It was a banner year for the Bowdoin College office of admissions. With an applicant pool that was 25% larger than the previous year, Bowdoin’s acceptance rate plummeted to the lowest in its history at 10.3%. In all, 9,081 students applied for admission to the liberal arts college in Maine in the hope of earning a slot in the Bowdoin College Class of 2022. This figure compares to 7,251 for the Class of 2021. Interestingly, the increase in applications was particularly dramatic among international applicants. So much for President Trump’s proposed travel bans discouraging international applicants from applying to America’s elite universities!
As reports Devin McKinney for “The Bowdoin Orient” in a piece about the Bowdoin incoming class, “The College also saw a significant increase in students utilizing fee waiver options, which it provides for low-income and first-generation college students. It also saw increases in students using an alternative application form, such as the Questbridge College Match Program and the Coalition Application, which also intend to make the college application process more accessible to students from low-income backgrounds…The diverse pool of admitted students represents all 50 states along with D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands and 40 countries.”
It’s nice to see that a small liberal arts college was able to admit students from all 50 states. There are universities that are a whole lot bigger than Bowdoin that struggle to do so and instead admit students only from 48 or 49 states. It speaks to the outreach strategies of Bowdoin’s admissions office in underrepresented states. So while Bowdoin seems to be very proud of its increasing appeal to international applicants, we happen to believe they should be very proud of their appeal to students in South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, too!
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