Chance Me
Admit It! You want to know whether or not you have a prayer of getting into a institution before you go spend the time, energy, and money completing an actual application. And with so many colleges having so many different review processes and criteria, it’s hard to know whether or not you have even the slightest chance of being admitted to any one of them. Hence the abundant “chance me” threads on College Confidential (for those of you who don’t know College Confidential is a site on which prospective students, parents, alumni, administrators, faculty, and current students can post questions, concerns, kudos and criticisms about colleges and universities and they can do so anonymously). The “chance me” threads are where students post their stats, course record, extracurricular resume, etc and ask people to tell them whether or not they are likely to get in to the individual institution. After having replied to what I feel like are a million of those threads I thought I’d provide everyone (whether you’re on College Confidential or not) their “chances” of being admitted to W&M.
Do you want to the good news or the bad news first. I like ending with the good news so lets start with the bad news. The bad news is, there’s no real way to give you your chances of being admitted to W&M. If I had your high school transcript, SAT/ACT scores, and extracurricular resume in front of me, I could say you have a [fill in a numeric digit] percent chance of being admitted. Our process simply doesn’t lend itself to those kinds of quantifiers. Our process is genuinely holistic; we review every single application at least twice, from cover to cover because we know that you’re more than just a GPA or an SAT or an extracurricular activity. We need the entire application to get a sense of who you are and what you can contribute to our campus. And even if I had your entire application in front of me, I still couldn’t give you a statistical answer to the “chance me” question because I also need everyone else’s application in front of me to be able compare yours to the rest of our pool.
Okay, so the good news. The fact that our process is truly holistic, and the fact that every application is read twice from cover to cover means no one is automatically in (I guess that could be viewed as bad news) and no one is automatically out. A GPA or SAT or an essay does not automatically put your application into one decision category or the other. Thus, everyone has a chance of being admitted.
So, the best answer I can give to those of you who want raw numbers is this: last year we admitted 32% of those students who applied. No one should consider W&M (or any other selective school for that matter) a safety school but no one should assume they stand absolutely no chance. We’ve not admitted students with 1600s and we’ve admitted students with 900s. We’ve not admitted valedictorians and we have admitted students who rank outside the top 10% (don’t fear those of you with 1600s and valedictorian status, we do admit plenty of you). Why you ask? Because no decision hinges on one factor and in the case of those with lower SATs or GPAs, there are likely a host of other wonderful factors that mean that student can contribute meaningfully to W&M, sometimes in a way those with higher GPAs or SATs cannot.
So, the moral of the story is this: if you’re remotely interested in W&M, apply! What does it cost you besides a little bit of time (hopefully you’re completing the Common App for other schools so W&M isn’t an entirely new application) and a $60. application fee. You’ll never know unless you try, I mean apply. Just go in with the right expectations. Know that if you do get in, great. And if you don’t, that’s okay too because there are 3,999 other colleges out there and you will get into one or two or five of them. The point is, at least you tried and at least you then know your chances.
Wendy Livingston ’03, M.Ed ’09
Senior Assistant 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.
Great post Wendy! Quick question though: do you guys look at freshmen and transfer applications the same way? Or, are there some components in transfer applications that mean more than in freshmen applications?
Sandra,
Glad you enjoyed the post.
Freshman and transfer review do both incorporate the same holistic review philosophy. However, the reviews are different because we do have information in transfer applications we don’t have in freshman ones.
In both application processes, we put a little more emphasis on the transcript (courses taken and grades received) than we do other parts. In the transfer process, that’s a bit magnified. Also, transfer review is different because students are coming to us at different stages (some are college freshmen, some college sophomores, some non-traditional students returning to school after a hiatus) whereas freshman all come to us at the same life stage. So the evaluation of a transfer applicant varies more from student to student based on where that student is on their educational path. Hope that makes sense!
This post really helped calm my nerves down. But I have a quick question: do you guys weigh upward trends significantly? I have had a HUGE upward trend from freshman to junior year and i have continued it senior year, so I was wondering if this would come into play in admissions?
Nithin, glad the post was helpful.
