by our College Data Analytics Team
College Factual recognizes the best colleges and universities in its annual rankings. These rankings include categories for best overall colleges, best colleges for each major, best value schools, and much more.
Bowdoin College was awarded 14 badges in the 2025 rankings. The highest ranked major at the school is political science & government.
Explore the best ranked schools for the programs you are most interested in.
Bowdoin is ranked #81 out of 2,152 schools in the nation for overall quality on College Factual's 2025 Best Colleges list. This lands it a coveted spot in the top 5% of all colleges and universities in the country.
Out of the 19 colleges in Maine, Bowdoin is ranked at #1.
Even if you have the best grades and high test scores, that may not be enough to get into Bowdoin since the school has one of the most selective in the country. Its acceptance rate is a mere 9%, so there's no shame if you don't get in. Be sure to apply to other schools just in case.
About 36% of students accepted to Bowdoin submitted their SAT scores. When looking at the 25th through the 75th percentile, SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores ranged between 720 and 770. Math scores were between 740 and 790.
The student to faculty ratio at Bowdoin is an impressive 9 to 1. That's quite good when you compare it to the national average of 15 to 1. This is a good sign that students at the school will have more opportunities for one-on-one interactions with their professors.
In addition to the student to faculty ratio, some people look at what percentage of faculty members are full-time as a sign of how much time professors will be able to spend with their students. This is because part-time teachers may not be be on campus as much as their full-time counterparts.
The full-time faculty percentage at Bowdoin College is 88%. This is higher than the national average of 47%.
Bowdoin College has a freshmen retention rate of 96%. That's a good sign that full-time students like the school and their professors enough to want to stick around for another year. It's also a sign that the admissions team did a good job in choosing applicants who were a good fit for the school.
Students are considered to have graduated on time if they finish their studies within four years. At Bowdoin the on-time graduation rate of first-time, full-time students is 91%. That is great when compared to the national average of 33.3%
Find out more about the retention and graduation rates at Bowdoin College.
During the 2017-2018 academic year, there were 1,777 undergraduates at Bowdoin with 1,776 being full-time and 1 being part-time.
| $0-30 K | $30K-48K | $48-75 | $75-110K | $110K + |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $2,706 | $5,760 | $10,068 | $19,525 | $38,863 |
The net price is calculated by adding tuition, room, board and other costs and subtracting financial aid.Note that the net price is typically less than the published for a school. For more information on the sticker price of Bowdoin, see our tuition and fees and room and board pages.
Almost 66% of college students who graduated with the class of 2018 took out student loans, but that percentage varies from school to school. At Bowdoin, approximately 10% of students took out student loans averaging $10,512 a year. That adds up to $42,048 over four years for those students.
Get more details about the location of Bowdoin College.
Contact details for Bowdoin are given below.
| Contact Details | |
|---|---|
| Address: | 255 Maine Street, Brunswick, ME 04011 |
| Phone: | 207-725-3000 |
| Website: | https://www.bowdoin.edu/ |
| Most Popular Majors | Bachelor’s Degrees | Average Salary of Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Political Science & Government | 83 | $60,626 |
| Economics | 78 | $75,867 |
| Area Studies | 47 | $45,315 |
| Mathematics | 43 | $90,213 |
| Computer Science | 42 | NA |
| General Biology | 33 | NA |
| General English Literature | 29 | $49,421 |
| History | 29 | NA |
| Neurobiology & Neurosciences | 26 | $43,373 |
| Biochemistry, Biophysics & Molecular Biology | 21 | NA |
If you’re considering Bowdoin College, here are some more schools you may be interested in knowing more about.
Curious on how these schools stack up against Bowdoin? Pit them head to head with College Combat, our free interactive tool that lets you compare college on the features that matter most to you!
Footnotes
*The racial-ethnic minorities count is calculated by taking the total number of students and subtracting white students, international students, and students whose race/ethnicity was unknown. This number is then divided by the total number of students at the school to obtain the racial-ethnic minorities percentage.
References
More about our data sources and methodologies.