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

Categories: Admission, Faculty & Staff Blogs
15 Comments
  1. Hopeless Student
  2. Admit It!
  3. Victoria
  4. Confused
  5. Admit It!
  6. rejected
  7. Sara
  8. Admit It!
  9. Admit It!
  10. Victoria
  11. Disapointed but...
  12. Admit It!
  13. Alexis
  14. Admit It!
  15. Admit It!

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.