The Bowdoin Orient

They hail from Portland to Pakistan and, at 510 students, they are the largest group of first-years Bowdoin has ever seen. Please welcome the Class of 2014.

Largest class ever

The 16-student increase from last year's class was unexpected by the Office of Admissions.

"Our plan at the beginning of the year was to come in with a class of 485 to 490," said Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid Scott Meiklejohn. "When we started getting all of the yeses in April we were very excited but we also started to go 'Yikes!'"

Meiklejohn explained that although this year's yield was comparable to last year's, the Class of 2014 did not experience the same level of "summer melt" expected by the administrators who anticipated a number of accepted students who take a gap year or accept an offer off the wait list of another college.

"In a normal year we would hit the high point and then 'summer melt' about 23 or 24 students, and this year I think it was about 10 or 11."

"The size of the class means that we have lots of students from lots of different experiences," said Dean of First-Year Students Janet Lohmann. "We're bigger than we want to be, but we're still small."

Lohmann stressed the thoughtful changes that have been made to accommodate the larger student population. "We weren't going to compromise the student experience," she said.

She cited initiatives taken with Dining Services to work on "flow" and with Academic Affairs to add courses. By the end of Phase II, over 98.8 percent of the Class of 2014 was enrolled in four courses.

There are more first-year seminars than ever before. For the first time, spots are sufficient that every single first year could have enrolled in a fall seminar if desired. This increase in courses was due not only to the increase in first year-class size, but also to the faculty's belief that the Class of 2014 will benefit from taking a seminar in their first, rather than their second, semester. According to Dean for Academic Affairs Cristle Collins Judd, there will still be "ample" first year seminar offerings in the spring.

Beyond first year seminars, additional classes and sections were added, for both fall and spring semesters, in "areas where we anticipated additional need or demand," wrote Judd in an e-mail to the Orient. "We were able to add these courses in a number of ways, primarily through visiting faculty...no faculty are teaching course overloads."

Residential Life "tripled" five doubles in West and five doubles in Osher, in addition to maintaining the 17 quints they had set up last year.

Associate Director of Housing Operations Lisa Rendall said that Residental Life has had "a few complaints," but that, "when they were built, [the doubles in West Hall and Osher Hall] were designed to be triples."

"Tripled" rooms were chosen on account of their larger square-footage. A disproportionate number of the quints are in Coleman because its corner rooms are the most spacious in first year housing.

Youth From Every Quarter

With 39 states and 17 countries represented in the Class of 2014, Bowdoin's "reach" is expanding. On the importance of geographic diversity, Meiklejohn said that "the college has to be a national and international place."

Sixty-one percent of the Class of 2014 is from outside of New England.

According to Meiklejohn, "The most important thing for us to do is to make sure that Bowdoin is as well known in Tampa and Spokane and San Diego and Phoenix and San Antonio as it is east of the Hudson River. And I would add Sydney and Hong Kong and Seoul and Tokyo and Lahore."

He described the transition the College has been undergoing over the last "15 or 20 years...from being really well known in New England and only New England to also being really well known in other parts of the country." The Class of 2014 is demonstrative of this trend.

"We're really happy about the reach of the College...in terms of how many different high schools are sending us an applicant. So I think that's a really excellent way to measure how broadly Bowdoin is known."

According to Meiklejohn, the Class of 2014 boasts applicants from 2,706 individual high schools while the Class of 2013 claims applicants from only 2,617, an 89-school increase in one year.

To compare, the Class of 2005 had only 1,803 schools submit applications. The number of schools represented in the applicant pool has increased by 50 percent over the last 10 years.

Bowdoin aims to increase its scope not just geographically, but also socioeconomically. This year, 46.8 percent of first-years are receiving financial aid. "It's been in the 41-42 percent range, so that's a significant increase over last year," said Meiklejohn.

On Campus So Far

Ashmead White Director of Athletics Jeff Ward estimated in a phone interview that by the end of the year 35 percent of the Class of 2014 will have participated on a varsity team. The percentage is "almost identical this year as it's been in past years."

An additional 20 percent will participate on intercollegiate club teams, which, while they also compete against other schools, are distinguished from varsity teams because they are funded by student activities rather than the athletic department.

Ninety-one first years, or 17.8 percent of the class, requested chem-free housing. This demand is slightly less than last year's 94 students. This year, the first floors of both Appleton and Winthrop are chem-free, in addition to all four floors of Hyde, which has been chem-free since 2007.

Appleton and Winthrop were chosen at random, though Rendall said that Residential Life would not have picked West or Osher in order to keep all chem-free students close to Hyde. First floors lent themselves best because they have fewer rooms than higher floors. Chem-free students in Appleton and Winthrop have the option to change their affiliation to Howell House, the chem-free social house, if desired.

The Class of 2014 is also the first to test the Bowdoin Advising Program to Support Academic Excellence (BASE), a pilot program designed by Lohmann and Associate Professor of Psychology Suzanne Lovett to help professors to "boost their advising" by participating, with their students, in workshops treating time-management skills, paper-writing, and relaxation, among other topics.

Each of the 11 BASE volunteer faculty advisers has three advisees for a total of 33 students. The students chosen as part of this pilot program were "not completely random and not completely selective either." Lohmann said that no feedback was available yet as the program is so new.