Visit
Welcome!
We'll begin the tour here at the Office of Admissions. To help you get to know Bowdoin and our home in Maine, all new students start with an off-campus orientation trip. Orientation trips help new students build community on either of our two types of trips. Bowdoin Outing Club (BOC) trips, open to students with all levels of outdoor experience, offer adventures in Maine’s great outdoors, such as camping, kayaking, or hiking, and McKeen Center Community Immersion trips, where students engage with local communities through service projects and hands on learning. Both options are designed to create a strong support network right from the start, with small groups of 10 students led by two experienced upperclass student guides.
I went on a BOC trip to Rangely Lake, which is about 2 hours north of Bowdoin. It was my first time camping, and I had a lot of fun hiking, swimming in the lake, canoeing, trying to make fires, and hanging around the campsite. I met some of my closest friends on the trip and our group still gets meals a couple of times every semester to catch up (and we always make sure to send a picture to our leaders who have since graduated).
-A student '26
Visitors are welcome until 5 p.m. each day.
Hawthorne-Longfellow Library is named after distinguished alumni Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, class of 1825. One of 4 libraries on campus, Hawthorne-Longfellow is a resource hub for Bowdoin students, offering access to special collections, a media commons, digital resources, and cutting-edge AI tools. The library also houses the Baldwin Center for Learning and Teaching, which offers professional academic advising, skills-based workshops and peer tutoring, encouraging students to learn with and from each other.
As an undergraduate only liberal arts institution, Bowdoin emphasizes learning how to learn and developing a broad range of skills that will be applicable to any career. Your pre-major advisor will help you explore our 40+ areas of study. Most students opt for more than one field of study, with options to pursue up to two majors, a minor, a teaching certificate, and, if applicable, a concentration or honors thesis.
Bowdoin is one of the most active research institutions among liberal arts colleges with research opportunities across all disciplines. Some students get involved as early as their first year here, either working directly with a professor as a lab or research assistant —sometimes even co-authoring papers—or pursuing their own projects through Independent Study or Honors Projects.
Grace Lott ‘26 combined her passions for the Grateful Dead and photography in a research project the summer after her first year, which Bowdoin helped fund. She followed Dead & Company's Final Tour across the country, photographing the concerts and Shakedown Street, the area outside of the concerts where vendors sell items. Back at campus, with support from her photography and anthropology faculty advisors, she wrote an ethnography on the culture surrounding the Grateful Dead and presented her photographs in a show.
Let's talk about first year housing
Each of the first-year bricks lining the main quad have mixed gender floors and same gender rooms, typically in a quad style. Each quad has a living room and two adjoining shared bedrooms, allowing you to have both private space and area to have friends over. Each floor has a proctor and residential assistant (RA), upperclass students who serve as mentors and friends that are responsible for organizing floor bonding events like weekly flinners (floor dinners), movie nights, or apple picking. Your proctor lives on your floor with you while your RA does not.
Sophomore College Houses and Upperclass Housing
Baxter House is one of eight college houses on campus that sophomores can choose to live in. These houses are mixed gender spaces with 20-30 sophomores who apply through the Residential Life office. All first-year students are affiliated with one of these houses which creates another level of mentorship for new students. They host inclusive campus-wide programing. In addition to more traditional night life and parties, they host events ranging from academic lectures to football game watching, neighborhood BBQs to baking cookies with Bowdoin President Zaki.
Sophomores and other upperclass students have the option of dorm or apartment-style housing. All housing costs the same and is covered by financial aid. Housing is guaranteed, with around 95% of students living on campus all four years at Bowdoin. Those who choose to live off campus usually live only a street or two away. Students also have the option to live in substance-free housing, including the dorm Howard Hall and Howell House, which is a college house.