Reply to How to pick between UVA and W&M

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Maybe, just maybe, there is a difference between some college ranked 150 and one ranked 50, but there is no significant difference between these two.[/quote]

I am still blown away that William & Mary is not ranked higher.  [/quote]

You shouldn’t be. WM excels in small classes, undergrad teaching, alumni and student satisfaction, study abroad and internships. When USNWR redid their formula this year, they eliminated these as factors for consideration in ranking (or gave them much less weight), and replaced them with DEI criteria. WM meets full need for Pell Grant students, but just doesn’t have that many Pell Grant kids. Students are primarily white and Asian and have a range of religions, ethnic backgrounds and political viewpoints— But WM does not have large Black or Hispanic populations. So basically, they aren’t the “right type” of diverse. Etc. And they got hammered for that by USNWR.  Tulane, Wake Forest, U Rochester, and even Vanderbilt got penalized for the same reasons.

WM also is unique among public national Us in that they are small and don’t have many grad programs. They don’t qualify as a SLAC, but the National U rankings are designed to evaluate much larger schools. So WM doesn’t fit well in either category.  They are ranked much lower that UVA and yet have almost identical student selectivity (difference in GPA is something like .02) and WM and UVA go back and forth over which one has higher SATs and ACTs. I believe WM is 1 point higher on the ACT at the 75% and 1 point lower at the 25%. WM out ranks UVA in many of the areas above (happiest students, class size, undergrad teaching)— but USNWR isn’t looking at that.

You need to do your own research and ask yourself— what do I value for my kid. Stop letting USNWR make these decisions for you. In 5-7 years, they will redo the formula again (because keeping top schools in the same order doesn’t sell their “product”) and WM might end up as a T25– depending on what they decide to emphasize next.

A better place to look is USNWR sub scores in various areas, rankings of individual departments, and Princeton Review in specific areas that matter to you.  [/quote]

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