"It’s a model more closely aligned with Bowles’ original mission as a home-like setting where students would live for four years in a close-knit, tradition-rich community with teachers and mentors."

"Bowles Hall aims to offer students close relationships with live-in graduate students, faculty and alumni, providing residents more academic and professional support than any campus residence hall in an effort to surpass the campus four-year graduation rate."

"A large castle-like building that sits above Memorial Stadium on the University of California, Berkeley campus has re-opened following an 11-year effort."

"UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas Dirks sees Bowles as the pilot for a plan to remake the entire dormitory system at UC Berkeley into residential colleges as they exist at Harvard, Yale and other elite universities."

"Back in 2005, Sayles and a handful of other “Bowlesmen” saw the same need and made a pact to reestablish the residential college. They set up the Bowles Hall Alumni Association and “grew their commitment into something marvelous,” says Bob Jacobsen, dean of undergraduate studies in the College of Letters and Science. “They sweated every detail to get the restoration right. It’s a testament to how the hall used to be, and how it soon will be again.”

"Bowles was modeled after residential colleges planned for Harvard and Yale, which were influenced by those at Oxford and Cambridge. In these decentralized live-learn communities, faculty, graduate students and alumni are major influences on student life."

"They appear to be typical college students, not wizards-in-training, but their new home is anything but standard-issue: a hilltop castle, where they can stay until they graduate from UC Berkeley...What makes the newly reopened Bowles Hall stand apart, besides its turrets and $42 million, alumni-financed restoration, is its larger purpose: to make a big school feel small. About 180 undergraduates who underwent a rigorous selection process will live, eat, socialize and study here — with a corps of live-in graduate students and other academics on hand to guide their college experience."