letranger

When I visited Williams I got the impression that the community is mostly made by filling quotas on certain types of people. (not just by race, but by region, hobbies, lifestyles etc.) I believe the director of admissions even mentioned something to that effect when outlining the admission process.

This makes sense, I suppose, with the small entering class (seeing as a "diverse" community is certainly invaluable in a college setting)...but it seemed a little ridiculous the way it was discussed by the admissions office. For instance, I was told that since I was not from a certain state, my chances of acceptance were suddenly much less than those of a similar student from that other state.

For any current student: What role do you think quotas play in the Williams experience, IF ANY?

I imagine it is a totally different experience as a student so I'm hoping to get some perspective. The campus was terribly lovely, and I have no doubt that the education is of the finest. I'm merely concerned with the whole idea of quotas.. (I clearly am not a fan of them. haha)

Thanks!

Teltar

What state are you from?

letranger

Pennsylvania

Poisonous

I also went to the admissions info session at Williams, and I must admit that I sensed something similar. It wasn't quite as blatant, but the admissions officer (a Latino male btw, might have been the same person you had) did note that they tried to take a certain number of students from different regions of the country and different backgrounds. It kind of bothers me as well, because I would rather have the most gifted and qualified classmates over the ones that lived in Idaho instead of Illinois. The campus is stunning though, and the people I met were very nice and seemed intelligent.

mythmom

All LAC's do this. In fact, all elite schools do this. If Williams was a bit more honest about their process, so be it.

Corbett

At Williams -- and every other top school in the northeast -- the applicant pool consists disproportionately of well-qualified students from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They could probably fill the whole freshman class just from those five states alone. But no school wants to do that.

So if a small northeastern school gets hundreds of applications from New York, and only a handful from Idaho or West Virginia, then yes, an Idahoan or West Virginian may be more likely to get in than an equally well-qualified New Yorker. All else being equal, there may be a perceived benefit to adding one Idahoan or one West Virginian to the freshman class, rather than the 89th New Yorker.

Of course, it works both ways. An applicant from Pennsylvania, for example, would likely have a geographic advantage at LACs like Pomona, Grinnell, Colorado College, or Whitman.

Ephemeral2

I was at Williams for Windows on Williams (their fly-in for low-income students), and I got the same impression. Don't get me wrong, I really really really liked the school. But, I sensed the "quota" thing too.

Corbett

I found some enrollment statistics by state for colleges and universities. For top-rated northeastern LACs, the five biggest northeastern states (NY, PA, MA, NJ, CT) typically account for 40-50% of the enrolled class. At Williams, the number was at the upper end of this range, which suggests that Williams may actually be less concerned about geographic diversity than some peer schools.

I don't think Williams, or any other northeastern LAC, has strict "quotas" for admitting students from specific states. But if a school is swamped with applicants from a few states, and rarely sees applicants from others, then realistically the odds of acceptance may vary. In general, any student in any state will probably get an increasing geographic advantage at schools farther from home, and will probably face stiffer competition at schools closer to home.

For top-rated LACs outside the northeast (e.g. Pomona, Carleton, Davidson), the five big northeastern states typically accounted for just 10-20% of the enrolled class. Carleton, for example, would likely prefer a well-qualified Pennsylvanian (2% of enrollment) over an equally qualified Minnesotan (27% of enrollment).

LaMariposaAzul

Okay, I have a related question. Do LACs also tend to diversify in terms of what high school prospies come from? I've heard that it's harder to get in sometimes from certain schools because so many of your classmates apply. Obviously, this wouldn't be quite so extreme as the "quotas" from states mentioned above, but if I go to a school that sends the great majority of its class to state colleges/universities and very few to top notch private colleges (i.e. at some of these places I'm the only one applying from my class), will that work in my favor at all? I know I'm cursed because I'm from MA, so I'm looking for some saving grace in my location.

Corbett

I don't have any special insight to the way Admissions Officers think, but I've heard the same thing. All else being equal (a big assumption), they would probably prefer to admit students from different schools than one group from the same school.
Not necessarily, just apply to good schools outside the Northeast, and your location may work to your advantage. I've also heard that high school students from the Northeast have reputations for:

(1) being exceptionally well qualified, and
(2) being exceptionally difficult to lure to other parts of the country

There are great LACs like Grinnell, Carleton, Davidson, Pomona, Claremont McKenna, Washington & Lee, etc. that would love to get more students from Massachusetts.

mythmom

And lets not forget Macalester, Kenyon, Oberlin, Colorado College, Reed, Whitman, Occidental among many others.

brittany2009

When I told an admissions officer that I was really worried about the fact that the salutatorian from my school was applying, she told me not to worry at all -- that they "don't read regionally" (what...?), we would only be compared on the large scale, and not just as students from the same school. This answer was cryptic to me, and doesn't seem to make much sense.

LaMariposaAzul

Yeah, the problem with me is #2, as Corbett said. I love New England, and I don't really really want to go anywhere else; I did apply to a few schools in Pennsylvania, though, so hopefully that's helpful. Thanks for the comments!

brittany2009, I think your admissions officer might be referring to this: I've heard that the way the process works at a lot of schools is that your file is read a couple of times, once randomly and (a lot of the time) once by the admissions officer who's responsible for traveling throughout your area (going to area schools/holding presentations, etc). The rationale for this method (assigning officers regions to become experts at) is that they can use that knowledge for context when reading your application--they'd probably know your school and the conditions you've been in throughout high school.

So maybe this admissions officer was trying to tell you that they DON'T have admissions officers specifically read from the territories they covered in the early fall. In that case, you and the sal wouldn't be compared really closely--you'd likely have your applications read by completely different people (the "large scale" of the applications pool). Does that make sense?

elbrowny

On the admissions website they explicitly say that they don't group people by state but rather by region for the admissions process. And as for the intra-high school competition in the admissions process, Williams accepted me and another kid in my english class early decision this year, and I think they accepted 3 kids from the same school North Carolina ED this year also. I think the only legitimate quotas that they have to fill are for sports. Of course they love being able to say that they have students from all 50 states, but it obviously isn't their number 1 priority.

Corbett

The geographic preference issue is not much different from the gender preference issue. The bottom line is that schools want balanced enrollments, but don't necessarily have balanced applicant pools. So they have to vary their admissions standards for different groups.

For example, top schools typically want more or less equal numbers of male and female students, but the applicant pool does not necessarily cooperate: many schools now get significantly more female applicants. Example: at Brown, 7,714 men and 11,383 women applied to enroll in Fall 2007. Brown wants balanced enrollment, so they have a lower acceptance rate for women. Many LACs, such as Swarthmore, Wesleyan, and Middlebury, do the same (Williams, incidentally, is relatively unaffected by this issue). So the basic laws of supply and demand work against female applicants at many schools.

Similarly, the Ivies and LACs in the northeast want balanced geographic representation. But the local MA/CT/NY/NJ/PA demographic does not cooperate: this region generates huge numbers of highly qualified applicants, and it seems like they all apply to MA/CT/NY/NJ/PA schools exclusively. So the basic laws of supply and demand kick in again.

Californians also have a reputation for provinciality in college applications, but not to the same degree.