You are just wrong here. This is odd as saying kids didn't stay on campus during the holidays until Harry Potter did. |
So instead of houses you like fraternities. Got it: "Don't worry, over-indulged kids who are afraid to leave home and make friends on your own, we're going to give you a ready-made family on campus, just like those frat boys from "Animal House" had. |
It's probably in between your experience and Rice. The college houses were indeed meant to replace greek life at Bowdoin, which was a really robust part of campus life until it was closed down in the late 90s and the college took over the houses. In practice, mostly groups of sophomores live in the houses, and the houses tend to form the center of social life for first-years and sophomores. Each house is associated with different floors in the first-year dorms, so all the people you live with and near will be part of the same house. The houses also reflect a pragmatic attempt to centralize younger-student partying on campus, recognizing that those students will drink anyway and that it's better for them to be drinking beer and wine in a public place patrolled by security than jungle juice and shots in their dorm rooms. (The latter happens, of course, but my sense is it happens less than at other schools that purport to be stricter about drinking.) The houses are very involved in orientation activities (at least in non-covid years). Ultimately, most of the programming at the houses that people attend are parties, and all of them are open to the whole campus, but members can come earlier, maybe use a different line for the keg, etc.. There are some more specific house-only events like dinners, lectures, and the like, but those are more sparsely attended. To some extent, the houses have different personalities (and particular parties thy hold each year), but because their membership is based on first-year residence floor rather than some sort of rush process, it's not like there's a jock house or a nerd house or anything like that. Although there is a substance free house that holds no drinking activities (affiliated with the substance free floors in the dorms.) By junior and senior year, people tend to be less focused on the house system (although the college is always trying to change that.) All in all, I always thought it was a nice compromise. You can be part of it as much or as little as you want, everyone can attend the many parties they hold, and it gives you another outlet for meeting different people from across campus. (It's also a decent sophomore living option because they're mostly singles.) |
If you are looking for less selective schools to add to your list, Franklin and Marshall offers something similar to freshmen. |
The houses at Bowdoin are social houses and there is a mutual selection process somewhat similar to rush. |
So really they are frats (but not allowed to call them that). |
Yep. |
While I don’t know a lot about the house system at Bowdoin, I clerked at a Portland law firm with a whole bunch of Bowdoin alumni and I ended up pretty envious of their college experience - it sounds like a great place to go for undergraduate. |
OP here. This isn't how it is described in the online info session - it says you are assigned a house based on first year residence hall. |
No. I went to Harvard, where the House system predates Harry Potter by many, many years. Perhaps Bowdoin is emulating Harvard, not Harry Potter? |
This is emphatically untrue. First-year students are assigned to a college house based on their first-year floor. Everybody is affiliated with a house (and only one house) automatically, with no selection or participation involved. As for who lives in the houses, they are chosen by the professional residential life staff of the college. The only "mutual selection" process is that groups of friends try to get residential life to admit them all to the same house. But we're talking about groups of 4, not groups of 40. So the houses still end up drawing from a decent cross-section of campus. (The super-quiet students and those who are "too cool" for that sort of thing excepted.) Anyone who goes to Bowdoin expecting frats is going to be sorely disappointed. The college house system aims to replicate some of the small-community feeling of frats, but at the end of the day, it's college housing controlled by residential life, patrolled by security, etc. |