MikeyD223

What sort of person uses Williams as a safety school?? They accept 16% of applicants, and the applicant pool is somewhat self-selecting due to the low visibility of the school.

icantfindaname

Someone with exceptional stats. The yield is in the 45% range if I remember right, whereas Harvard is around 80%. There are a lot of reasons but some of it is HPY apps seeing where they get in.

interesteddad

nceph:

You are right. I was confusing the last two Record articles on admissions. The only number we know today is that 65 of the 66 tips accepted enrollment. Recruited athletes usually end up being between 135 and 150 in the first year class, depending on yield. The variance isn't among the tips and protrects; Williams doesn't go to bat for them unless they are ready to sign on the dotted line. It's in the high-stat recruited athletes with no help from the coaches. They usually have options; although Williams tends to get most of them because the athletic budgets and athletic emphasis are so much higher than the other DIV III schools.

nceph

Thanks. I was just trying to figure out how all of the numbers fit together.

Re: posts #16 & 17 -- I don't think that makes Williams a "safety" school for those students. It may be somewhat easier to get into than HYP, but hardly a "safety."

lantern5

An athlete from my town with SAT well below 1300 was accepted by Williams just this year...

interesteddad

My fault. I had both the "acceptance letter" and "deposit letter" articles open at the same time. A lot of times schools will give you one tidbit in one and another in the second article that lets you figure out a number the college doesn't typically release. For example, looking at both articles let me figure out that Williams acceptance rate for internationals was 6.9%.

icantfindaname

"An athlete from my town with SAT well below 1300 was accepted by Williams just this year"

Do people with well below 1300 scores go around telling people that fact and if so I wonder why? I didn't say it can not happen just that it is very uncommon and no more prevelent at Williams than any other NESCAC school. You can also assume that schools like Stanford go even lower to gain national status teams in division I. Balance in all things.

speedo

you're telling us that nescac schools like Trinity or Conn Coll
etc won't go below 1300 for a recruit? The average SAT score
at Trinity can't be much more than 1350 and a Conn they
mostly use Subject Test scores. Where is your info coming
from?

icantfindaname

I am saying that so called "low band admits" are a source of great focus at Williams Amherst and the like as they strive to balance their academic standing with athletics. There are some Williams critics and alums that feel there is too much athletic focus. Nine straight Directors Cups seems to reinforce the notion that athletics are very important there. All I am saying is there is very little in the way of lowering admission standards to gain competitive advantage, and in fact the rules prohibit it.

MikeyD223

Its not surprising that an athlete with sub-1300 scores was accepted. After all, 25 percent of all Williams students have 1340 (V+M) scores or below. I always find it interesting that these discussions single out athletes, while mysteriously ignoring the advantages given to legacies in the admissions process.

interesteddad

Speedo:

The way the Ivy Leagues and elite Div III LACs deal with low-band admits is to set their parameters based on "standard deviations" below the school's average academic qualifications. Each school will take "x" number one band below average, "y" number two deviation bands below average, and "z" number three deviation bands below average. That's why the schools refer to "low-band" admits.

Conn's "low-band" is lower than Williams' low-band, at least in theory. But, it's not as simple as just SAT scores. You could have kids with lousy SATs and a high GPA, an underperformaing GPA and high test scores, and middling performance on both -- and all might fall in the same "band".

These types of colleges recruit athletes heavily from the prep schools and affluent suburban high schools. So it's pretty common for low-band admits to have very high SAT scores (rich parents) and poor, underperforming academic transcripts. Without an athletic hook, that kind of applicant would be dead in the water in elite college admissions -- the worst combo.

interesteddad

A legacy (at least one without a family name on buildings) would never get accepted to Williams with 1340 SATs. There are no low-band "tip" admits for legacies. They've got to be at least in "protect" territory...probably above protect territory.

MikeyD223

Your statements are purely speculative... As you've never spent any time in the Williams admissions office, your claim is totally without merit.. and probably false.

I'm done with this discourse.

purplegirl

Well where we live (long island, NY) I don't know anyone who has gotten into Williams without being an athletic ED admit. (I;m sure there are some smart kids from long island who got in, but we don't know any) This year I know of 3 kids who were admitted swimming, tennis and lacrosse from different schools, none of which their parents said would have gotten in on their own merit. Only 1 kid has gotten into Williams from our school in the last 8years that our GC could find and he was a lacrosse recruit (but bright kid). This yr in my D's class both the Val and Sal got rejected, both with SAT's >2200, one an athlete but didn't go for the athletic tip (he was hoping for another IVY). Just for reference, the top 5 kids usually get into Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UPenn, etc, not Brown, Princeton, Williams or Amherst, or Tufts for some reason, so no surprise. My husband and I have given up on Williams for any of our kids. Upset us that when visiting the Williams, the Adcoms tell you how important it is to visit, have EC's, blah, blah, blah yet what we see is that the only kids around here that get in were athletic tips. Same around here for Brown, they also haven't taken anyone in years, only kid this yr who got in from our school is playing lacrosse, was told last summer, not even in top 10% of the class, avg sat's, nice kid though. I guess nothing changed, same way 30 yrs ago when I graduated from H.S. My daughter was prepared and is happy, but we made sure she loved at least one of her safeties.

nceph

One thing to keep in mind when you hear about someone with a low SAT score who gets into a school like Williams is that he may have taken the ACT and gotten a more competitive score. I know it is the case with athletes from my kids' school that if they can't get the SAT score they need for a certain school (in many cases a D1 school with a strict lower cutoff), they take the ACT. Word may still get around about how they got in with a certain really low SAT score (makes for more outrage when telling the story), when in fact, it was a somewhat higher ACT score that allowed them to get in.