A jewel in Lewiston, Maine.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

While the old mill town of Lewiston appears to be successfully gentrifying, its ‘dark, satanic mills’ being converted to businesses, restaurants and quality housing, no such excuse need be made for Bates College, a true jewel. The campus is gorgeous, and Lewiston happens to be one of the safest cities in the United States.

On the small side as US campuses go with but 1,800 undergraduates, and dating from 1855, Bates spans 133 acres on the Lewiston campus, and manages to be much of a muchness. Everything is where you want it and it is the second school we have visited where not a single building is out of place, regardless of age. Indeed, one of the most recent, Pettengill Hall, is one of the best, with a magnificent sweep of bay windows and the high Perry Atrium inside making for a special place to meet, to learn and to think.

A dear friend who graduated here – and also met his future spouse on campus – writes:

Without naming names, I can guiltlessly disclose this long held secret!

Bates is accused of being the costliest private school but the distinction is meaningless. These New England private colleges do not compete on price, having no need to do so in an environment of massively excess demand. So the Bates ‘premium’ is but pennies on a comparative basis. If Bates has a challenge it is to increase its endowment where, on a dollars per student basis, it’s at the low end of the range. Let’s hope its modest premium allows this to be done.

Bates alumni include Bryant Gumbel, Robert F. Kennedy, the architects Buckminster Fuller and Minoru Yamasaki, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Dean Kamen the great engineer and inventor, George Mitchell, Jan Masaryk, Edmund Muskie and Olympia Snowe.

Verdant yet flawed.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

Founded in 1813, Colby College is home to 1,800 undergraduates and encompasses 714 acres in central Maine, some 50 miles north of Lewiston-Auburn. The school has a strong liberal arts tradition and is in excellent repair throughout.

Our visit here was a mixed bag for while the college has a vibrantly verdant setting there is no sense of a cohesive whole that is to be found in other schools. Frankly, much of this impression is based on the architecture, frequently shockingly bad and the use of the main building as a library is a very poorly done conversion. Most books were shipped offsite and the awful low ceilings quite destroy the interior in contrast to the superb exterior.

So the question for aspiring entrants is not so much the academic standards, which are fine, but whether they can live with so much mediocre architecture, and having to do so for four years could constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

Alumni of Colby College include a bunch of politicos, including economist Eric Rosengren of the Fed, Billy Bush of pu**y grabbing fame and the fine historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

In Brunswick, Maine.

For an alphabetical index of the New England College series of pieces, click here.

Some of the best American schools are to be found in remote Maine, and Bowdoin (pronounced ‘Boh-din’) is very much a study in excellence. There are 1,800 undergraduates here in a school dating from 1839. A healthy endowment helps see to it that the school is maintained in pristine condition.

If distinction it be, then Bowdoin is distinguished as being the first college we have visited without a disfiguringly ugly modern building. Even the later additions here are beautifully integrated and the school’s building committee is to be congratulated. Bowdoin is one of the highest ranked liberal arts colleges in the nation despite its relatively modest size.

Distinguished alumni, in addition to those named above, include Reed Hastings (Netflix), Ken Chenault (AmEx), President Franklin Pierce, hedgie Stanley Druckenmiller, Alfred Kinsey and Joan Benoit (Olympic gold in the marathon).