As mentioned in the previous comment, while all things are essentially equal in our review process, we do place a little more emphasis on the transcript (courses taken and grades received). We evaluate how a student performed overall and certainly take notice of either upward or downward grade trends. Certainly any improvement in grades is more positive than any academic downturn. If your grades were lower than you would have liked early on, feel free to use the additional information portion of the Common Application to explain why. Also, be sure to have your first semester grades sent when they become available so we can see if the upward trend continues.
Good luck!
I’m curious as to student(s?) with 1600 SAT scores who might be rejected by W&M. What kinds of things on an application (or lack thereof) would cause you to reject a student with very high SAT scores, high grades, good class rank, etc.? Also, do you reject applicants with high academic credentials during the RD process on grounds that you suspect they wouldn’t accept an offer to attend W&M?
Steve, please keep in mind that students who have a 1600 and high grades are very likely to get in but there are instances when a student with a 1600 has bad grades/class rank or maybe they have good grades but no rigor to their course selection. We’ve seen students with a 1600 who take no APs and we’ve seen students with a 1600 who gets all Bs and Cs. These students aren’t admitted because all they have is a great SAT but clearly they aren’t working to their potential. We also see valedictorians who likewise get there by taking easier courses or who have very poor standardized testing or extracurricular activities so those students may be less competitive despite their valedictorian status. These things could cause a student not to be admitted.
Sometimes students have great grades and test scores but they do almost or absolutely nothing outside of class. It’s hard to believe these students would contribute much to the W&M campus since they’re not involved in high school so somtimes they’re not admitted. We consider every factor in making a decision (both the objective and subjective) and no student will be admitted based on a great SAT score or great class rank alone.
We consider any applicant who applies to be interested in W&M. We would never not admit any student because we don’t think they’ll come to W&M. Just like we tell you that you won’t know if you could have gotten in unless you apply, we won’t know if we could have yielded a student if we don’t admit him/her.
Hope this adds some clarification.
As far as extracurricular activities go, would you rather see a student focus on one or two organizations and spend most of their time there or would you rather see them have a wide variety of volunteer places and different sports etc.. Also, would you rather see that a person has held a job or held a volunteer position? Also, how many years of a foreign language do you like to see?
Alex, there’s no preference here. There are places in our class for students who focus their efforts on one or two specific areas and there are places in our class for the more jack-of-all-trades sort. We do not have a preference for one or the other; we value both. Likewise, we do not preference a part-time job over volunteer experience. Both are equally valueable in our eyes.
As for the academic side, we like to see four years of a single foreign language from applicants.
Hope this is helpful
Heyyy, okay so i was wondering that if I had a 3.8 gpa and i applied to william and mary would you guys even consider me or do I have to have above a 4.0 gpa to even get considered?
If i have a 4.6 gpa and i get a 1800 on my sats and i have a lot of comunity service, and i am an overall beautiful person on the inside and out, would i have a good chance of being accepted?
Hols and June, while numbers are a part of our process, they are far from the whole. However, we have no minimum cut-offs so regardless of your GPA, you are absolutely considered for admission. That is the message of this blog; that everyone has a chance of being admitted. We put your GPA in context of your school (it’s grading scale, weighted vs unweighted, competiteness or lack thereof, etc).
We consider a student’s objective qualities (courses, grades, standardized tests) as well as his/her personal qualities. June, this is where we consider extracurricular activities (such as community service), recommendations and essays which help us understand exactly who you are as a person and what you can add to the W&M community.
The basic profile for our most recent incoming class is as follows: students enroll in advanced courses (namely AP and IB based on what’s available at their school), 80% of our students graduate in the top 10% of their class, and the middle 50% for the SAT is 1280-1430 (Critical Reading + Math) or 28-32 on the ACT.
Hi, I’m a high school junior looking to apply to W&M. The problem is, my grades are a bit less than decent, and my GPA has been on a slightly downward trend since freshman year (4.1-3.9). I go to a very rigorous, highly-ranked public school. Though I have a lot of A’s, I’m also getting a few B’s and currently have a C+ average in one of my classes. However, my SATs and SAT Subject Tests are in the 700s for ever section, and next year I will have three leadership positions in clubs I’m involved in. I’m also doing scientific research over the summer. I’m sorry to be listing stats, and I understand that you’re looking at every part of the application, but are all of these things enough to get into W&M? In other words, will my SAT scores and extracurriculars outweigh the bad grades? Thanks.
