Anonymous wrote:You need to distinguish between name recognition and the reason why the school is recognized. Virginia Tech may be as well known as William and Mary, but I'd say it is much more likely that William and Mary is known for academics and its long history.

Anonymous wrote:Back to the original question.

I grew up in NY and spent time in Boston.

William & Mary was thought of as a private school that is public for VA residents, and a very big deal.

Virginia Tech I learned about when I got to DC, but also that was when I spent more time with techies.

If your field were engineering, I bet you'd put VT high on the list.
When I met people who went to VT they were really smart, especially in STEM related careers.

I'd be delighted if my kid(s) went to either.

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Anonymous wrote:I’m from the northeast and in my nerd circle of peers W&M was fairly well known. A few people attended. VT was more obscure but one random semi-nerd (not great grades) went there.

This. William and Mary is pretty highly coveted in NYC society circles as a step below Ivy (in line with Oberlin, Williams, Haverford etc).

Anonymous wrote:As a science major, many of us turned down liberal arts schools in favor of VA Tech, including W&M.

VA Tech has an incredible number of patents. Their research facilities are good. If I were a science or IT major in VA and wanted in-state, it would be my top choice.

Anonymous wrote:Few schools are known outside their states. When I went to UVa from out of state, I'd never head of it, nor had my friends back home. But as I ended up staying in NoVa for the job market afterward, it ended up helping me anyway since everyone here knows it. Unless you are turning down Ivies I wouldn't worry about name recognition - it's probably a better school than VT (except stem) and definitely a very different vibe.

Anonymous wrote:W&M is a school about 200 years past its prime. It's a fantastic public school option for Virginians, but... C'mon. It's not even the best public school in the state. I don't understand the people trying to pass it off as some prestigious, "highly coveted" school.

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Anonymous wrote:We tried hard to get our kids to consider W&M but they were put off by the small-town location. In any event, a sample of unknown size, suggests that when students are admitted to both W&M and VT it is pretty much a toss-up which one they go to. At least there is no significant difference, unlike the case for, say, UVA (no, I did not attend UVA). See

https://www.parchment.com/c/college/tools/college-cross-admit-comparison.php?compare=College+of+William+and+Mary&with=Virginia+Tech

A friend's daughter who was admitted to all three of the schools mentioned opted to attend W&M for STEM (not engineering, obviously).

What may be more meaningful to know is what choices are made outside of engineering. William and Mary doesn't have engineering, so students choosing VT would be choosing a different course of study.

Fair enough. But one has to wonder why a student seriously interested in engineering would apply to W&M in the first place. Few students are interested in the combined engineering degree program on offer at W&M and elsewhere. It might be fair to assume that students who applied to both W&M and VT were predominantly non-engineering types.

Why wouldn't they? Unless their stats are good enough that VT Engineering is a guaranteed safety, there's no reason that students wouldn't apply to W&M considering the minimal monetary and time costs.

My thinking was that students who are interested in engineering would only apply to VT with few exceptions. (W&M does not offer engineering except through a combined degree program; very few students opt for this.) Those interested in fields other than engineering are those who would likely apply to both W&M and VT. Hence, my conjecture was that the Parchment results largely reflect choices made by students who are not interested in engineering. This thinking is influenced by watching one engineering-oriented son make decisions on where to apply to. In the end, he applied only to schools that offered engineering even though he was initially attracted to some schools that didn't.