Bowdoin College Student Reviews

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Abbie

  • Class: Sophomore
  • Major: History
  • Gender: F
  • High School: Roland Park Country School
  • Transfer Student:
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Big Picture

When I was first looking at colleges my junior and senior year in high school, I was convinced that I wanted a huge student body. Coming from a small private school in Baltimore, I felt that I needed to have that experience. When I started looking into Bowdoin, the class size was the one thing that made me hesitant about applying, despite the fact that I loved everything else about it--the social house system, the balance of athletics and academics, the food (of course), the campus, the location, etc. I decided that regardless of what size school I went to, I would have significantly more classmates than the 75 I had in high school, so either way, I was going to have a plenty of different experiences. When I got here my freshman year, I found that the class size was practically perfect. Enough people to always be meeting new ones and small enough that I didn't feel overwhelmed. One experience that I'll never forget is when the women's Field Hockey team won Bowdoin's first ever National Championship. The entire campus was at the field house at 1 am on Saturday night to greet them. One of the houses off campus threw them a huge party and practically the entire campus was there, supporting the team until 5 o'clock in the morning. Even security guards were there when the team got off the bus, taking pictures and cheering them on with the rest of campus. It really was a huge testament to our incredible school spirit.

Academic Life

Professors will always know your name at Bowdoin if you participate in class or if you go to them for extra help outside of class. Even in larger lecture classes, most Professors make an effort to learn names.

Student Body

I would say that most students wear jeans and a t-shirt. There will always be those people that you never see wearing sweatpants, but I can say that I have zero problem wearing a sweat suit to class. I don't feel uncomfortable, under-dressed or out of place. I think there's a pretty good mix of politically aware and active students and ones that have no clue what's going on and don't care. Bowdoin definitely is predominantly left on the political spectrum, however, I have seen some fliers around campus recently about a Republican group on campus, so they're small but visible.

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