What is the real W&M experience/vibe?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many students are choosing between W&M and UVA. UVA is the popular school but it’s huge and with the OOS students who are top of their class it’s VERY competitive in all ways: socially, admittance to business and other schools and so on. W&M is a bit more low key and much smaller. Gives an individual student more opportunities.

UVA is "huge" like Penn and Cornell are huge.

Cornell enrollment: 24,027
UVA enrollment: 25,018
Penn enrollment: 26,675

Cornell and Penn are Ivies with international reputation. UVA is a popular state school but not in the same level. It just isn’t. Not an even comparison. UVA should be compared to Michigan or Berkeley.

It was a size comparison, genius.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Enrollment at W&M might be down due to cost. Total cost = $43K. That’s almost twice UVA or Vtech.

Google says in-state costs are as follows for 2018-19
W&M. $39595
UVA. $34094
VT. $27283

[Anonymous]

2020-21 CoA is $40,034 according to the website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:2020-21 CoA is $40,034 according to the website.

Is extra for the Business school. I’m just quoting our bill from the website.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many students are choosing between W&M and UVA. UVA is the popular school but it’s huge and with the OOS students who are top of their class it’s VERY competitive in all ways: socially, admittance to business and other schools and so on. W&M is a bit more low key and much smaller. Gives an individual student more opportunities.

UVA is "huge" like Penn and Cornell are huge.

Cornell enrollment: 24,027
UVA enrollment: 25,018
Penn enrollment: 26,675

Cornell and Penn are Ivies with international reputation. UVA is a popular state school but not in the same level. It just isn’t. Not an even comparison. UVA should be compared to Michigan or Berkeley.

It was a size comparison, genius.

Oh Genius I thought you meant UPENN not Penn State. Lol. Big difference.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the problems with W&M is that it's extremely strict on grading (which would be fine if not for), student codes, and social codes.

It's a very conservative social culture. Not necessarily politically conservative or religious, but conservative as in very judgemental of any freedom/liberties. It's really not a good place to find yourself in as a college kid when you want to be exploring the world. Large part of this is being in the South.

Also there's a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby it has a terrible reputation as a school socially, and only those that don't care about social culture go there, realize that it has a terrible social culture and don't enjoy their time there, tell others that it has a terrible social culture, etc.

A lot of male kids that go their do so because they didn't get into UVA, which worsens resentment towards the already extremely bad school.

Being in Williamsburg, a terrible town by any standard full of retirees and the type of tourists who want to go to Colonial Williamsburg (again, retirees), further worsens the deficits of the school.

The only good part of W&M is that its better to go there than massive 30,000-student public schools for those majoring in certain humanities - English, etc. - because of the small class sizes although the course selection is very limited. STEM and Business education are both terribly weak.

But anyone not majoring in humanities and anyone that can go to private LACs and mid-sized universities should do so.

I don’t understand the UVA comment. W&M is regarded as on par[i] if not superior to UVA...

[b] Maybe ten years ago ... not anymore. SCHEV statistics show it to be significantly more difficult to get into UVA, both on test scores and GPA. 90 percent of the students are in the top ten percent of their high school class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So many students are choosing between W&M and UVA. UVA is the popular school but it’s huge and with the OOS students who are top of their class it’s VERY competitive in all ways: socially, admittance to business and other schools and so on. W&M is a bit more low key and much smaller. Gives an individual student more opportunities.

UVA is "huge" like Penn and Cornell are huge.

Cornell enrollment: 24,027
UVA enrollment: 25,018
Penn enrollment: 26,675

Cornell and Penn are Ivies with international reputation. UVA is a popular state school but not in the same level. It just isn’t. Not an even comparison. UVA should be compared to Michigan or Berkeley.

It was a size comparison, genius.

Oh Genius I thought you meant UPENN not Penn State. Lol. Big difference.

