WASP? Is this a real thing, or recent construction?
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Anonymous
The elite attend institutions with high application numbers that are very competitive. I don’t know why we’re acting as if they don’t reside in highly competitive colleges- Harvard, Yale, Stanford… |
Anonymous
| Midd and Hamilton are very tough sells in increasingly diverse country. Add in Colby. |
Anonymous
This is like the false claims that the Ivies are not relevant. These are elite schools in high demand. They will continue to be very relevant. |
Anonymous
I don’t see how Bowdoin leads this. Other than Mamdani, there really haven’t been many Bowdoin alum in government (at the high level). Especially compared to Williams and Amherst. It has a pretty small computer science department. It’s nice that it spends a lot on making the experience good, but academically it appears very mediocre. |
Anonymous
These schools don’t even get 20k apps. |
Anonymous
| ^wishful thinking |
Anonymous
| Vestiges of prep school privilege days, long since passed. |
Anonymous
These schools sell themselves. All three are great. |
Anonymous
Pretty much why it’s a waste of time discussing them ad nauseam. They don’t have the space for middle class white students, and they really don’t represent the most academic colleges in the country. They’re just…generally decent small academic communities with rich and poor people. |
Anonymous
Very confused what you mean by mediocre. I don’t think any of these schools are mediocre on an absolute or even relative basis. Other than Mamdani and Pearson who graduated this century, there are numerous govt officials in Bowdoin’s history including ambassadors, senators, even POTUS. George Mitchell is one. The late Ed Lee was another. Alumni list aside, the fact is that Bowdoin’s most popular major is Government and for that reason it does have a lot of student interest and success in that field. Your original comment was “near” so I don’t even have to make an argument for superiority here. |
Anonymous
It has student interest, but you're just describing an overcrowded major. Here confirms my suspicions that CS is overcrowded: https://bowdoinorient.com/2024/12/06/as-student-enrollment-trends-and-liberal-arts-values-collide-faculty-disagree-over-how-to-respond/. Williams has a lot of current very important alumni in government: Lina Khan, Wahidullah Waissi, Philip Wilcox, Steven Fagin, Victoria Coates, Elsie Kanza, Don Beyer, and there's many more recent alum who have made world history (Notably Reza Pahlavi). I really don't think Bowdoin is anywhere near comparable to Williams in anything other than environmental science. |
Anonymous
So you are saying that Bowdoin is mediocre in Government because it is too popular a major? Overcrowded, when the average class size is <20? Curious. And those names of yours seem comparable to what Bowdoin has produced. Not going to get into a whole bake-off here on lists but I'll also give you Lawrence Lindsey, Christopher Hill, Thomas Pickering, and you can do your research for more. But if you really want to continue going through life believing Bowdoin is far inferior to Williams despite all available evidence showing otherwise, be my guest. This is a pretty pointless argument. Nobody is disagreeing that Williams is still the #1/2 LAC. But that gap is not enormous and contrary to remaining "stagnant", by admission stats, endowment AUM, and any other measure it's clear that Bowdoin has even closed some of the gap over the past ten years, which is exactly the opposite of stagnation. Re the CS point: CS is getting (overly) popular at every school. And as the article states, the school is responding to increased demand by hiring more faculty... I think you must be a parent and a particularly obsessed one at that. Cannot possibly be a Williams grad yourself - those I know are far more gracious and all of us who went to top-end LACs know our schools are very comparable. |
Anonymous
The williams alum in government are much more known, prominent, and important. Compare the notable alumni pages. Just because the average class size is <20, doesn't mean the government program isn't overcrowded. I love how you skipped over the faculty struggling with the CS workload due to lack of faculty and just made the easy point. It's frustrating trying to discuss with commenters like this because they choose not to get the point and bulldoze over the most important details. The gap is enormous. Bowdoin has a much worse yield, worse admitted students, and worse endowment performance. I understand the defensiveness for an alma mater, but this is just the reality. I think if you want a career in government, Bowdoin is going to serve you...fine, for a low level position, but you aren't seeing alum go off into the big careers like Williams and Amherst alum. |
Anonymous
What point did you even make? That CS department had a need to hire more faculty? This has been addressed.. https://www.bowdoin.edu/news/2025/03/announcing-the-hastings-initiative-for-ai-and-humanity.html Bowdoin is going to serve you...fine, for a low level position, but you aren't seeing alum go off into the big careers like Williams and Amherst alum. you've got to be kidding me... Lina Khan is literally, as we speak, working for Zohran Mamdani |
Anonymous
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And re: endowment performance (which really has nothing to do with quality of education at this level)
Bowdoin beats Williams on every single timeframe As of June 30, 2025, Bowdoin’s endowment generated three-, five-, ten-, and twenty-year annualized returns of 8.8 percent, 13.5 percent, 11.0 percent, and 10.7 percent, respectively. Long-term returns place Bowdoin in the top 1 percent of all college and university endowments tracked by Cambridge Associates. The [Williams] endowment generated a higher return [11.7% in 2025] than last year, when it delivered a return of 10.2 percent — about $355.4 million in 2025 dollars — following declines in 2022 and 2023. The highest total value of the endowment was $4.2 billion, which the Investment Office reported in 2021 after a 49.9 percent return. The 10-year annual return at the conclusion of this fiscal year is 9.4 percent, an increase from last year’s 9.2 percent. Really no clue where all these wild assertions are coming from, especially from someone with no personal experience at Williams OR Bowdoin ha |