Bowdoin College

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Early years

Bowdoin College was chartered in 1794 by the Massachusetts State Legislature and was later redirected under the jurisdiction of the Maine Legislature. It was named for former Massachusetts governor James Bowdoin, whose son James Bowdoin III was an early benefactor.

Bowdoin began to develop in the 1820s when Maine became an independent state following the Missouri Compromise. Future U.S. President Franklin Pierce attended the school, along with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1825. Pierce and Hawthorne began an official militia company called the 'Bowdoin Cadets'. The Phi Beta Kappa Society was active at Bowdoin before the Civil War and featured anti-slavery speakers.

From its founding, Bowdoin was popular among the sons of the political elite and "catered very largely to the wealthy conservative from the state of Maine". During the first half of the 19th century, Bowdoin required of its students a certificate of "good moral character" as well as knowledge of Latin and Ancient Greek, geography, algebra, and the major works of Cicero, Xenophon, Virgil and Homer.

Harriet Beecher Stowe started writing her anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in Brunswick while her husband was teaching at the college. Brigadier General (and Brevet Major General) Joshua Chamberlain, a Bowdoin alumnus and professor, was present at the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia at Appomattox Court House in 1865. Chamberlain, a Medal of Honor recipient who later served as governor of Maine and president of Bowdoin, fought at Gettysburg, where he commanded the 20th Maine in defense of Little Round Top. Other notable Civil War-era alumni include Major General Oliver Otis Howard, class of 1850, who led the Freedmen's Bureau and later founded Howard University; Massachusetts Governor John Andrew, class of 1837, who was responsible for forming the 54th Massachusetts; and William P. Fessenden (1823) and Hugh McCulloch (1827), both of whom served as Secretary of the Treasury during the Lincoln Administration.

With strained relations over slavery between political parties, President Franklin Pierce appointed Jefferson Davis as his Secretary of War, and the college awarded the future President of the Confederacy an honorary degree. The Jefferson Davis Award was established in 1972 following a donation from the United Daughters of the Confederacy and was given to students excelling in legal studies. The award was discontinued in 2015, with the college president citing it as inappropriate because it honored someone "whose mission was to preserve and institutionalize slavery".

Admissions

The acceptance rate for the class of 2030 was 6.5%.The college received more than 14,727 applications for the class of 2030 – the highest application number in the college's history and a continuation of the rise in applications over the past four years. Applications increased by about 50%, since the class of 2024 and about 100% since the class of 2021.

U.S. News & World Report classifies Bowdoin as "most selective". Of enrolling students, 89% are in the top 10% of their high school graduating class. Although Bowdoin does not require the SAT in admissions, all students may submit a score upon application. The middle 50% SAT range for the verbal and math sections of the SAT is 660–750 and 660–750, respectively—numbers of only those submitting scores during the admissions process. The middle 50% ACT range is 30–33.

The April 17, 2008, edition of The Economist noted Bowdoin in an article on university admissions: "So-called 'almost-Ivies' such as Bowdoin and Middlebury also saw record low admission rates this year (18% each). It is now as hard to get into Bowdoin, says the college's admissions director, as it was to get into Princeton in the 1970s." Many students apply for financial aid, and around 85% of those who apply to receive aid. Bowdoin is a need-blind and no-loans institution. While a significant portion of the student body hails from New England—including nearly 25% from Massachusetts and 10% from Maine—recent classes have drawn from an increasingly national and international pool. The median family income of Bowdoin students is $195,900, with 57% of students coming from the top 10% of highest-earning families and 17.5% from the bottom 60%. Although Bowdoin once had a reputation for homogeneity (both ethnically and socioeconomically), a diversity campaign has increased the percentage of students of color in recent classes to more than 31%. In fact, admission of minorities goes back at least as far as John Brown Russwurm 1826, Bowdoin's first Black college graduate and the third Black graduate of any American college.

Clubs

The largest student group on campus is the Outing Club, which leads canoeing, kayaking, rafting, camping, and backpacking trips throughout Maine. One of the school's two historic rival literary societies, The Peucinian Society, was refounded in 2007 after a century's long slumber. Founded in 1805 due to the minimal access to the College's library, originally housed in the oldest building on campus, Massachusetts Hall, Peucinian disbanned in the late 19th century after the rise of fraternities on campus. This organization counts such people as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain among its former members. The other, the now-defunct Athenian Society, included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Franklin Pierce as members.

Bowdoin competes in the Standard Platform League of RoboCup as the Northern Bites, where teams compete with five autonomous Aldebaran Nao robots. Bowdoin won the world championship in RoboCup 2007, beating Carnegie Mellon University, and finished 2nd in the 2015 US Open.

Bowdoin's student newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient, is the oldest continuously published college weekly in the United States. The Orient was named the second-best tabloid-sized college weekly at a Collegiate Associated Press conference in March 2007 and the best college newspaper in New England by the New England Society of News Editors in 2018.

The school's literary magazine, The Quill, was published between 1897 and 2015. The Bowdoin Globalist, an international news, culture, and politics magazine affiliated with the Global21 organization of college magazines, has been publishing since 2012. The Bowdoin Globalist transitioned to a digital-only platform in 2015 and changed its name to The Bowdoin Review. The college's radio station, WBOR, has been operating since the early 1940s. In 1999, The Bowdoin Cable Network was formed, producing a weekly newscast and several student-created shows per semester.

Six a cappella groups are on campus; the Meddiebempsters are the oldest. Founded in the spring of 1937, the Meddies performed in USO shows after World War II.

Environmental record

Bowdoin College signed on to the American College and University President's Climate Commitment in 2007. The college followed through with a carbon neutrality plan released in 2009, with 2020 as the target year for carbon neutrality. According to the plan, general improvements to Maine's electricity grid will account for 7% of carbon reductions, commuting improvements will account for 1%, and the purchase of renewable energy credits will account for 41%. The plan includes the construction of a solar thermal system, part of the "Thorne Solar Hot Water Project"; co-generation in the central heating plant (for which Bowdoin received $400,000 in federal grants); lighting upgrades to all campus buildings; and modern monitoring systems of energy usage on campus. In 2017, the college was on track to meet the 28% own source reduction target, and efforts have continued in the areas of energy conservation, efficiency upgrades and transitioning to lower carbon fuel sources. Bowdoin's facilities are heated by an on-campus heating plant that burns natural gas.

Between 2002 and 2008, Bowdoin College decreased its CO2 emissions by 40%. It achieved that reduction by switching from No. 6 to No. 2 oil in its heating plant, reducing the campus set heating point from 72 to 68 degrees, and by adhering to its own Green Design Standards in renovations. In addition, Bowdoin runs a single stream recycling program, and its dining services department has begun composting food waste and unbleached paper napkins. Bowdoin received an overall "B−" grade for its sustainability efforts on the College Sustainability Report Card 2009 published by the Sustainable Endowments Institute.

In 2003, Bowdoin committed to achieving LEED-certification for all new campus buildings. The college has since completed construction on Osher and West residency halls, the Peter Buck Center for Health & Fitness, the Sidney J. Watson Arena, 216 Maine Street, and 52 Harpswell all of which have attained LEED, Silver LEED or Gold LEED certification. The new dorms partially use collected rainwater as part of an advanced flushing system. The new Park Row Apartments and Schiller Coastal Studies Center are Passive House Certified through Phius.

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