It's just Penn now, not UPENN. You sound silly calling it UPENN.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:During a stroll around the campus last summer, I was struck by how well-off all of the students looked, the female students in particular. I checked the most recent NYT infographic on college students’ family income and I was correct: 73% of W&M students come from families making the highest 20%ile of income. I was also interested in the gender disparity.

I don’t have a point, just intrigued.

First of all, in the summer, you are only seeing the students that can afford to go to summer school. Second, the demographics are similar to those for any LAC. Not really different that UVA, etc.

Well, if that data source is correct, JMU is 70% top 20 percentile for income, UVA 67%, and Virginia Tech 66%, so William & Mary is on the high end but very similar and probably given by the demographics of the areas they draw students from (Nova, etc.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the problems with W&M is that it's extremely strict on grading (which would be fine if not for), student codes, and social codes.

It's a very conservative social culture. Not necessarily politically conservative or religious, but conservative as in very judgemental of any freedom/liberties. It's really not a good place to find yourself in as a college kid when you want to be exploring the world. Large part of this is being in the South.

Also there's a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby it has a terrible reputation as a school socially, and only those that don't care about social culture go there, realize that it has a terrible social culture and don't enjoy their time there, tell others that it has a terrible social culture, etc.

A lot of male kids that go their do so because they didn't get into UVA, which worsens resentment towards the already extremely bad school.

Being in Williamsburg, a terrible town by any standard full of retirees and the type of tourists who want to go to Colonial Williamsburg (again, retirees), further worsens the deficits of the school.

The only good part of W&M is that its better to go there than massive 30,000-student public schools for those majoring in certain humanities - English, etc. - because of the small class sizes although the course selection is very limited. STEM and Business education are both terribly weak.

But anyone not majoring in humanities and anyone that can go to private LACs and mid-sized universities should do so.

I don’t understand the UVA comment. W&M is regarded as on par[i] if not superior to UVA...

[b] Maybe ten years ago ... not anymore. SCHEV statistics show it to be significantly more difficult to get into UVA, both on test scores and GPA. 90 percent of the students are in the top ten percent of their high school class.

90% of those who report their rank. Only 43% report their rank.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One of the problems with W&M is that it's extremely strict on grading (which would be fine if not for), student codes, and social codes.

It's a very conservative social culture. Not necessarily politically conservative or religious, but conservative as in very judgemental of any freedom/liberties. It's really not a good place to find yourself in as a college kid when you want to be exploring the world. Large part of this is being in the South.

Also there's a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby it has a terrible reputation as a school socially, and only those that don't care about social culture go there, realize that it has a terrible social culture and don't enjoy their time there, tell others that it has a terrible social culture, etc.

A lot of male kids that go their do so because they didn't get into UVA, which worsens resentment towards the already extremely bad school.

Being in Williamsburg, a terrible town by any standard full of retirees and the type of tourists who want to go to Colonial Williamsburg (again, retirees), further worsens the deficits of the school.

The only good part of W&M is that its better to go there than massive 30,000-student public schools for those majoring in certain humanities - English, etc. - because of the small class sizes although the course selection is very limited. STEM and Business education are both terribly weak.

But anyone not majoring in humanities and anyone that can go to private LACs and mid-sized universities should do so.

I don’t understand the UVA comment. W&M is regarded as on par[i] if not superior to UVA...

[b] Maybe ten years ago ... not anymore. SCHEV statistics show it to be significantly more difficult to get into UVA, both on test scores and GPA. 90 percent of the students are in the top ten percent of their high school class.

Popularity and quality are two different things. If you look back in SCHEV numbers, you would see that W&M generally had higher SAT scores than UVA (for something like 17 out of 20 years). I don't take that as evidence to mean UVA was lower quality then than W&M (or higher quality now). These are subtle shifts in popularity and selectivity over time.

UVA has had an increase in applications recently while W&M has stayed relatively flat. Perhaps that will continue, but it may just be like the past and things will change.