Does showing interest improve admission chances at Williams?

[momrath]

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@Heights

a substantial part of the substantial percentage of the class that is admitted ED is made up of legacies and recruited athletes.

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<p>Do we know that or is that just a generally accepted belief?</p>

<p>Not much anecdotal evidence on CC this year, but the handful of kids who posted on the ED acceptance thread don’t include an overwhelming number of athletes or legacies. If anything, the trend seems to be toward music and URMs. So, yes, there’s an emphasis on hooked candidates but the hook criteria are broader than athletes and legacies.</p>

<p>This is what the admissions director said:

Once again, our intensive diversity recruitment efforts, including two fall fly-in programs for low-income students, proved highly successful and brought us some outstanding students. . .Standardized test score averages are higher than any previous Early Decision cohort: 716 Critical Reading, 713 Math and 724 Writing and 32 ACT. A large share of this scholarly group (69) indicated an interest in eventually pursuing a Ph.D.
Well-represented are highly rated artists, athletes, musicians, and actors.

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<p>If “approximately 44 percent of all students participate in intercollegiate sports (36 percent at the varsity level)” then it stands to reason that ED admits would align with this percentage; however, I believe that Williams also uses ED admits to recruit strength in the arts and to balance their diversity demographics. Percentages are hard to calculate because so many Williams kids fall into more than one category, e.g., arts+sports.</p>