W&L Appears to Remain the Most Selective College or University in Virginia
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Anonymous
Beyond its currently low acceptance rate, W&L has posted the highest standardized scoring profile in Virginia for most or all of at least the last 10 or 20 years. However, "better," as you would know, represents a subjective determination. |
Anonymous
| Does it have recognition outside of Virginia or the DMV? Forgive my ignorance but I grew up on the West Coast and went to a college in the NE and I had not heard of W&L until my 40s. |
Anonymous
For those who may have been unfamiliar with the school for geographical or cultural reasons, W&L may have become noticable for statistical reasons. For example, in this analysis from when standardized scoring represented a consistent component of college admission, W&L's profile matched that of the top UC and exceeded those of some highly regarded Northeastern LACs, such as Wesleyan and Middlebury: The 610 Smartest Colleges in America - Business Insider https://share.google/OhfN1v3qPHYvxt3wi |
Anonymous
And of those that checked “Hispanic”, I would guess many look white. |
Anonymous
People keep basing their comments on an an incorrect interpretation. As was corrected posted earlier, W&L's site indicates that 69% of its incoming class are White students of domestic origin. |
Anonymous
| Do they mention on the tour that Robert E Lee’s corpse is in their chapel? You can see the Lee crypt along what is like a shrine to Lee here at W&L- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o2zjyTvoScQ |
Anonymous
| Is this one of the "colleges have better looking students" by DCUM standard? |
Anonymous
Do they have good genes? |
Anonymous
Or one that on a “Labor Day weekend”, students do not “look so small?” 
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Anonymous
We are in NY area and W&L is seen as providing a different experience than some of the tippy top new england SLACs. Know kids considering W&L over Williams and Amherst for the reasons listed above - definitely known in NY area, and experiencing the same renaissance here for smart kids that the SEC schools are experiencing vs the northern state schools |
Anonymous
Look they are apples and oranges. There is a good reason US News has liberal arts schools on a different list. Totally different kinds of schools! personally I prefer liberal arts schools and think you get a better education at them as a rule, but I would never say that W&L is "better." You can't take one statistic and compare it to determine which is better, you can't even take three. W&L is a tiny school that can only take a small number, of course the admissions rate is low. It really doesn't tell you much. The schools have comparable SAT scores but a lot more first-years at UVA actually submitted their scores, which suggests that overall UVA's students have scored higher. My anecdata is that I know a few kids who got into W&L but not UVA. I don't know anyone who got into UVA but was rejected from W&L, yet I am sure there are some. |
Anonymous
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W&L is a great school with small class sizes and is particularly strong in political science.
The things that would give me pause: Its extremely expensive for what you get, especially relative to other strong Va publics It’s still a regional school in name recognition It being partly named after Robert E Lee is a problem for me, and they had a vote to change it recently and they didn’t. It has all the challenges of UVA traditionally: too Greek, not diverse My friend’s daughter goes there but on a full financial need based scholarship. Otherwise, I would not pay $90k/ year to go there |
Anonymous
This is actually W&L ‘s best feature. |
Anonymous
It took them until 2014 to move the Confederate flags to the museum. But they did move them to the museum. |
Anonymous
Actually, UVA out of state selectivity is even lower than W&L overall at only 12.5% |