Bowdoin College Top Questions

For me the best thing about Bowdoin is the lifestyle it provides. The academic life is tough, but not impossible, and extremely interesting. The athletics are fantastic, with great facilities, and competitive teams. The social life is all that i wanted.

Bowdoin is a perfect fit for me. The social scene is great on the weekends, but for the most part exists only on the weekends as people work very hard during the week. Those in the know are impressed that I go to Bowdoin, but many people outside of New England haven't heard of it. Brunswick is the perfect little town. It has almost everything you would need (coffee shops, sandwich shops, video stores, A TON of really good restaurants), the surrounding areas have big chain stores such as Target, and if you can't find it here you can get it in Portland. The most frequent complaints come from the College House system, which seems good on the surface but is fundamentally flawed. Some parties there are good, some are awful, but there are always fun things to de elsewhere.

When people hear Bowdoin they have one of two reactions; they either know it or they don't. People who know it say "Oh wow that's a great school!" I have occasionally heard it being described as "all the best parts of Harvard, but smaller." Then there are the people who don't know it, and they generally say "Bow-doin?" (pronouncing it wrong) "Oh where is that?" And when you reply that it's in Maine they say "Oh, it's cold there!" Bowdoin is very small. Everybody hears everything very quickly, and everyone knows everyone (for better or worse).

I wanted to go to a small school and Bowdoin seems to be the perfect size - at this point. I'm worried that by the end of Senior year I'll be itching to get out of here and meet new people, but as of now, its so nice to be on a welcoming campus and see my friends mulitple times everyday on the pathways or dining hall.

I love the friendliness of the student body. It would be an overstatement to say that everyone is nice, but compared to the other campuses I've been on, almost everyone IS nice. It's really great. I like how people are healthy and eat well and are active without being too obsessed about it. I love the town; I love how there is such a diversity of restaurants in a small town in Maine. Also the stores are cute and practical. The faculty is impressive and warm. They are approachable, like the students. I think the biggest controversy was over C/D/F. In my opinion, I'm glad that I was able to use the "credit" option for my math class but I can also understand why it encourages students to slack off, and how in that sense it is a bad thing. There is an average amount of school pride, which I think is normal of most campuses. The campus itself is beautiful. I have had too many great experiences so far to remember just one.

I love that Bowdoin is small enough that it's not overwhelming and there are plenty of people I still don't know, but at the same time it seems much much bigger than the HS I graduated from. A lot of people I talk to have never heard of Bowdoin and/or don't know where it is, which I find strange. However, I have found that most of the people I know on campus are extremely smart and driven, and yet have a host of other interest such as sports, other outdoor activities, dance, you name it.

Socially speaking Bowdoin is great on the weekend because the people are great on the weekend. That said, it is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, and I wouldn't recommend it for anyone who can't do without a clubbing/bar nightlife. Portland does get some good music from time to time, though, and there's an incredible variety of cultural opportunities that come with being at a college that's as distinguished in the realm of academia as Bowdoin is.

Bowdoin is full of really nice, friendly people. Admittedly, there are a few people that don't fulfill this generalization, but that's true everywhere and often with far more exceptions. As it is, almost anyone you talk to will help you out if they can and are generally open and fun. Most everyone is intelligent and multi-talented: able to take hard classes, play a couple sports, and then go sing a concert for an extreme example. Sometimes the classes can get a little intense, but people are still able to cool off and make it through. It's rather ironic to me that despite all the skills and rankings that place Bowdoin so high (especially for the food!!), most people I know from home/elsewhere have never heard of the school.

So many times people ask where I go to school, and I say "Bowdoin"; they reply, "Where?" But to everyone who goes here, Bowdoin is the center of the universe. We have a community that could not be fostered as well at any larger school. Bowdoin is in the middle of a small town, some people might say in the middle of nowhere - I say it's perfect. It's only 20 minutes from Freeport, 30 minutes from Portland, 2 hours from Boston and less than 10 minutes away from the ocean.

Bowdoin is just the right size, but it's small enough so that when I tell people about it, they don't usually know where it is unless they are well educated individuals. There's a small town surrounding Bowdoin, but there is very little night life in it, a few bars. There were a few open forums recently to discuss sexuality at Bowdoin. There were a few homophobic comments made at the beginning of the year and these forums were held to discuss why and if the community is fostering negative stigmas concerning sexuality.