<p>Actually, a good friend of mine at school was choosing between Wesleyan and Bowdoin, and I would disagree that they are very similar. I think Wesleyan is much more liberal and much more politically active. I would also say that Wesleyan has a reputation for being fairly counter-cultural that Bowdoin really doesn’t. My friend ultimately decided on Bowdoin because she thought Wesleyan would be a little too intensely liberal whereas Bowdoin would be a bit more traditional and more of what she wanted. The fact that Bowdoin’s food was better also didn’t hurt (just kidding. kind of). But yeah, you could really compare Bowdoin to virtually ANY other highly selective liberal arts college and come up with at least some similarities, but from the experiences of myself and my friends who all chose Bowdoin, I would say that Colby and Colgate and possibly Midd (minus the language emphasis) are the most similar schools to Bowdoin in terms of student body, community, athletics, campus feel, and academics.</p>
<p>And about the sports thing-- a lot of the athletes I know applied ED because they said that they didn’t think that they’d be able to get in otherwise. I don’t really know much more about it, but I imagine that applying ED does give you a pretty big advantage</p>