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Bowdoin College is located in the coastal New England town of Brunswick, Maine. The Bowdoin Polar Bears compete in 31 varsity sports in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference. Bowdoin has nearly 100 student organizations. One of the largest and most active groups is the Outing Club, which offers 100 excursions each year. Peucinian Society, founded in 1805, is one of the oldest literary and intellectual societies in the country, with alumni including poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Bowdoin abolished fraternities in 1997 and replaced them with a system of college-owned social houses. Freshmen are required to live on campus and are assigned to a college house that provides residential social activities.
Bowdoin was a men’s college until 1971, when the school admitted its first female students. It was also one of the first selective schools to make the SAT and ACT optional on its application in 1969. More than half of Bowdoin students study abroad for a semester through more than 100 affiliated academic programs. Notable alumni include former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Melville Weston Fuller, author Nathaniel Hawthorne, former U.S. President Franklin Pierce, and human sexuality and gender researcher Alfred Kinsey—subject of the 2004 biographical film bearing his surname.
School mission and unique qualities (as provided by the school):
A liberal arts education at Bowdoin is not about being small and safe; it is about having the support to take surprising risks. That means caring more about the questions than giving the right answers, discovering you are good at something you did not think was your strength and making connections where none appear to exist. Bowdoin's curriculum offers a bold blueprint for liberal education designed to inspire students to become world citizens with acute sensitivity to the social and natural world. Its interdisciplinary focus encourages students to make connections among subjects, discover disciplines that excite their imaginations and develop keen skills for addressing the challenges of a changing world. Bowdoin students achieve at the highest levels but also lead balanced lives. Campus visitors frequently comment on how friendly everyone at Bowdoin is to visitors and how happy everyone seems at Bowdoin. This impression is supported by high retention, graduation and alumni giving rates. The connection to place is vitally important to the educational, social, service and recreational opportunities at Bowdoin. Maine is much more than the College's address. A Bowdoin education is best summed up by "The Offer of the College": To be at home in all lands and all ages; To count Nature a familiar acquaintance, And Art an intimate friend; To gain a standard for the appreciation of others' work, And the criticism of your own; To carry the keys of the world's library in your pocket, And feel its resources behind you in whatever task you undertake; To make hosts of friends ... Who are to be leaders in all walks of life; To lose yourself in generous enthusiasms, And cooperate with others for common ends. This is the offer of the college for the best four years of your life. --Adapted from the original "Offer of the College" by William DeWitt Hyde, President of Bowdoin College, 1885-1917.
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