Bowdoin College Top Questions

Classes are 50 kids at the largest. Most classes are around 25 people this is a good number. Bowdoin offers a wonderfully diverse liberal arts education. Bowdoin, however, does not prepare students enough for life after college. It does not encourage internships, or provide enough funding for people pursuing internships. I think this is a mistake, as students are not provided with enough experience to get good jobs out of college.

Overall I’ve had great classes and great professors. The material is interesting an the professors engaging. I like having small classes that limit the amount of lecture time (discussion is the norm in most of my classes). My professors know my name (sounds trivial, but it’s really helpful) and it’s easy to cultivate relationships with them. The workload varies by class, professor and how much effort you intend to put into it. It’s certainly not easy. I do spend a significant amount of time studying, researching, writing, and doing labs etc but not to the exclusion of other activities. It's all about learning; it's all about discussion; it's all about enriching your mind with students and professors alike, inside and outside of class. It's a lot of work, but for the most part we enjoy it.

-Academics are rigorous, but with efforts anyone can succeed. Students are very consciencious about their future and work hard to achieve a goal. Still got time for parties. During finals and exams, everyone is too damn worried so it's not as pleasant of an environment.

Professors are typically sadists who love assign ridiculous amounts of readings. But they all know your name, and they are typically really intelligent.

Academics at Bowdoin are challenging but generally very good. Sometimes you are going to get a crappy professor who is not clear or who is himself not very interested in the topic: like my general chem class. Honestly, my experience with intro and general classes in the science department have not been that great: the classes are big, the teachers are uninterested, and the material I pretty much have to teach myself. BUT there are some great classes too. Every art class I've taken here has been awesome; the art department is my favorite (to be fair, also the department I've had the most contact with), they're all approachable and awesome. I am a Visual arts and Neuroscience double major, which normally raises some eyebrows. The Neuroscience department is not really a solid entity- its kindof stretched between bio and psych, but the classes are fantastic. Right now I'm in a class called Behavioral Neuroscience, where we are doing behavioral and anatomical experiments with goldfish. We design the experiments as a group, and the subject matter is what our professor actually does his research on. Class size on the whole is pretty small, about 15 I think, and how much you work for them varies A LOT. There are some classes I don't think I EVER work for and some that have me working on things every night. Professors, though, are always really willing to help, they always have office hours, can meet up, check their email excessively and are pretty flexible.

The academics here have been absolutely fantastic for me. I've had professors here and there that I haven't really liked, but overall Bowdoin has been a perfect fit for me academically. I'm a Classics major and the department is really small, so my classes have never been more than about 15 kids, and my professors are all really passionate about what they teach and extremely helpful outside of class. I also have to say that one of the best things about Bowdoin is that students really aren't competitive. I came from a big high school where kids were practically cut-throat competitive with each other; it was all about grades and people would do anything to do well. At Bowdoin it's uncool to talk about grades; people tend to be intrinsically motivated, setting (often very high) goals for themselves. And no one cheats. Bowdoin has a zero tolerance policy with cheating (the first offense pretty much guarantees suspension for a semester). It's so nice to be in an honest environment, where everyone has to work just as hard as everyone else to do well. And for the first time in my life, I'm not obsessed with grades. I actually enjoy learning.

My favorite class has been with Professor Morgan in Constitutional Law. He has amazing credentials and expertise in this area of law. In class he is quite entertaining and efficient in his lectures. I never thought I could be this interested in law until this class. I study every night for hours; Bowdoin keeps me academically challenged at all times. The thing that most surprised me was the lack of intellectual conversations outside of the classroom. I believe that this is a result of students being too strenuous on ‘political correctness’, and too damn liberal to be interested in getting another perspective. I myself am a moderate and I feel ostracized for it, I cannot imagine how conservatives must feel. Sadly, there’s even a lack of dialogue within the classrooms. I just joined a club, the Peucinian Society, and this has been the first time that I have encountered genuine intellectual discourse amongst my peers. Students are not competitive here which is great. There's a bunch of peer support and motivation that comes from within instead of pressured by peers. I am a double major in Government and Economics with a minor in Asian Studies. Government is Bowdoin's most pursued major and is full of outstanding professors. The economics department desperately needs more professors because the student demand is overwhelming, or at least has been during my time here. The Japanese curriculum is unbelievable here; there are so many venues of support stretching from weekly Japanese Table dinners and movie showings, to an annual fair with bates and Colby and Conversation Clinics. The academic requirements are very reflective of Bowdoin’s values. Students generally complete them without knowing it; this goes to show how easy they are to fulfill.

The small size at Bowdoin allows for small classes. The largest classes on campus are generally introductory courses of 50 students, and even in these classes, most professors will make an effort to learn the names of all the students. Professors are also generally very accessible outside of class. The government department is very strong at Bowdoin. It is also one of the most popular majors. The professors are very intelligent and helpful outside of class.

The academics are great at Bowdoin. I'm double majoring with one major in a very large department and one major in a very small department, so the size of my classes has ranged from 4 to 100. Both classes were good experiences for the me, though the smaller the class the more individual attention each student gets. Students are very intellectually curious and tend to be academically driven, but I wouldn't say that there is much competition among the students themselves. Grades aren't shared openly. The introductory classes are good, but the best classes are once to get up to the 200 and 300 level classes and professors teach in their are of study. Professors are so welcoming. I go to a language table every week and have developing relationships with all of the professors in my department of study. They are also open to enabling students to do what they want to do.

The academics at Bowdoin are rigorous and time management is a must, but overall its great. For the most part, classes are small so knowing your professors is almost guaranteed. Outside of the classroom setting, information learned in class is usually carried out in normal conversation.