With yesterday’s arrival of the Bates Class of 2027, the final and most telling number of the 2022–23 admission cycle got etched into Bates history. The number is 509, the number of students in the newest class of Bates students, which was selected from 8,937 applications, the highest number in Bates history.
Better than anyone, Leigh Weisenburger, the college’s vice president for enrollment and dean of admission and financial aid, knows what the new students bring to the Bates table. “Engagement and action,” she says. “They’re problem solvers,” young people who are quite capable of putting out fires (sometimes literally: two new students are firefighters) and finding the key to problems (again, sometimes literally: one is a locksmith apprentice).
“They’re the Greta Thunberg generation,” added Weisenburger, referring to the Swedish environmental activist. (In fact, one incoming student joined a Thunberg-led protest in Stockholm.)
Full Coverage
We’ll bring you full coverage of Opening Day and Orientation Week, including weekend AESOP outdoor trips, next week. In the meantime, follow along on Bates Instagram.
Beyond straightforward advocacy, the new students bring an awareness of how various issues, from climate change to racial justice, intersect with one another, and they feel a drive to be part of solutions for the long term. “They see something and they take it and run with it. They don’t wait for others to take action,” Weisenburger says.
One of the dean’s delightful duties each year is to join the Bates president (this year Garry W. Jenkins in his first Opening Day) and Dean of Students Erin Foster Zsiga in welcoming the new students and their families and loved ones on Opening Day.
For Weisenburger, it’s one of the best moments of her year. “I feel such pride — for the Admission team and for Bates as a whole. And I see pride and emotion in the new students’ and their families’ faces and eyes. And also a mix of intention and hesitation: It’s time to begin a new journey.”
The new Bates class is the 161st incoming class in college history. Back in 1863, the first cohort entered Hathorn Hall, then the sole campus classroom building for their college studies, and they hailed from our home city of Lewiston and also from lands beyond Bates, such as Wales, Vienna, Norway, Lebanon, and Peru. (OK: Truth be told, those early students came from towns in Maine with those international names!)
As usual, within just 509 young people is a dazzling amount of diversity, broadly defined, which means that “students who come to Bates will find their place in this community,” says Weisenburger.
Geographically, the distribution of incoming students from the U.S. looks like this, which is a similar breakdown to prior years:
- Middle Atlantic 22%
- Midwest 7%
- New England 36%
- Southeast 6%
- Southwest and West 17%
Forty-four U.S. states are represented in the class, plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Forty-one students come from Maine, from its largest city, Portland, with a population of 68,000, to tiny villages like Oquossoc, population 120.
In this year’s class, 28% are U.S. students of color, the fourth straight year above 27%. In terms of gender identification, 48 % are female and 52 % male. This bucks national trends: Women comprise nearly 60 % of enrollment in universities and colleges and men just over 40%.
Similar to prior years, 12% are first-generation college students, while 11% are international students, coming to Bates from 37 countries outside of the U.S.
Skills and Talents from a Record-Setting Class
Other interesting talents and interests from the new class include students who:
- Is featured in a documentary about the immense challenges of being a girl growing up in Palestine
- Has a keen interest in fossil hunting
- Is an expert cheesemonger
- Was a Youth Action Fellow for their state’s affiliate 350, a national movement to advance a just transition to a renewable energy economy, leading protests at the state capital
- Has performed the trapeze with a youth circus
- Has devoted more than 45 hours a week to training guide dogs, including service as a volunteer raising puppies
- Is a soccer referee (a cool thing given the national shortage of youth sports officials)
- Volunteers as a foster caregiver for rats, ensuring they can be adopted as pets
- Is a kite maker and preservationist who saved 20 traditional Bangladeshi kites in their homeland from destruction
- Assembled and maintains a 175 gallon saltwater aquarium in their basement, which is about 6 feet long, two feet wide, and two and a half feet tall
- Founded their school’s skateboard club to create a supportive space for women, people of color, and queers
- Founded a youth organization helping to increase women in STEM in Mongolia
- Has been visiting memory care facilities with her dog since eighth grade
- Attended the same high school in New Jersey as new Bates President Garry W. Jenkins
- Is a top-ranked debater in a U.S. state with a long debate tradition and No. 28 nationally
- One student makes Adirondack chairs; another co-founded club that knits and crochets hats, scarves, and more for those in need; another is welder for a robotics team
- Had an internship working on electric space propulsion at MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics; another student was a member of their NASA Student Launch team
- Helped install the Field of Light at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin, illuminating 16 acres in the Texas Arboretum with 28,000 vibrant solar-powered, fiber-optic lights
- Initiated a successful movement to eliminate class rank at their school
- Interned at an oyster farm
- Is a nationally ranked competitive roller skater
- Is an accomplished fencer
- Is a competitive book reader
- Co-founded world’s first competitive high school gravel cycling team, which involves racing bicycles on unpaved and varied terrain, often over long distances
- Conducted research at MIT on corn sequestration and climate change
- Runs a Maine business selling firewood
- Founded lobster and aquaculture oyster businesses
- Is an apprentice locksmith and a blacksmith apprentice
- Is a successful business entrepreneur in several fields, including as a reseller of limited-edition apparel
- Volunteered as a coordinator for eight animal shelters and four animal hospitals
- Interned for a Nobel-winning scholar to research the significance of early childhood education on economic outcomes
- Is a competitive Rubik’s Cube solver
- Directs a unified theater program that brings together teens of all cognitive abilities.
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