Bowdoin acceptance rate and admissions statistics
Bowdoin admitted 957 of 14,045 first-year applicants in its 2025-26 Common Data Set, an official acceptance rate of 6.8%. Every number below comes from the college’s own Common Data Set, each year linked to its document; a figure the college leaves blank says “Not published”, and the notes at the foot of the page say where a total is the sum of rows the college printed.
What did admitted applicants have? How to get into Bowdoin counts the grades, scores and activities they posted.
Bowdoin acceptance rate by year
| CDS year | Applied | Admitted | Acceptance rate | Enrolled | Yield |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-26 | 14,045 | 957 | 6.8% | 515 | 53.8% |
| 2024-25 | 13,265 | 946 | 7.1% | 507 | 53.6% |
| 2023-24 | 10,966 | 879 | 8.0% | 504 | 57.3% |
Acceptance rate is admitted divided by applied; yield is enrolled divided by admitted. Both are computed by Aristo Scholars from the two counts printed beside them.
Early decision at Bowdoin
Bowdoin waitlist
Bowdoin SAT and ACT scores
What Bowdoin says matters in admission
In section C7 each college rates its own admission factors as Very Important, Important, Considered or Not Considered. These are the factors Bowdoin rated in the top two tiers.
- 2025-26
- Very important: Rigor of secondary school record, Class rank, Academic GPA, Application essay, Recommendations, Extracurricular activities, Talent/ability, Character/personal qualities
- Important: None recorded
- 2024-25
- Very important: Rigor of secondary school record, Class rank, Academic GPA, Application essay, Recommendations, Extracurricular activities, Talent/ability, Character/personal qualities
- Important: None recorded
- 2023-24
- Very important: Rigor of secondary school record, Class rank, Academic GPA, Application essay, Recommendations, Extracurricular activities, Talent/ability, Character/personal qualities
- Important: None recorded
Bowdoin testing policy for students applying in 2026-27
Test-optional (since 1969): ACT or SAT scores are not required for admission, and applicants choose for each test whether it is used. Homeschooled applicants must submit either a graded paper/lab assignment or test scores.
From Bowdoin’s admissions site, read 2026-11-05. Policies change; the college’s page is the authority.
How these numbers were read
C2 prints only the number admitted from the waitlist. The 2023-24 totals are the sums of the men and women rows.
Bowdoin acceptance rate questions
- What is the Bowdoin acceptance rate?
- Bowdoin's Common Data Set for 2025-26 reports 14,045 first-year applicants and 957 admitted, an acceptance rate of 6.8%. It was 7.1% in 2024-25 and 8.0% in 2023-24.
- What is the Bowdoin early decision acceptance rate?
- In 2025-26, 296 of 1,985 early decision applicants were admitted (14.9%), against 6.8% of all applicants. Early decision applicants are a different pool who commit to enroll, so the two rates are not a like-for-like comparison.
- What SAT scores do Bowdoin students have?
- In 2025-26, the middle half of enrolled first-year students who submitted the SAT scored 1470 to 1540, and ACT submitters scored 33 to 35. 34.8% of enrolled students submitted an SAT score.
- How many students get off the Bowdoin waitlist?
- In 2025-26, Bowdoin offered an unpublished number of applicants a place on the waitlist; the number who accepted is not published, and 5 were admitted from it.
- Does Bowdoin require the SAT or ACT for students applying in 2026-27?
- Test-optional (since 1969): ACT or SAT scores are not required for admission, and applicants choose for each test whether it is used. Homeschooled applicants must submit either a graded paper/lab assignment or test scores.
Applying to Bowdoin?
An acceptance rate describes the whole pool, not one student. A Specialist can read your student’s file against what Bowdoin says it weighs.
Source: Bowdoin Common Data Set, sections C1, C2, C7, C9 and C21, each year linked above, read 2026-11-05. Aristo Scholars is not affiliated with Bowdoin. All official acceptance rates