Bates v Bowdoin v Colby

Nutmeg22
Sat, 12 Jan 2013 16:42:11 +0000

Just a heads up, this is written from the point of view of a future Bowdoin student ('17).

I considered all three of these schools in my college search, but ultimately only decided to visit two of them: Bowdoin and Colby. I’ve grown up in a suburb outside of a pretty big city on the West Coast and I don’t really like urban areas. Reading about Lewiston, I thought it may be too urban (maybe even in a bad area). Whether or not my assumption is justified, I decided not to visit Bates and to instead focus my attention on other colleges.

My visit at Colby went extremely well. The rolling green hills are beautiful and the academics are certainly strong. I was interviewed by someone who was very likable and interested in similar things that I was interested in. At the time I visited Colby, I had almost finished my East Coast college trip, but I had not yet visited Bowdoin or Wesleyan. If it means anything, I liked Colby more than Dickinson, Colgate, and Trinity, but less so than Haverford and Williams. That was just my personal preference.

When I visited Bowdoin, I knew it was the place for me. It has the strong academics and probably a better reputation among Grad schools than does Colby (but who am I to think that? I’m still a high schooler.). On my tour, the guide and the people touring seemed more socially “normal” to me than did people on the tours from other schools, including Colby. Because LACs have a small number of students, they tend to attract students who are more quiet than do a school such as NYU, but don’t get me wrong I expect the social life and both Bowdoin and Colby to be vibrant. My point is the people at Bowdoin seemed more outgoing than any of the other schools I visited. Maybe it was just the tour I was on, but I got a sense that Bowdoin was the fit for me. Also I wouldn’t consider the people there as snobby (I’m not rich either; I’m getting financial aid). Maybe the other people on this thread just had an isolated bad experience.

As for the people telling you to look at some lower caliber schools, it is probably a good idea to have some safety schools because admission is very competitive for Bowdoin, Bates and Colby. That said, don’t let anybody on CC discourage you from applying to all 3 of these wonderful schools. Unless they are admissions officers, they don’t know your whole story and can only give you very rough estimates of your chances of admission.

As for me, I was a NESCAC recruit in a sport that is trivial and doesn’t have a lot of influence in admission like soccer, lacrosse, or hockey. The Bowdoin coach never told me if he was going to help me with admission, but I applied ED 1 anyway and was admitted. I’ll never know how and if I got help though; my academics were very strong (2290 SAT, 4.3 WGPA).

Best of luck! and I hope you end up applying to all 3 schools!