Bates is a very good and highly regarded school. It took some time getting used to my Freshmen year just because I came from a close knit family and was not used to being away from them. However now I absolutely love the school. The only problem that I would say that I do not like about Bates is that it is a very small school (~1800). For me, that was the size of my high school, and in some aspects (socially) it can sometimes still feel like in high school. However for many of my friends size is not an issue with Bates because their high school classes were only 50, 60, 70 people so for many people Bates seems bigger then it really is.

If people are looking for a "college town" then Bates is not it. Bates is a secluded on campus type of school because the area the school is located is not very safe for kids to be walking around at night. There are also no stores or college age kids really in the area. The only stores around are a Shaw's grocery store and a Walmart.

Academics are very hard and rigorous. Teachers tend to grade hard and therefore students are always in the library studying. Classes tend to be small (anywhere from 10-30 people in an average class) however some of the 100 level classes there can be up to 70 people. With small class sizes it is hard to skip classes becuase teachers tend to know who you are and expect students to be participating regularly in class discussions, etc.

Although ethnically Bates is relatively diverse for only having 1800 students, socio-economically everyone is generally the same. Because everyone tends to be in the upper-middle class there are oftentimes conflicts with the town of Lewiston people who tend to not have a lot of money. As a result it is always advised to not really leave campus to walk around, especially at night.

Everyone lives on campus, there are very few people who live off campus because the school is not in the best of areas. Because of this all the parties, etc. are always on campus in dorms or on campus houses. The alcohol policy tends to be very lax when dealing with beer and wine, however as soon as hard alcohol is used, whether your 21 or not, you can get in a lot of trouble. The "big" nights for going out are usually thursdays and saturdays. Fridays people will drink, howevr usually not that much because everyone is tried from a full week of classes and studying so people generally like to sleep and relax on Fridays.

If you are an athlete, you usually can not go out as much as much as people who do not play a sport. You will have practices and games 6 days a week, and its not until the mid season that the coaches will give their players sundays off (which allows athletes to drink saturdays). Before that random days are given off, such as a Tuesday, so there is not much parties to be done.

That the general student body are all wealthy, snobby, elitests. More specificly that all the girls are very preppy and wear pearl necklaces and ribbons in their hair, whereas all the guys wear popped collared shirts and moccasins.

Yes and no. The students at Bates do tend to be in the upperclass and dress preppy, however there are geneally 3 categories/social groups of people. First the "jocks" who are varisty athletes and make up almost half of the student body. Second, the outing club, environmentalists, and artsie people who tend to go hiking, skiing, funky kind of people. Finally, there are the preps, basically everyone else who doesnt fit into the other two categoires. And it is these people, which are probaly only 1/3 of the Bates student population that generally fits the Bates stereotypes.