News Analysis
Despite the recent decision to end its affiliation with the Boston Area Posse program, the Office of Admissions says it will continue to reach out to students from across the country with special admissions events and help from organizations nationwide.
Rather than establishing quotas for students of varying ethnicities, the college has shifted its efforts toward recruiting students who represent all aspects of diversity, including racial, sexual, and socioeconomic factors.
"We think of diversity in the broadest sense," President Barry Mills said.
The College "resolve[d] to create opportunities for students from across America representing all aspects of the country," he said. "We are trying to get into high schools and let people know about the opportunities that Bowdoin provides, and the results show that it can be successful."
"We've had a number of programs in place to reach out to students of color and first generation college students of all ethnicities," Dean of Admissions Jim Miller said. In its efforts to recruit students from a range of backgrounds, Bowdoin looks to programs such as Upward Bound, the Arkansas Experience, One Voice in Los Angeles, the Cathedral Scholars in Washington D.C., and the Philadelphia Futures program.
One Voice, Cathedral Scholars, Philadelphia Futures, and the Arkansas Experience work with lower-income high school students in order to prepare them for college. The Upward Bound program targets first-generation college students. These programs support students academically throughout high school and then help them to obtain scholarships at an affiliated school of their choice.
These connections "have all helped [the College] to bring talented students here who would not have ordinarily considered Bowdoin," Miller said. "They identify and support promising students that can come to Bowdoin and be successful. We've made great progress over the past five or six years in bringing different kinds of students to the campus."
The Bowdoin Invitational program in November and the Bowdoin Experience program in April are multi-day programs designed to "expose the College to groups of students who may not otherwise have the opportunity to see the campus," Miller said. The College also plans to expand other programs such as the Chamberlain Scholarship Program.
In addition to admissions programs that recruit students to the College, Bowdoin is also working to maintain student support networks.
"People tend to focus a lot on getting students to come to the College, but the hard work happens once they get here," Coordinator of Multicultural Student Programs Stacey Jones said. "We need to strengthen the support systems for students in order to try to catch everyone."
"We have a lot of students who identify very strongly with their race, or with their sexuality or gender," Jones said. "We offer a lot of services and try to err on the side of offering too much. Our biggest priority is that these students graduate and that they graduate feeling pleased with their experience here."
After this year's expiration of the contract with the Posse program, which granted students scholarships based on merit, Bowdoin will grant financial assistance based entirely on need.
"At this point in Bowdoin's history, and given the financial aid resources of the College, we believe strongly that we should be supporting students with financial need but only students with financial need," Mills said.
"We have had a great experience with the five Posses at the College, but in the end, we couldn't resolve successfully the philosophical differences we had with the national Posse program about financial aid," Miller said.
"We ran the risk each year of providing scholarships to Posse students who didn't have need for them?a circumstance we couldn't defend to the rest of the College population receiving need-based aid," he said.