Scott Meiklejohn, dean of admissions and student aid at Bowdoin since 2008, is moving on to lead the division of development and alumni relations. In the past eight years, Meiklejohn and his team have achieved the highest applicant totals in Bowdoin’s history and have attracted an increasingly diverse group of applicants. Meiklejohn, now in his twentieth year at Bowdoin, has proven himself to be an effective leader in a variety of roles, managing—at different times—programs and staff in annual giving, alumni relations, donor relations, Bowdoin Magazine, and corporation and foundation relations.
My office is packed up for a July 1 move from Burton-Little House to 85 Federal Street. With my eighth and last class (the Class of 2020) set to join the College, I’ll have a new business card next month in Bowdoin’s development and alumni relations offices. I look forward to my new assignment, and to working with many of you on Bowdoin’s progress.
A few parting thoughts from my time in the dean’s seat:
• I’m so happy that Whitney Soule, my office partner and Bowdoin’s director of admissions for the past eight years, will move across the hallway to become Bowdoin’s dean of admissions and financial aid, and that Associate Dean Claudia Marroquin ’06 will succeed Whitney as director. With Mike Bartini and his team also continuing in student aid, things are in good hands.
• It’s been fun telling Bowdoin’s story and meeting young people as they figure out life after high school. Bowdoin is a personal and accessible community, and we’ve tried to run the admissions and aid offices the same way—it’s easy to interview, meet the staff, or arrange a phone call. We think that represents Bowdoin as it is, and also serves students in their college-finding experience. A high level of contact also guarantees that a few goofy and memorable things happen as students and families communicate with us, and I considered “Weird Scenes Inside the Gold Mine” (cue: The Doors) as the title for my last BDS piece as dean of admissions and financial aid. For instance, there’s that paper maché polar bear in our upstairs conference room that arrived in the mail…well…never mind. Knowing that Senior Associate Dean Anne Springer ’81 has been working on an admissions sitcom screenplay for years, it seems better to save those special stories for another venue. Anne will do a better job of telling them anyway.
• I appreciate that Bowdoin’s presidents and trustees have placed consistent priorities in front of us and encouraged us to find more of the right applicants—not just more for the sake of more applicants. We have between thirteen and fourteen candidates for every spot in the class, and we have much more talent knocking at the door than we can possibly admit. Would it be cool for Bowdoin to have 9,000 applicants instead of 7,000? I guess so. Has it been one of our goals? No. Would it make any difference in who enrolls at Bowdoin? Highly doubtful. There are some crazy things going on in college land, with some places making it easier and easier to apply so that more and more students will apply, so that published application figures will be higher, so that admit rates will be lower, so that etc., etc. Each college does business the way it needs to, and to serve its own purposes. Fair enough. I hope that Bowdoin will remain a college that has meaningful application requirements beyond the Common App.
• Bowdoin’s admit rate lately has been 14 percent to 15 percent, and most of the other stats for the entering class are also at record levels. To audiences of Bowdoin alumni, I have always said that our primary focus has not been to enroll the maximum number of valedictorians or 800 SAT verbals or AP test-takers. While juggling the institutional priorities that drive some of our decisions, our goal has been to find Bowdoin people—to enroll the next class of talented, thoughtful students who will make the place better, engage deeply in the community, and love and support the College for all their days. I know: it seems like the process only rewards the gaudy test scores or the highest weighted GPA or some other special category or achievement, but there are intentional pieces of the review process that focus on fit for Bowdoin College. By my rough count, the current members of the admissions staff have a combined 146 years of advising, counseling, teaching, and application reading experience. Placing value on that experience and relying on the informed judgment that a student could be just right for us—that can be the tip that identifies a first choice and drives a decision. May that be so in the years ahead.
• Along those lines, it’s worth considering that while admission to Bowdoin has gotten tougher and stats have become more impressive, the retention, graduation, and alumni giving participation rates are also at, or near, all-time highs. I see an important connection among those figures and a meaningful indicator of Bowdoin’s overall strength and success. Students mostly do a good job of applying to Bowdoin knowing it’s a pretty good fit; the Admissions Committee does thoughtful work in selecting students who seem best-matched to the College; the faculty, deans, coaches, and the rest of the campus community receive 500 young people from wildly diverse personal circumstances and guide each person through an exceptional academic and residential experience; and the College offers a variety of ways for loyal Polar Bears to stay engaged in Bowdoin and to support a place that is different from, but also the same as, the one they attended. So, in the same year that the admit rate and retention rate hit record lows and highs, participation in the Alumni Fund from our very youngest alumni, the classes that have graduated Bowdoin since 2010, was 72.7%—nearly as high as the 78.2% participation from the classes of the 1950s, the heart of the Old Guard. This is a great signal for Bowdoin’s future and (with credit to the entire community) an indicator that things are going well at many different stages of the Bowdoin experience, from the front door to the 50th Reunion.
• Bowdoin today is one of just fifteen colleges and universities in the country with need-blind admission, no-loan financial aid offers, and grants that meet full financial need. Having the resources to remain in that small group is vital to what the College is, and to our relevance in the landscape of higher education. In thousands of interviews, group presentations, and other encounters over the past eight years, I have seen first-hand what it means to hold the door open to talented students regardless of their financial circumstances. I take up my new post with greater insight into our financial aid priority, and I look forward to those conversations in the years ahead.
Finally, my sincere thanks to current and past members of the team in Admissions and Student Aid, 2008-16. You’ve done the work with devotion and great unity and always with good humor, and I have been proud to tell the Bowdoin story alongside you.
Scott Meiklejohn