Hopeful,
Glad you’re interest in William & Mary.
In our review process, most components are considered equal. We do place a little more emphasis on the transcript (course rigor and grades) than other parts of the application. The question isn’t so much will your SAT scores and extracurricular activities outweight the bad grades; it’s more do we think you can be a successful student at W&M and if we do, do we think the good qualities you exhibit are so good that they make you more competitive than students who might have better grades.
One C+ and a few Bs in no way makes you an automatic deny. I hope it’s clear from my blog that no student is an automatic admit or an automatic deny. While we do prefer to see upward trends (as opposed to downward trends) you still have time to improve your grades. You have almost half the current semester left and you might show improvement plus you have your senior year courses and grades yet to come. Additionally, feel free to explain any grade that is an anamoly on your transcript.
In the end, while we cannot tell you before we have a chance to review your entire application in the context of the greater pool what your chances of admission are, we can tell you that we consider everything you put forward and that we value many things in addition to grades (course rigor, extracurricular involvement, leadership, essays, personal qualities, backgrounds, talents, the list goes on and on). You can also consider visiting campus this summer and conducting an on-campus interview (www.wm.edu/admission/interview) as an optional component of your application.
Good luck!
Hello,
I was wondering what my chances would look like for being accepted into W&M.
I didnt do too well in high school I had a 2.7 on a 5.0 GPA scale due to a slacker attitude, but I explain that i had a sort of revelation in my essay which i did.
my sats are Math: 660 and Verbal: 630 Wrtiting: 600
My current college GPA is a 3.5 flat from last semester at the University of Hawaii taking 16 college credits with a bio/bio lab, chem/chem lab, math, ROTC course, and a social science ( human development) im an ROTC cadet with plenty of leadership experience including taking over as Co-coach of the wrestling team my senior year in highschool when our coach changed over to another school and we lacked a wrestling coach but had a conditioning coach, I also was an army combatives instructor during the summer and participated in a very selective medical reasearch summer program during my sophmore and junior summer, and also volunteered mainly in mexico with my grandparents and the Knights of Columbus in Newport News
This semester in college I am taking 17 credits including Bio/bio lab (B), Chem/Chem lab (B,A), ROTC/ROTC lab (A,A), English (A-), Religion (A-)
I am part of the National Society of Collegiate Shcolars and am part of the National Association of Medical Students
Jorge,
Glad you’re interested in transferring. You’re certainly starting off college on the right foot by taking good courses and getting good grades.
Not sure from your post if you applied for Fall 2011 or not. If you did, it will likely be a close call. When a student’s high school record is rocky and recent (as your’s is) we generally like to see several semesters of good college courses and grades. If you applied for the fall, we’ll only have one completed semester of college to review and it’s a good semester but it’s still only one semester and high school was four years. Be sure to send your mid-semester grades by March 28.
If you did apply for fall and are not admitted, chances are you could reapply for spring 2012 and be very competitive because we’ll have another completed semester of college to review (this current semester) and mid-semester grades from next fall.
If you’re looking to apply for spring 2012 and haven’t applied yet you are likely to look strong if you continue to keep up the academic pace you’re currently on.
Hello!
I am a junior in high school and I am going to apply to William & Mary for fall 2012 admission. When I was a freshman, a medical crisis emerged requiring life-saving surgeries. This crisis prevented me from attending high school on a regular basis for over two years. I had to work mostly from home; however, I maintained straight-As in all of my classes, which were mostly honors/AP. This year I am back in school and thriving. Because of my past medical issue, I haven’t been able to pursue extracurricular activities as fervently as some of my peers. I am a member of NHS, and I have a passion for music that has led to my participation in my school’s Guitar Ensemble. I also give weekly free guitar lessons to disadvantaged children through a local non-profit organization. I love to write and some of my work has been published in my school’s newspaper and literary magazine.
Will you take setbacks like the one I experienced into consideration when reviewing applications from prospective students? Your input is greatly appreciated.
