Decisions, Decisions — 2012 Deny Edition
Admit It! This is not the outcome you expected, hoped for and waited all of these long months to read. You’re disappointed, angry, maybe even enraged; you’re entitled to be all that and much more. We recognize that we are fortunate to practice highly-selective admission. We also recognize that an enormous downside of high selectivity is that we send out far more bad news than good news, and we are sorry that you are on the receiving end of that bad news. What we cannot underscore enough is that an admission decision is not the same as a judgment; not being admitted to W&M is in no way an indication of how we feel about you as a student, a person, or your potential for success in college. Do not let it become anything of the kind.
We were up over 6% in applications this year; that means we received nearly 800 more applications this year than we did last year. This is our most competitive applicant pool to date. The more students who apply the more we must deny – it’s what our Dean of Admission calls a zero-sum game – for every student we admit that means there’s another student we cannot admit. William & Mary’s relatively small size (we strive for an incoming class of 1450 students) make its extremely desirable to tens of thousands of college-going students. As demand from applicants grows, our supply of incoming spaces does not increase similarly; we are committed to remaining a mid-sized university; it’s a hallmark of W&M. That means thousands of quality students, yourself included, are unfortunately not admitted.
Selective admission is an art, not a science. There is no mathematical formula that can be applied to our decision making process. When we admit someone with a 3.8 GPA but not someone with a 3.9 it’s because so many non-objective factors came into play. Furthermore, the difference between a 3.8 and a 3.9 is miniscule whereas the difference in talents, accomplishments, personalities and other factors may not be. We are reviewing plenty of subjective qualities (passion, talent, perspective, potential, character) in addition to the traditional objective qualities (SAT/ACT, GPA, course rigor). We fully admit that we may get it wrong, denying numerous students who could have been successful at W&M and who could have added greatly to our campus. Admission is a practice in which the process is fair, even though the outcome may not be. What we mean by that is that each application was reviewed in the same thorough manner; we gave every application the same treatment. But we do not conclude that process identically for each applicant as we have to make different decisions based on each individual applicant’s merits in a vacuum and relative to the entire applicant pool.
As we’ve said in every Deny Edition blog, it’s not you, it’s us. There are valedictorians who are not in our class, there are students with 1600s who are not in our class, there are students who had sublime interviews who are not in our class, there are all-state musicians/athletes/singers/mathletes that are not in our class. Our pool is that high quality. Imagine the absolute best students in your senior class at your individual high school. They’re a pretty impressive group no? Now imagine those impeccable students from all high schools across the Commonwealth, across the country, and from across the world applying to one college, that’s the applicant pool we have finished reviewing. That’s why not admitting someone is in no way a judgment on that individual and his/her accomplishments. All of our denied applicants are immensely smart, talented, accomplished young men and women. It’s not that we voted not to admit you; it’s just that we voted affirmatively to admit someone else. And while W&M will not be part of your future we have no doubt that you will receive admission to several amazing institutions. Your college experience at one of those great places will simply be different; not better, not worse, just different.
We know that no blog can remove the sting of rejection and this blog is not an attempt to that; it is simply intended to explain what we do, why we do it and that we still believe you have much to offer the college or university that is fortunate enough to enroll you. We wish you nothing but the best as you move forward with your college search process.
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.
I will sadly add the W&M rejection email to my folder of all the rejections I have received thus far. Thank you for taking my application into consideration. Although it is slightly depressing to see the similar phrase “We regret to inform you…” five times in a matter of 3 days. Nonetheless, things do happen for a reason and my luck struck out this time.
Hopeless, we are sorry the news isn’t better and that you’ve been seeing similar messages over the past few days. No doubt you’re still waiting to hear from additional institutions and hopefully some of those messages will start with congrats. Best of luck to you.
🙁 I guess I’ll start to read up on the Transfer blogs.
I understand the competition is fierce, but when you
and other schools deny a four-time honors student
with a 4.5 GPA, who takes all AP classes, is a student
athlete and class officer, plus took on four community
service projects, l honestly don’t know what you’re looking for?
What more could this person have possibly done, because 8hrs
of homework a day apparently asn’t enough.
Visiting and interviewing at W&M last year and falling in love
with the school wasn’t enough.
Neither was the hand sewn W&M pillow from which dreams were born.
Rejections without solid reasons only push an excellent student to
question himself and to wonder why they’ve worked so
very hard to get into your school. What’s the message
you’re re sending to the good kids who don’t get the
chance to shine. It’s disappointing. It maddening.
It’s ridiculous and hypocritical. It’s a shame that
you’ll never know the gem of a student who would have only given
William and Mary the best of everything he is and will always be.
Confused, we understand your disappointment and you sound like a very accomplished student. We understand why you’re confused and disappointed and we know lots of students will feel similarly. All we can say is that our pool really is that competitive (13,600 applications for 1450 spots). We know that we are unable to admit some incredibly qualified students and that that is our loss. In highly-selective pools there are no hard and fast answers as to why a student did or did not get in. It’s not as if it’s about tenths of a point on GPA or a few points on an SAT. We truly wish you all the best and we’re sorry things didn’t turn out as you’d hope but you sound like a very impressive young person and no doubt will have some great offers to consider.
how many “unqualified” minorities were accepted?
Can we appeal the decisions? If so, what would be the process?caccip
Sara, unfortunately all decisions are final. There are no appeals. Each application received thorough and thoughtful consideration by multiple deans. Enrolling a class of 1450 from over 13,000 applications simply means we send out more bad news than good. Reconsidering even one decision would obligate us to reconsider them all, which would not be feasible.
@Victoria, we’re sorry the news wasn’t better. Someone posted some sage advise to those who were not admitted and considering transfer last night on College Confidential (http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-william-mary/1219572-news-updates-w-m-admission-7.html). Worth a read.
Thanks!
I would like to just take a moment and thank you for everything. I know that reading all those thousands of applications is a tedious process. Although of course I am disappointed, I know that this isn’t the first denial I will get in my life. Of course, transferring is still an option so I’m not giving up that easily!
@rejected, the answer is none. No student is admitted who isn’t qualified and who isn’t prepared to be successful at W&M. Our 95% retention rate (the number of freshmen who return for their sophomore year) and our 90% graduation rate are good evidence that we admit students who are a good fit for W&M and who are successful students.
Yikes…This is not a very uplifting read, haha, but good to put things in perspective. You “Admit It!” guys have a hard job, so kudos to you.
@Alexis, our best guess is that no blog will uplift the spirits of those we were unable to admit but we hope it provides some context and reassurance. Best of luck to you.
@Disapointed but…we apologize but your comment got caught in spam. We appreciate your good attitude and we encourage you to give the institution you do enroll at a chance before deciding to transfer but if W&M remains your top choice after enrolling next fall we’ll be here to help