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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm trying to convince my son to consider William & Mary instead of going out of state.  William & Mary is the only in-state school that he applied to.  Outside of costs (we'll be in-state) and program/major (data science), what do you love about William & Mary? [/quote]

My son, in h.s.,  was not into tradition, not into history, and a tech kid. So, W & M was NOT on his radar. I convinced him to apply last minute during the pandemic when he couldn't visit any colleges. He finally visited in April of his HS grad year and was very surprised by how much he liked it. He visited UMD/VT after he was admitted to both. UMD/VT both had a lot of student competitions (robotics, racing, etc) that he thought would be really fun. But when he asked about research, he could tell it would be hard/unlikely that he could be involved as an undergrad. He would be competing with grad students for the lab positions. When he went to W&M, they were encouraging him to jump into research from Day 1. So to everyone's surprise, he went to W&M to double major in CS and Math.

He only has one semester left, but he has LOVED W&M. The funny part to me is that he is now into tradition and history. I think you can't go to that school without feeling the power of the history and tradition behind it, and it is authentic. A lot of schools try to manufacture a culture, but W&M is surrounded by it.

My son will leave college with research paper publishing creds, which is really cool. He also leaves with an understanding of why people love history. He has said, "Having a professor so passionate about history, make you start to appreciate it too." He is by far more well rounded than my son who went to a tech school to major in CS. I use to think you go to tech schools for CS, but after watching two kids at the different schools I'm a huge fan of the well-roundedness of a W&M education.

The other item we love is that at W&M the curriculum is wide open for electives. So, he really got to explore things he thought might be interesting. My other son at a big tech school didn't have much say in electives. The electives were often you can pick A, B, or C; whereas at W&M, it was pick anything that sounds interesting to you. As he leaves W&M, he feels like he has gotten to try lots of things such that he is now ready to go deep in grad school with his focused passion.[/quote]

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