Members of Bowdoin’s 1794 Society were extended a special invitation to join President Clayton Rose and Dean of Admissions and Student Aid Whitney Soule for a live discussion and Q&A town hall via Zoom on June 11, 2020.
“Members of the 1794 Society are leadership donors to Bowdoin,” said Senior Vice President for Development and Alumni Relations Scott Meiklejohn, who helped facilitate the discussion. “Your support ripples through every aspect of what happens here.”
After thanking the 1794 Society membership for its leadership in financial support and personal contributions to the College, President Rose and Dean Soule answered questions and spent time sharing an insider’s view of where the College is and where it’s headed amid these unusual times.
Soule explained a bit about the admissions process that happened under the coronavirus cloud and how the incoming Class of 2024 took shape.
“The proportion of students who responded yes, they were coming, followed our yield models,” she said. “It was representative in all the ways that we had been hoping, so our job then was to just keep filling the class proportionately as we went forward with the waitlist.”
Soule gave the town hall’s attendees a peek at the makeup of the Class of 2024, saying as it currently stands, it comprises 503 students, split nearly evenly between men and women. Thirty-five percent are students of color and fifteen percent are first-generation. Half are aided; nine percent are from Maine and nine percent are legacy applicants, defined as being the child or grandchild of someone who attended Bowdoin.
Soule spoke of managing the increased requests for deferred admission or gap years and of not wanting to place the burden of pandemic response on the students who are graduating from high school next year by really limiting the available spaces in the class.
“Some students may be asked to defer longer and come at a different time,” she said. “That is the plan we have at the moment. It's hard to say how much demand there might be.”
Faced with the challenges of the times, Soule says the admissions team has identified opportunities it might not have learned under ordinary circumstances—among them, virtual tours and information sessions that can take place without capacity limitations.
President Rose spoke of the financial toll the pandemic will take this coming year and how the College will be able to weather the storm in the near term with its reserves.
Rose reiterated Bowdoin’s commitment to being need-blind and no-loan in its student aid. “That’s a bedrock value for us, as you all know,” he said. “And you all make that possible.”
He also spoke of the work of three groups, the Return to Campus, Budget, and Continuity and Teaching and Learning committees, whose input helped shape the decision on how to proceed with the upcoming fall semester and how, amid a health crisis, it can be done in such a way that ensures faculty are in front of students in a meaningful way and with the skills to provide a Bowdoin education—and in digital form for whatever proportion of the College’s students who may need to access it that way.
Rose shared that Bowdoin’s Office of Career Exploration and Development, or CXD, has been actively working with alumni to help the College’s newest graduates find opportunities.
Rose once again expressed his gratitude to the members of the 1794 Society for their participation in all aspects of the College. “We would not be Bowdoin College without you and your devotion to this school. I am incredibly grateful.”
