Social atmosphere

bluepurple · 07-13-2009, 02:33 AM

Hi people! I was curious about the relationships that professors and studets have at Bowdoin; I have heard much negative complements towards Williams, which is on my top three colleges to attend, and I wanted to know how the relationships, as far as student to student and teacher to student, are at Bowdoin. Also how competitive kids are at Bowdoin? How groupy, etc? The more I know about Bowdoin, the better I can picture myself there...I am aware that Bowdoin directs much attention towards diversity, which makes me feel comfortable since I am from another country originally, but which school is the best in the top liberal art colleges other than Amherst that puts my emphasis on diversity?
Thank you!!

pb2002 · 07-13-2009, 08:40 AM

middlebury has a particularly large proportion of international students. wesleyan is very diverse and is also very left politically. swarthmore is similar to wesleyan in those aspects, although it is smaller.

i'm surprised you heard negative comments about williams. in my friends' experiences there, it is only ever been one of the best places to form enduring relationships with professors.

at bowdoin that is certainly the case. i have been shocked regularly by how professors bend over backwards to assist. some i only had for a single class, say, my sophomore year. still they remember their students vividly and are always eager to help in whatever ways they can.

Tzar09 · 07-14-2009, 12:03 AM

Hope you don't mind list form.

1) Like pb said, students and professors have really good relationships. I was in DC for 4 July and I happened to run into a Bowdoin grad from the class of 1994 who, during the course of our conversation, said that he had had a few professors who he STILL keeps in touch with 15 years later.

2) Everything I've heard indicates that Bowdoin students are very anti-competition (with each other). That doesn't mean that they don't constantly push themselves to do better and compete with themselves, but they don't really compete with their peers at all. My senior interviewer at Bowdoin said that she only knew the GPA of maybe 1 friend. I've also heard plenty of stories of kid helping out friends in their classes who didn't understand whatever (even though, technically, they're competing with each other by means of the curve). To be sure, its quite different from places like Johns Hopkins where people will steal other's notes so that the other person can't bring up the curve.

3) People I've spoken to are divided. I've heard stories that say that there is a little bit of a cliquey thing going on, but I've heard just as many stories about people who meet new friends every day.

4) I'd say that all the all the liberal arts schools are making real efforts to increase diversity. Once they realized that having zero diversity was a bad thing (~1960) they all started trying pretty hard to turn things around. Who's been the most successful? I'd say Bowdoin is up there. Heck, 30-35% of the student body is non-white, and then there's another couple percent who are white but from abroad.

And economically, Bowdoin is need blind and meets all demonstrated need with grants. Very few schools do all that, and even though the program of need based grants is new, it will certainly bring more and more economic diversity the more years it is in place.

PlainCurious · 07-14-2009, 04:23 AM

Absolutely agree with all that's been said so far. And just to add my two cents about cliques, I think it really depends on the people in the class, not the college. I've also heard different stories about Bowdoin students; it seems to me, however, that people - seniors and future freshmen alike - are very willing to meet new people and not get stuck in certain groups, and that's the most important thing. There's also diversity, and I think it's not only represented by the countries of the students or their social backgrounds, but also by their interests, hobbies, and passions.

On another note, a college that sticks out with its internationalism is Macalester, but from what I've heard, the atmosphere there is different.

bluepurple · 07-14-2009, 09:22 AM

Thank you people!! This really opened up my options toward Bowdoin again! Now I am stuck between Amherst and Bowdoin! I will apply to both but I will apply to one of those two for ED; I will pay a visit, probably to Amherst, for some Diversity program that I am strenously looking forward to; but I have very good friends at both schools and they tell me all but positives about both schools! I am eager to hear some negatives

Thank you again for helping me!

SundayMorning1 · 07-14-2009, 10:26 AM

If you visit both campuses (I'm thinking you have not yet done the campus tours/visits) you'll probably develop a preference for ED at one vs. the other. Both are great schools but have very different atmospheres from A-Z.