Ellen,
We will absolutely consider extenuating circumstances when reviewing an application. We know that injuries, illnesses, moves and a host of other things can interrupt a student’s academic and extracurricular path. Please just be sure you tell us about your circumstances so that we can take them into account. We suggest using the additional information section of the Common Application.
Hello,
Its me once again and I have a recent update that i was wondering if it would have any impact on my chance of being admitted. I was recently cited in two scientific papers waiting to be published in a scientific journal, I would have mentioned this in my application but i just recently found out that the work i had done would be part of a published paper.
Jorge, you are welcome to update your transfer application by emailing any updates to admission@wm.edu. Please include your W&M Application ID (included in the emails we have sent you regarding your application status) and we will add a copy of the email to your application materials.
Me again!
I was wondering how much weight W&M admissions puts on AP Exam scores when reviewing applications from prospective students. For example, if a student gets an ‘A’ in his AP class but a ‘2’ on the AP Exam, has he tarnished his chances at getting into W&M? Or is he OK if he chooses not to report that score?
Thank you so much.
Janice, we do not require AP scores to be submitted as part of the application so students can choose not to submit them. Additionally, the bulk of AP exams are often take after admission decisions are made (senior year AP exams are taken in May and decisions are released in April). While we of course prefer to see congruency between the grade earned in the class and the score received on the exam we do place more emphasis on the course taken and grade received than the exam score. Similar to the comparision between GPA and the SAT we believe your four-year record in high school is more important than your four-hour record on a Saturday morning. With AP classes your record throughout the year is more important than your record on a half-day exam.
Hello! I would love to be a student at this college in the fall of 2013 and was wondering whether it is required to have taken pre-calculus. I will have taken four years of math but do not know if I can fit pre calculus inti my schedule. Is it required? How detrimental would it be not to take it? Do you offer a pre calculus class? Also was wondering how important community service is to you. I have accumulated between 6 and 7 hundred hours over the past five-ish years, but some colleges do not weight that too heavily, whereas some colleges love that. Thanks so much for this informative blog and for taking your time to answer all of these questions.
Alora, while we do not require any classes for admission we strongly recommend that students enroll in the core subjects every year that they are in high school. In math specifically, we like to see students take calculus their senior year. If calculus is not possible, we recommend pre-calculus. It would depend on what level of math you have completed as to “how detrimental” the absence of pre-calculus would be. We do offer pre-calculus at W&M but prefer that students have taken that class before enrolling.
As for community service we certainly appreciate any student who is engaged in such endeavors but do not favor community service over any other kind of extracurricular activity. We just want to see students engaged in activities outside the classroom but do not prefer certain activities over others.
Hope this is helpful.
My daughter is homeschooled. She’s 16 years old with 12 community college credits so far (all A’s–English, Lit, and Psychology). She enrolled in her first college class at 13. She has SATs of 640, 520, 600–Reading, Math, Writing. She plans to attend community college full time in what would be her senior year of high school and expects to have a total of 32 college credits by the time she would typically graduate high school.
She already has two foreign languages, two musical instruments, volunteer work, calculus, classical studies (such as Logic), and her sport is equestrian.
Do you have any recommendations as to whether she should apply as a transfer student or a senior in high school? She has plenty of credits to be graduated now, but she could certainly accumulate more.
Thanks for any insight.
At W&M, a student is considered a freshman applicant, regardless of whether or not they have college credits, until they graduate high school. So if your daughter goes to community college full-time this year but graduates high school next spring, she will be a freshman applicant.
Given that she is young we would recommend she apply as a freshman. Transfer students are not guaranteed housing so if she graduated high school now and then applied as a transfer for Fall 2012 she would not be guaranteed on-campus housing which is likely something she should have given she’ll be only 17 or 18 years old.
We would recommend that your daughter take math and science at the community college this year in addition to the humanities courses she’s already taken. We would also recommend that she take SAT II exams as we like to see those from homeschooled students (and we prefer subject tests in math and science also).
She might also consider taking the SAT one more time. We combine the best scores to get the student’s best composite. Our middle 50% range is 1280-1430 (Critical Reading + Math). The SAT is only one part of our process and there is no minimum score but taking the test again could allow her to score higher.
