Amherst and Bowdoin are both great small liberal arts colleges. Two of the best. You can’t go wrong with either one. Both have great access to the outdoors. I’ll try to highlight some of the differences.
There are distinct differences, beginning with the curriculum. Both have a freshman seminar. Beyond that, Bowdoin has 5-6 more courses of distribution requirements. To fulfill these, you choose the courses to meet the requirements. So, it’s a pretty open curriculum. At Amherst the curriculum is totally open. No distribution requirements, meaning you choose everything. This is the core of your academic experience for your first 2 years, so ask yourself whether you prefer the totally open approach where all of your choice of courses is yours or if you prefer the guidance and structure of a menu of options. You still choose the courses but each in a pre-specified area so that you get exposure to a range of fields. Your choice.
Each campus has a variety of types of on-campus and off-campus housing. Bowdoin has “college houses”. Read about them. Amherst has “theme houses”. Both have repurposed their old frat houses for today’s living. Some offer single room options.
The communities in which the colleges are situated are very different from my point of view. Brunswick, Me is a charming small town. You can easily walk to the center of town from campus. It is on the ocean. Boating of various kinds is popular in Maine. Swimming is not because the ocean is too cold for swimming even in summer. The next town to Brunswick is Freeport, 10 miles away to the south. It is home to L.L. Bean and draws a lot of tourists to the “factory store.”
Amherst is also a delightful small town but about twice the population of Brunswick, largely due to the population of students at UMass. The result is more restaurants and entertainment in Amherst than Brunswick. About the same distance away from Amherst (9miles) as Freeport is from Brunswick is Northampton, the county seat of Hampshire County, complete with a court house and other government offices as well as an annual county fair every September. It is also home to Smith College. The Amherst-Northampton area is the 2nd largest booking venue in all of New England after Boston, meaning that there’s lots of live music if all kinds in the area if that’s your thing. There’s really good live music in Portland, Me, but it’s 3 times as far from Brunswick (27 miles) and takes 45-50 minutes by train to get there or a half hour by car. You can actually ride a bike to Northampton from Amherst on a protected bike trail slightly faster than you can travel by train between Brunswick and Portland. And the Arts District in Portland where a lot of the music clubs are is not downtown. In Northampton, all of the restaurants and music clubs are on or just off Main St. Access to Northampton is enhanced by the fact that a campus shuttle bus runs regularly to & from Northampton 7 days a week to facilitate the 5 colleges connection with Smith College.
If you want a quiet small town, go to Bowdoin. If you want a busier metro area, go to Amherst. Each has its own appeal.