How We Read
We Admit It! We’re proud of the application review process we have in place. We believe it to be genuinely holistic, thoughtful and contextual. There is no automatic in, and no automatic out. There’s no pre-sorting based on any one criterion. There’s no mathematical formula where a + b + c = a specific admission decision. The classes we have built and the classes we hope to build are about so much more than transcripts and SAT scores (although those of course are important factors). It’s not your 4.0 that makes you the most interesting student in your discussion-based freshman seminar. And it’s not your ACT score that makes you the next president of the Student Assembly. It’s your personality, your background, your talents, your life experiences that provide engagement, perspective, challenge and life to our campus.
So how do we make those decisions? Well, each and every application is read at least twice, from cover to cover, by two different members of our team (one of those reads will be done by our regional dean). During each read, all components of the application (transcript, standardized test scores, extracurricular engagement, recommendations, the essay(s) and any optional components submitted) will be reviewed and assessed for their overall strength relative to the overall application pool. Each read is also done contextually taking into account everything from a student’s background to their high school environment to any extenuating circumstances brought to light in the application so that we are assessing your accomplishments with as much background information as possible.
From there, an application can go in a myriad of different directions. Many will end up being presented to the Admission Committee (our Committee meets at the end of both Early and Regular Decision reviews) during which a group of deans will vote on the applicants before us. The Committee has the benefit of having had a chance to see a majority of the pool which informs its decision on the applications being presented, and it has more voices at the table to discuss the merits of the toughest cases.
Despite the increasing number of applications we receive and the pressures that come with completing such a labor-intensive process in a relatively short period of time, we keep with it because we’ve seen it yield such phenomenal results. We do everything within our power to give each individual applicant the due consideration we believe they deserve. And we believe our process allows us to build the best incoming class that we can.
Thank you for the time you’ve put into your application. We truly look forward to reading them.
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed. ‘09
Associate Dean of Admission
Comments are closed on posts older than one year, but we still want to hear from you. If you have a comment or question for us, please email admission@wm.edu.
Thank you so much for your blog posts. It’s incredibly reassuring to read them and it makes my day when I see a new one.
@Wmhopeful, so glad you enjoy the blogs and find them helpful. That’s very gratifying to us.
Your blog is truly the best there is in the world wide web of college admissions! It shows your transparency and earnestness, but most of all, it makes eager applicants (like ours) a little more relaxed that even if they are unconventional or not quite on the mark they will get a fair consideration. Good luck to everyone – and keep these posts coming.
@Parent, thank you for the feedback. We really do believe so firmly in our process because of what you said, it gives every applicant their fair shot at admission. Good luck to your student and we promise to keep the blogs coming.
Great blog! Thanks for the insights into your process. It is pretty hard to make apples to apples comparisions for grades with Honors and AP coefficients and not all school systems publish class rank or percentiles in transcripts either (they really need to hire more competent IT folks). Will your timeline be similar to 2013 ED as far as notifications (all at the same time)? There is great deal of info at your 2013 blog exchanges and I was wondering if they are relevant for this year as well. Thanks!
@NoVA Parent, we do our best to bring order to the chaos that is different grading scales, weighted grades, GPAs, etc. through our regional review. It’s the job of the regional dean to understand the individual schools/area/states and provide that information to the review of an applicant.
As for our timeline, we are committed to releasing decisions in early December, and yes, all students who applied ED will be notified at the same time. Last year was a bit of an odd year given we delayed the application deadline. This year is a bit of an odd year with the Thanksgiving holiday falling so late. We cannot predict a decision release date in advance but will do our best to keep everyone informed as we move through the process.
My counselor informed me yesterday that I needed to turn in a separate Early Decision agreement as I thought that the signature under CommonApp was the only thing I had to do. I turned in my application weeks ago, but just sent out the physical contract in the mail last night. Will the contract still be accepted though the deadline has long passed?
Thank you for your help.
@L, yes that’s just fine. We’ll just add the agreement to the rest of your materials when it arrives.
Wait does everyone have to fill out a separate ED agreement? I just signed the common app one
@ED, there’s no separate ED agreement. @L, was referring to the Common App one we believe. Assuming you, your parent and counselor signed the one through Common App you’ve done everything you’re supposed to.
Thanks!!
Same concern – is a physically signed agreement required? Our daughter only submitted to electronic agreement in Common App.
@Parent, no need for a physical copy of the agreement. If you did everything online through the Common App that’s just fine.
While I do not want to denigrate the way you scrupulously sift through applications, cover letters recommendations and may conduct interviews I wonder: as this one experiment where high school teachers were give random assessments on the intelligence of their students which later turned out to be “true”, i.e. the better rated students “performed” better when the researchers retested, although there was no actual basis for this as it was, as I said, random, has it ever occurred to you, as a scientific institution, that the performance of your students has something to do with simply being “admitted”? In other words: if you would choose, for one year, to admit students by “lot” instead of going through that tedious process, then and only then would you know the difference. Of course that would have to be done via a “double-blind” admissions process whereby your faculty and staff must never guess as otherwise they’d again play that self-fulfilling prophecy game of “Oh, no wonder he failed – isn’t he from that lottery year?” But, as scientists – can we be sure if we didn’t try?