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Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Guess that you know little about Bowdoin, or pretty much any school for that matter. Nonsensical fictional post with a nonexistent child.

Would you like to make a point then since I know "little about Bowdoin." Average salary out of Bowdoin is not recouping 360k cost of attendance. I get that the financial aid is good, but I just don't think it is worth it even if you can afford it; especially for a service oriented institution like Bowdoin where many student going into public service roles and education. I believe in these valuable, fulfilling careers and believe a Bowdoin education is elite-there's no question. I just don't agree it's worth the average cost of a property in Vermont.

Average salary isn't a good measure of anything because it doesn't take major, location, etc. into account. If we were to approach everything from an ROI perspective on a per major basis you would have to make the same comment about any top tier private school for many majors. I doubt that Bowdoin majors do measurably worse than other top privates including the Ivies and MIT on a major for major same geography basis. The same likely holds for any other top SLAC or R1, it's just not a good measure of value. If that is the hill that you want to die on go to a solid public and study engineering. SJSU should be near the top of your list because it is hard to find a better ROI once adjusted for field and location.

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Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Guess that you know little about Bowdoin, or pretty much any school for that matter. Nonsensical fictional post with a nonexistent child.

Would you like to make a point then since I know "little about Bowdoin." Average salary out of Bowdoin is not recouping 360k cost of attendance. I get that the financial aid is good, but I just don't think it is worth it even if you can afford it; especially for a service oriented institution like Bowdoin where many student going into public service roles and education. I believe in these valuable, fulfilling careers and believe a Bowdoin education is elite-there's no question. I just don't agree it's worth the average cost of a property in Vermont.

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Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Guess that you know little about Bowdoin, or pretty much any school for that matter. Nonsensical fictional post with a nonexistent child.

Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:Very simple 3 great schools in NESCAC league, Williams, Amherst, and Bowdoin.

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Anonymous wrote:What does bowdoin have/is doing that ranks it near Williams or Amherst? It seems really stagnant and uninteresting.

Academics on par overall between the three, but Bowdoin has particular strength in:

Government (largest department, with strong connections on Capitol Hill)
Sciences (esp. Environmental and Oceanographic Sciences)
Soon: Computer Science/AI (Reed Hastings donated to fund a new program and expand faculty)

Not to mention reputation for highest QoL (facilities, forms, food) and student happiness which I think is the major reason why Bowdoin has been rising & winning cross-admits against W/A of late

Far from stagnant tbh

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.

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.

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.

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.

Meh. There's a real prestige drop after Amherst. I've met many Ephs and Mammoths in my career, but I really don't think of Bowdoin as particularly prestigious. Maybe that's "elitist" or whatever word this forum uses for opinions they dislike, but the reality is that Williams and Amherst alum dominate industry, government, and academia better than Bowdoin and most other LACs (I give a nod to Swarthmore, Pomona, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and Vassar)

Not that I think you're elitist, but I'd really like to know from what vantage point you are casting this judgment. Because I am in the periphery of some of the most elite circles on this planet (work in NYC high finance, know billionaire families socially) and I have never heard this view expressed. Indeed, the people sending their children to Trinity, Dalton, et al. all know W/A are the highest-ranked, but still very much respect LACs beyond those two schools.

This;

I’m on the other coast and now work on Sand Hill Rd. I know families with kids at Williams, Midd, Bowdoin, Swat, etc. All families in the same bracket as mine which is mid-8’s to lower 9 figures. Everybody knows all of these schools and nobody considers one better than the others. One kid at Williams is still mad that she was rejected by Haverford.

I don’t know anyone in SV who addressed their work as “sand hill road.” People here really pretend like they’re in the know when they’re cosplayers, at best.

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Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Umm are you trying to argue that Bowdoin students cannot make $180k in tech or finance out of school? Because this is verifiably false….

Anonymous wrote:Bowdoin is a waste of $360,000 with mediocre outcomes. It is stupid spending that sum of money just for your kid to need to go to graduate school. We have the funds for it but only spent that much for a kid whose starting salary out of college is $180,000 and 5 years out they’re making nearly as much as the 4 year cost of attendance. Bowdoin will not give you that opportunity.

Anonymous wrote:Very simple 3 great schools in NESCAC league, Williams, Amherst, and Bowdoin.

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Anonymous wrote:Midd and Hamilton are very tough sells in increasingly diverse country. Add in Colby.

Not a hard sell for my kid who liked all three of these very much. Not everyone wants to go to school in a city.

Yup—my kids have lived in a city their whole lives and probably will after college. They’re looking for something different during their college years. A nice campus is important to our junior.

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Anonymous wrote:Midd and Hamilton are very tough sells in increasingly diverse country. Add in Colby.

Not a hard sell for my kid who liked all three of these very much. Not everyone wants to go to school in a city.

Anonymous wrote:Midd and Hamilton are very tough sells in increasingly diverse country. Add in Colby.

Anonymous wrote:Among NESCACs it’s Williams and Amherst slight step down Bowdoin, another step down Hamilton small step Midd small step Colby and then who cares rest are not worth the money.