network already welcoming you and working hard on your behalf.

Student Organizations. More than 100 different groups sponsor extra- and co-curricular activities for students, faculty, staff, and community members. Together, these organizations broaden and enrich your time at Bowdoin by providing social, cultural, and educational experiences outside the classroom. Have you planned and promoted a concert for 2,000 people? Do you have the right audio and video equipment for a film fest? What kind of space works best for small-group conversations? Student organizations keep us busy and involved, but they also provide important leadership opportunities during our years here. The Office of Student Activities is dedicated to providing the resources needed to make your event a success. Bowdoin Student Government is a democratically elected autonomous body of student representatives that offers a very direct path to leadership opportunities. BSG can help you start a club, fund a project, find course feedback, and more.

School Mission & Unique Qualities

It is the mission of the College to engage students of uncommon promise in an intense full-time education of their minds, exploration of their creative faculties, and development of their social and leadership abilities in a four-year course of study and residence that concludes with a baccalaureate degree in the liberal arts. At Bowdoin, the commitment to the “Common Good” is something that we’re serious about: in our classes, in our community, and in our free time. Through the McKeen Center for the Common Good, students are encouraged to think critically about the common good, and then act via a number of channels, including coursework, internships, research, and community service.

Student Reviews…

“Excellent food, great dorms, and professors that changed my whole perspective on life. However, the institutional bureaucracy could be difficult to manage. If you go here, I encourage you to ask for support. They have funding opportunities for research projects and individual interest projects. Bowdoin is academically strong, but it’s in a really isolated location.”