FG13

i was told that there was an article in time showing that the average sat score of someone who was rejected from williams was actually higher than the average sat score of someone who was accepted. is this true?

714nD1

Found this recent article, but I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for. If you go HERE and search for "Williams college", this is the only 2008 article that comes up.
Getting Off the College Waitlist - TIME

ccfaithful

FG 13, it's not unusual. There are tons of rejected or waitlisted students whose sat scores are higher than those of accepted students in any top college.

FG13

oh, of course. i just thought it was surprising that the AVERAGE sat score of those rejected was higher than those accepted.

ccfaithful

Then, it's surprising.
Do you have any supporting evidence?
Unless someone shows me the article, I can't believe it.

johnwesley

think of all the people who get rejected by Williams every year because they aren't good enough at a particular sport to play competitively. :/

onemoremom

"think of all the people who get rejected by Williams every year because they aren't good enough at a particular sport to play competitively"

Or play a musical instrument/sing, act, dance, do scientific research, or express intellectual vitality well enough: of the 1229 accepted by the time RD was over, 184 had athletic attributes, 141 were tagged as musicians, 36 had theatre ratings, 18 were slotted for dance, 164 for scientific research, and 432 were taken for their intellectual vitality; 79 were legacies and 264 were first generation college students.

Quite a diversity of acceptees, actually.

FG13

also having trouble finding this actual article. agree with the aforementioned posts, but still very surprised at the particular stat.

icantfindaname

"think of all the people who get rejected by Williams every year because they aren't good enough at a particular sport to play competitively"


They will still have lots of choices for a good education at schools like Wesleyan that do not place importance on sports. Different strokes for different folks and that is not a bad thing.

kwu

*headsigh* He was being sarcastic and bitter.
Critical reading, guys.

It so happens that Williams reserves an embarrassingly large number of seats for athletes, and he's lamenting this fact.

Of course it's believable. A vast majority of people with astronomically high SAT scores are shooting for the "creme de la creme" (to use Princeton's silly phrase) of the "Ivy League." They use Williams as one of their safety schools, so Williams has to safeguard against that by waitlisting them to test how legitimately interested they are.

interesteddad

Just so people are clear on the meaning of these terms:

An "athletic attribute" means that an applicant has been through the recruiting evaluation and identified by the Williams Athletic Department as a "likely four-year varsity athlete at Williams". 34% of this year's class so far is made up of recruited athletes.

This does not include all of the applicants who were high school varsity athletes and may try to walk-on, but who were not recruited by Williams.

icantfindaname

"It so happens that Williams reserves an embarrassingly large number of seats for athletes, and he's lamenting this fact."

Not remotely true. NESCAC has very specific rules about the number of spots reserved for tipped athletes. The number is fixed at around 65 a year so in reality it represents a larger % at schools with smaller incoming classes.

interesteddad

The 65 "tipped athletes" have a very specific meaning, too. A "tipped athlete" is an impact player who has below average academic qualifications ("low band admit") and would not be admitted to Williams College without the Athletic Department using one of the 65 tips. The "tips" range from somewhat below average to significantly below average. As with the Ivy League, there is a formula for how many can be included in the tips from super low qualifications. As a general rule of thumb, Williams will go down to about an 1800 combined SAT for a tip.

There is another category of 30 to 36 "protects". These recruited athletes have roughly average academic qualifications. The athletic department including their names on a "protect" list gives them the boost over other non-athletes with "average" academic qualifications. Nobody with average qualifications get accepted to Williams without something "special". The recruited athlete impact player designation is the "something special" for these 30 to 36 recruits.

And, finally there are about 80 more (this year) recruited athletes with academic qualifications high enough to get them accepted to Williams. The Athletic Department schmoozes these recruits, but doesn't lift a finger to put them on a protect or tip list, prefering to use those designations for weaker applicants and letting the high academic recruits take their chances with the normal admissions sequence.

nceph

Interesteddad - The numbers you cite above add up roughly to the "184 with athletic attributes" that onemoremom mentioned. That 184 was out of the 1229 admitted students, not just out of the enrolling class. I understand that there is a good chance that the protects may be likely to attend (and may well have applied ED), but are you assuming all of the 30 to 36 protects and the 80 other schmoozed-but-not-tipped-or-protected athletes are all definitely committed to attending Williams? I'm just trying to figure out how you came up with the 34% of the enrolled class being "recruited athletes."

icantfindaname

If you want for some reason all the info on athletes admission go to ephblog where it is covered in extra ordinary detail and highly charged discourse. In general a protect needs a 1420ish to get any chance which is the average SAT anyway. Low band admits below 1300 seldom happen these days and are tightly monitored and happen at all NESCAC school in the same manner. The standards get higher every year. As it says on one of the Williams novelty t-shirts "it's lonely at the top".