Reply to What’s wrong with William & Mary?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My son is strongly considering W&M and likes the size, teacher/student ratio and the good things he has heard about the Business school.  His only concern is that he has heard there is little to do outside of studying and that Williamsburg is very boring for college students. He has heard great things about the school spirit at  UVA and VT.  He wants a good balance of academics/social life.[/quote]
There is indeed very little to do outside of campus in the college town itself, but there is indeed a frat scene with ~35% in frats/sororities. But don't expect anything to be set around the town itself (i.e. no movie theaters/concerts/clubs etc.). Mostly house parties. 
There is school spirit but its a different kind from VT and UVA. It's not based around sports, its more of what you might expect at a private liberal arts school. 
Some kids do seem to outright hate the school initially though; there are a lot of male students that did not get into their first choice of UVA who come to W&M and would much prefer the environment of UVA i.e. large population, big-time sports, huge frat scene, undergrad business school, Charlottesville.

The outright best part of W&M is their humanities, government, and related majors i.e. international relations. The small class size, generally 20-30 students per class in even freshman classes, is very good and necessary for those types of majors because it allows class discussions, and the professors in those majors are generally great and come from great schools. I would say this is a huge advantage that W&M has over UVA, VT and other top public universities.

Majors like Economics are not as good and you don't need small class size for those types of majors. Not much course choice. Computer Science major is extremely mediocre.

UVA business school is probably better than W&M's and certainly has more prestigious employers i.e. investment banks, top management consulting firms recruiting that W&M doesn't have.

[/quote]

Base sciences (chemistry, biology, physics, etc.) and science education are really strong at W&M.  Intro classes can be fairly large, but classes are taught by professors who are generally good at teaching (labs can be TA supervised).   Upper level classes are small, and professors are very accessible and giving of their time.  Most majors do professor supervised research which is really useful in graduate and medical school admissions.  Advising in these areas is pretty strong.  I believe only Berkeley and New Mexico School of Mines (whose graduates tend to get advanced degrees because of their field) have a higher percentage of their undergraduates go on to get STEM Doctorates according to National Science Foundation tracking data.  (Both of those schools have a higher percentage of students getting STEM undergraduate degrees.)

When I was there, the departments were housed in different buildings, and labs needed modernizing, but W&M has now built an integrated science center to enhance interdisciplinary studies and collaboration.  Labs seemed very nice when I toured recently.   [/quote]

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