Decisions, Decisions – Fall Transfers 2019 Edition

We Admit It!  It’s an exciting time here at the Admission Office. The spring is here, the flowers are blooming, and the moment you have been waiting for is finally here: we have finished application review for the newest incoming class of transfers. Regardless of the decision outcome, we want you to know that you are amazing. Many of you come from a diversity of backgrounds, have a wide range of different experiences, and somewhere along the way of your personal journey found your way to William & Mary. We are grateful that you shared with us your story and want to say it has been an incredible honor. Now without further ado:

Below you will find all pertinent information about how decisions are released and what each decision means.

Decision Release

• Decision emails were sent this evening (April 29^th) to the email address provided in your application.
• Though decisions have officially been launched, it will take some time for all emails to leave our server and reach your inbox.
• Decision emails are sent to all applicants regardless of decision (assuming you submitted a completed fall transfer application).
• Please check your spam/junk folders in case the email landed there instead of your inbox (this does sometimes happen).
• The sender of the email will be “William & Mary.” The subject will either be “Good News” or “William & Mary Admission Decision.”
• Those who are admitted will also receive a formal admission packet in the mail in the coming days. Those who are not admitted will only receive a decision email.
• Note: If you submitted a completed fall transfer application and did not receive a decision email from us this evening, please do not panic. There are a number of reasons why this could have happened. Please contact us tomorrow during our regular business hours. We will investigate what happened and report back to you. If need be, we can re-launch your decision email, as well as mail a hard copy to you.
• Second Note: As decisions are arriving to inboxes, we will be signing off until tomorrow, where we will be more than happy to assist you. Please review this blog in its entirety for answers to any immediate questions. We will respond throughout the week to any other questions or comments posted to this blog.

Decisions

Admit: Congratulations, and welcome to the Tribe! It is our absolute pleasure to welcome you to the William & Mary community. We have full confidence that your experiences, passions, stories and interests will meaningfully enhance our university. We know it will. An official admission letter signed personally by Dean Whitney Pitschke will be mailed to you. In the meantime, pat yourself on the back, give someone a high five, do a happy dance… in other words, CELEBRATE. You’ve earned it. We are thrilled to welcome you to the Tribe.

In the meantime, we know that you must have a lot of questions and are looking to explore this community that you are now part of. Come by for a visit, explore our super helpful transfer website, and read some of our blogs written by other transfers! Above all, know that you are now part of a bigger family that will be with you every step of the way.

We realize that there is a lot to consider and get done over the next few weeks, but all of this hard work will soon pay off. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance – we are here to help you if we can. Congratulations again on this terrific accomplishment. One Tribe. And now it’s yours.

Waitlist: We understand that you were hoping to see Good News in your inbox. Unfortunately, just like with our freshman pool, we have many more qualified students apply to transfer to W&M than we have spaces available. As a result, we have to put terrific candidates, like you, on the waitlist. We will now wait and see what happens with those to whom we have offered admission. If in late May or early June we still have remaining spaces available for transfer students, we will reconvene our Committee and make decisions regarding those on the waitlist. All transfer students remaining on the waitlist will get an email update from us by June 15.

So what can you do besides wait? Unfortunately, waiting is a large part of it; there is simply no way for us to predict whether or not we will be able to admit additional students. But once our deposit deadline passes, and we are able to assess where our transfer class stands, we will know more. In the meantime, you are encouraged to accept a spot on the waitlist (through the link provided in your decision email), as well as submit an updated final transcript to us once the semester ends. Additionally, if you wish to send our Director of Transfer Admission Whitney Link (whitney@wm.edu) a short statement of continued interest, you are welcome to do so.

Wherever your transfer journey concludes, be that at W&M or elsewhere, we are honored that you decided to apply to W&M, and wish you all the best as you continue your college education. We have no doubt that you are going to have a tremendous collegiate career.

Deny: We are genuinely sorry that we’re not able to offer you admission at this time. We know that you were hoping for a more positive outcome, and we understand that you’re likely disappointed and frustrated by our decision. There’s little we can say that will make this decision feel any better. We know it’s not what you were hoping for, and we are truly sorry that we couldn’t offer you better news. Transfer admission, just like freshman admission, is very selective. We are faced with hundreds of great applications for a fairly limited number of spots. As a result, we have to turn down accomplished students such as yourself.

While we wish that we were able to accept every talented student wanting to attend W&M, the competitive nature of our applicant pool coupled with our smaller size makes this impossible to do. Throughout our deliberations, the decisions we make are not between good and bad applicants, but between great and great applicants. Your admission decision is in no way a reflection on what you’ve accomplished or on what you might accomplish as a member of the W&M community. It is simply a product of an exceedingly competitive and selective admission process.

If W&M is your ultimate goal, there is the opportunity to reapply once you’ve pursued additional coursework and have additional grades to show the Admission Committee. However, it’s also absolutely fair to recognize that this is now your second, possibly even your third or fourth, go around with the college application process (and let’s face it, applying to colleges is not anyone’s favorite pastime). You may determine what’s best for you right now is to accept an admission offer from another institution and to complete your degree. That is understandable and fair.

Thank you to all of our applicants for your patience as we have been carefully navigating our review process. It has been humbling to review your many talents, interests and accomplishments. Whatever the outcome of your individual application, please know how much we appreciate you applying to William & Mary, and how confident we are that you will accomplish great things moving forward.

Again, a sincere and heartfelt thank you to all of our transfer applicants. From all of us here at the Admission Office, we are so very impressed by each of you, and wish you all a tremendous rest of your college career.

Jack Zhang
Assistant Dean of Admissions