Bates is a coeducational, nonsectarian, residential college with special commitments to academic rigor, and to assuring in all of its efforts the dignity of each individual and access to its programs and opportunities by qualified learners. Bates prizes both the inherent value of a demanding education and the profound usefulness of learning, teaching, and understanding.Bates offers a curriculum and faculty that challenge students to attain intellectual achievements and to develop powers of critical assessment, analysis, expression, aesthetic sensibility, and independent thought. In addition, Bates recognizes that learning is not exclusively restricted to cognitive categories, and that the full range of human experience needs to be encouraged and cultivated. Bates expects students to appreciate the discoveries and insights of established traditions of learning as well as to participate in the resolution of what is unknown.
The University of Chicago is one of the world's great intellectual communities and centers of learning. It has achieved particular distinction through faculty scholarship, the training of graduate students, and an undergraduate education that emphasizes critical thinking and broad, interdisciplinary exposure to the common wisdom of humankind.Few institutions are as well-known for advancing knowledge. The first three Americans to win the Nobel Prize in physics were all University faculty members. In the last 20 years, Chicago's faculty has been honored with the Nobel Prize 10 more times: three times in physics and seven times in economics. Seventy recipients of the Nobel Prize have been students, researchers or faculty at the University.