<p>Those numbers are a bit misleading. Let me try to put them in context.</p>
<p>W&M has always received more actual applications from OOS students than IS students so we’ve always been more selective for OOS students (because they make up a smaller percentage of our class and because they’re a larger percentage of our applicant pool).</p>
<p>In recent years, the number of IS applicants has increased at a higher rate than the number of OOS applicants but our class size has changed only slightly and our in-state to out-of-state ratio hasn’t changed so now there are more IS students competing for essentially the same number of spaces. Thus we’ve had to get more selective with our in-state students.</p>
<p>Last year we admitted 32% of those who applied. We admitted 38% of the IS students who applied and 27% of the OOS students who applied.</p>
<p>Hope this is helpful and provides more context to help make sense of the numbers.</p>