Experience

Experience

Building an Educational Experience

Bowdoin's curriculum is flexible and allows students the freedom, along with the responsibility, to create their own educational experiences. This means students decide not only:

  • what courses to take to fulfill general distributional requirements,
  • what major (or majors) they will to pursue (and, with some majors, a specialty within the major), but also
  • what other interests they will explore.

Do students want to:

  • Double-major?
  • Minor in a discipline?
  • Take courses in various disciplines that cohere around a common theme such as disease, social justice, or human relationships to the natural world?

Bowdoin’s general distribution requirements can usually be fulfilled with six to eight courses. Most majors require between 10-12 courses. Combined, these “requirements” entail only about half of the number of courses taken by students before graduation.

One of the biggest differences between high school and college is that students have much greater freedom and responsibility to create their own educational program, with few requirements and many opportunities. Although students bear the ultimate responsibility for their own education, they don’t have to construct it all on their own. The right-hand menu (above) lists some of the supports and opportunities the College offers.