Bowdoin College

Founded 1794. Maine liberal arts college of Hawthorne, Longfellow and Arctic explorers.

Overview

Chartered in 1794 by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, when Maine was still part of it, Bowdoin sits in Brunswick near the coast. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow graduated in the same class of 1825, and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin while her husband taught there. The Arctic explorers Robert Peary and Donald MacMillan were alumni, honored by the Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum. In 1969 Bowdoin became one of the first selective colleges to make standardized test scores optional for admission. It enrolls around 1,900 students.