Bates College is a private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. It was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2012 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists. Bates College is one of the first colleges in the United States to be coeducational from establishment, and is also the oldest continuously operating coeducational institution in New England. Originally a Free Will Baptist institution, Bates is now a nonsectarian institution.

Bates College offers 32 departmental and interdisciplinary program majors and 25 secondary concentrations, and confers Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degrees. The college enrolls approximately 2,000 students, 300 of whom study abroad each semester. The student-faculty ratio is 10-to-1.

Bates is a leader of the SAT optional movement for undergraduate admission. It instituted one of the first SAT optional programs in the nation in 1984.

Founded in 1855, Bates was New England's first coeducational college. The founders of Bates were active abolitionists, and several of the college's earliest students were former slaves. The college was originally called the Maine State Seminary and replaced the Parsonsfield Seminary, which burned under mysterious circumstances in 1854. The Parsonsfield Seminary was founded in 1832 by Free Will Baptists and served as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Parsonsfield's Cobb Divinity School, founded in 1840, merged with Bates in 1870 and eventually became Bates' religion department. Therefore, Bates' religion department is 15 years older than the College itself.

Eric Carle (born June 25, 1929) is a children's book author and illustrator who is most famous for his book The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which has been translated into over 500 languages. Since The Very Hungry Caterpillar was published in 1969, Eric Carle has illustrated more than 70 books, many best sellers, most of which he also wrote, and more than 103 million copies of his books have been sold around the world.