Bowdoin College is a private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick. Founded in 1794, the college currently enrolls 1,839 students, and has been coeducational since 1971. Bowdoin offers 33 majors and four additional minors, and has a student–faculty ratio of 9:1.
Bowdoin is ranked as one of the top liberal arts colleges, and is tied with Pomona, Middlebury, and Wellesley as the fourth-best liberal arts college in the U.S. in the 2016 U.S. News & World Report rankings. Bowdoin accepted 14.9% or 1,009 of the 6,790 applicants for the class of 2019. U.S. News and World Report classifies Bowdoin as “most selective”. Of enrolling students, 89% are in the top 10% of their high school graduating class.
Bowdoin competes in the NCAA Division III New England Small College Athletic Conference (colloquially known as the Little Ivy League), which also includes Amherst, Conn College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Tufts, Wesleyan, Williams, and Maine rivals Bates and Colby in the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin Consortium (CBB). The college’s mascot is the polar bear, the school’s official colors are white and black.