Hello,
In the summer before her junior year my daughter scheduled herself for 5 AP classes which we thought would be too stressful for her…but she was adamant (yeah, stubborn). All started off well but at the end of the first quarter she abruptly decided to drop AP Calculus with a withdraw/pass. We visited W&M in summer of 2009 and she has had this school at the top of her list ever since. She is worried about how this drop of an AP Calc class will affect her chances for admission to W&M. She entered senior year in top 5 of her class (400+ students) and superscores are 700R/690M/800R and her junior year AP scores were 5/5/5/4 and she has four more AP underway this year. I think she is worrying way too much over this. Would there be much weight given to the fact that she withdrew from the AP Calculus class? Thank you!
Did your daughter take another math class her junior year? Did she retake calculus during her senior year? It’s not common for juniors to take AP Calculus so if she simply withdrew from it to better prepare and attempted again that shouldn’t have much impact on her application. She should however explain the withdraw in the additional information section.
Hello! Thank you for doing this for us! It means a lot!!
I’m a student who is currently a junior with a wide array of extra curriculars and I’ve had a very rigorous schedule. I have tripled and doubled on math and science classes nearly every single year. My summers have consisted of international travels to India to volunteer at an orphanage for disabled children (I have a personal connection to it, it was founded by my great-aunt after being inspired by her own disability). Unfortunately, my GPA is a 3.44 but I am turning it around this year!
My sophomore year consisted of my homeroom teacher dying in front of me, two of my teachers getting arrested for harming children, and two of my friends committing suicide along with bullying issues. Unfortunately my grades took a nose-dive. I would have had a 3.8-3.9 GPA if it was not for my sophomore year. I was wondering how the admissions committee would take my (very personal) reasons for not doing well my sophomore year? And also, would they see it as another excuse or would they legitimately understand all that occurred?
Nikitha, we apologize for the delay in response. Your comment got caught in our spam filters and wasn’t released until today.
You are welcome to explain the reasons for your dip in grades sophomore year. Just be thorough without overdoing it. We certainly take students at their word. We will look closely at your junior and senior grades to look for a turn around. We will not ignore your sophomore year grades but we can consider context if provided. Keep in mind however that many students applying to W&M have maintained impeccable grades throughout high school and you will be reviewed in the same pool as those students.
I was wondering when looking at trends if you take into consideration the fact that freshman year classes are much easier then say junior year classes. I had mostly A’s and a-‘s freshman and sophmore year but now that I am a junior I am gettting many more B’s. I am doing the full IB diploma (all 7 classes IB (4 of which are HL) so B’s are not considered bad at all. I was wondering if this will look very bad on my transcript because though due to the rigor I am probobly doing as well, my grades are a little lower (the weight on my classes makes up for that though on my weighted GPA).
We consider both rigor and grades. We often get asked if it’s better to get an A in an easy course or a B in a harder course. The answer is actually none of the above; it’s best to get an A in the harder course. That seems unfair but our pool is so outstanding that many of our applicants do just that.
Pursuing the IB Diploma is great and we definitely evaluate your grades in the context of that rigorous program but we do advise you to earn the best grades possible!
Hi, I’m a hispanic junior from out of state. My SAT scores fall just in the middle 50% for W&M — 680 reading and 600 math. My GPA is about a 3.75 and I have a pretty rigorous course schedule at a highly ranked high school. I would really like to know if applying early decision will increase my chances being admitted and if it will decrease my chances of getting a scholarship (if I have any chance for that at all).
Julia, applying early decision increases anyone’s chances of being admitted. Our early decision pool is about 1100 students whereas our overall pool is over 13,000 students. It’s easier for any student to stand out in the smaller pool.
We would advise that you take the SAT again or try the ACT as your scores are at the low end of our middle 50% range. It can’t hurt you but it could help you.
Applying early decision in no way impacts your ability to receive a scholarship from W&M but all students should know that very few students are awarded a scholarship (we unfortunately have a limited number to offer). If comparing scholarship/financial aid packages is important to your family you probably shouldn’t apply early decision to any school.