Bowdoin campus earns top grade on national list

Photo / Bob Handelman, www.bobhandelman.com Bowdoin College in Brunswick (pictured here) was ranked the second-best college campus in America by Niche (www.niche.com), a web platform that provides comprehensive rankings, report cards and profiles for every K-12 school, college and neighborhood in the country. Bates College in Lewiston, at No. 18, also received high marks.

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By Staff

Bowdoin College earned an overall A+ as the second-best college campus in America in a new list by Niche, a Pittsburgh-based web platform that rates schools and neighborhoods.

The 2018 Best College Campuses ranking is based on key statistics and student reviews using data from the U.S. Department of Education.

Those that earned top marks offer outstanding campus resources across classrooms, labs, performance venues, housing, food and recreational venues, according to Niche.

Rankings were calculated based on grades in five areas, with student surveys on campus quality accounting for 50% of the overall campus grade. The overall grade also factored in grades on food, housing, the local area and safety.

Bowdoin received an overall grade of A+ and a campus grade of A+. It also got an A+ in academics, value, professors, student life, dorms and campus food and an A in diversity, but only a C+ for location. Its party-scene grade was a B-.

Washington University in St. Louis was ranked No. 1 overall.

Niche, which has been likened to Yelp for schools and neighborhoods, lists 656 reviews for Bowdoin, of which 245 give a five-star rating of ‘Excellent.’

“I love the fact that Bowdoin is a small, liberal-arts college,” one user wrote five months ago. “I am someone who thrives in close teacher-student relationships, and Bowdoin provides me such an opportunity.”

Of the three users who gave Bowdoin a one-star rating of “terrible,” one wrote, “Bowdoin is way too liberally polarized,” while another complained about the nightlife.

Among other Maine institutions in the top 25, Bates College in Lewiston came in at No. 18 but also with an overall grade as well as a campus grade of A+. It received a B- in safety and a C- for location.

Niche, which says it employs a team of data scientists, engineers, parents and “yinzers,” claims to have the most comprehensive data available on U.S. schools and neighborhoods. It lists about 57 employees on its website and says it has millions of users.

Niche bases its analyses on dozens of public data sets and millions of reviews to produce comprehensive rankings, report cards, and profiles for every K-12 school, college and neighborhood in the United States.