Thanks. There is a new School of Computing, Data Science, and Physics. The write up I saw talked about the Physics PhD program as new, but it must have been talking about it as new within this new school. I appreciate you for clarifying it.
Yes, as of this Fall the physics department is now part of a new college within the university and no longer part of the college of arts and sciences. I understand the confusion. No worries.
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My daughter graduated summa cum laude in May from W&M and loved, loved her time there, so much so that she was a campus tour guide for three years. (Maybe she led your tour?
) she had been a little shy in high school but really came alive in college and gradually joined several organizations. She’s now in a graduate program, and while she is thrilled to be where she is, she is still very nostalgic about W&M and misses the good old days. She wasn’t in STEM so I can’t speak to that, but she was a Monroe Scholar (something you find out soon after acceptance ), which, among other things, means that you have an option to stay in a dorm with other Monroe scholars. Only around 10% of students are given the designation and I feel it’s likely you would be chosen. My daughter met most her closest friends for the whole of her four years in her Monroe Scholar freshman dorm (even though she definately branched out and had other friends as well, who were also enthusiastic learners). Several had been accepted to higher ranked schools (off-hand, I remember that one of these was Rice) but chose William & Mary because they preferred it….they got that gut feeling similar to yours that this is a special place that is not for everybody, but just right for those who “get” it. These students came from New England, Texas, California, Chicago area and Floridal as well as Virginia, had many choices and yet came to Williamsburg. My D’s S.O. had gone to a pressure-cooker competitive high school and had an SAT score about the same as yours (according to what she told me) and I’m pretty sure he felt challenged in his major.
I second what another poster said. Since you do feel something in your gut about William & Mary, I wouldn’t ED somewhere else unless it’s a school you visit between now and the ED application deadline and get an even better feeling (aligned with necessary facts) about that other school. I do think hands down that you will be accepted to William & Mary so there’s little risk to applying regular decision along with other schools you wonder about. But if you just want that closure (my D did) and feel you won’t be constantly wondering about the “what ifs”, I think you have a wonderful four years to look forward to if you apply ED. It’s not just a school; it really is a community. Professors tend to be personable and accessible. The school also has that hard -to find-sweet-spot in terms of size …small enough to feel cozy and big enough to not feel claustrophobic. Then there’s that undefinable quality that is just W&M to those who love it.
One thing to think about: with your likely degree, I’m pretty sure you’ll be looking at graduate school. There’s plenty of time to be thinking about prestigious STEM programs filled with brilliant students in the future. W&M is a nurturing place for starting out.
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The “to ED or not ED” thing seems to be the only real question here, looking upon the advice and the evidence I’ve gathered. Wondering what people’s experiences with this is. Does ED impact scholarship/honors positively or negatively? I’m gunning for the Monroe program if possible, but it’s mostly a question of what makes it more likely.
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All applicants are considered equally for the Monroe Scholarship. ED does not make a difference in selection.
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746 spots in a freshman class of 1614 were admitted via ED. Almost half the class.
I think the briefest and most true (if not the most helpful) answer regarding a penalty/benefit for Monroe via ED vs. RD is “there isn’t a clear signal either way”. As @lkbtnc noted, the merit scholarships page says “all applicants (both Early Decision and Regular Decision) are automatically considered for these merit-based awards”, and also that notifications don’t happen until March. (So even if you do apply and get in in the fall, you might not find out about Monroe until the spring.) I totally understand where you’re coming from on wanting to know about the odds, though.
I know a few people who got Monroe while applying ED. I know more people who got Monroe while applying RD. It’s worth noting, though, that more people apply RD, so don’t read too much into my “few” vs. “more”. More important, though: I know many more people who didn’t get Monroe at all, but who went to W&M and had an absolutely incredible, life-changing time there. As I mentioned in a post a few years back, “As cool as the Monroe program is, I really want to emphasize that the best opportunity before [you] isn’t Monroe, but W&M itself.”
I think this is the kind of situation where you won’t have perfect information and you’ll have to make the best decision for you with the intel you have. For better or worse, a lot of decisions you’ll run into in life from here out end up with that general shape — imperfect information and a binding commitment. I think you’ve done a good job of gathering the info you can, though, and think both paths in front of you have merit, as it were.
Seeing as you can’t know, I’d suggest maybe setting the Monroe to the side and weighing the other factors, like whether being done in December would be welcome. Especially if wrestling with mental health and motivation is a part of your story, I think an early acceptance would be huge. And since I haven’t seen you name any other schools that make your heart sing, I’m inclined to nudge you towards EDing to W&M. But ultimately, as you know, this will be one you’ll have to work through and make the best call for you.
All that is a long way of saying that I think it’s easy to spin out thinking about how to min/max the application process (or even just one small part of it, like a particular scholarship), and I want you to know that it will all work out well. You’ve done great work and are going to have an amazing college experience. I know it. I know it! Good luck with the decision. I promise it will all work out!
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A scholarship like Monroe serves as an inducement for students to come to W&M. Students who apply ED don’t need an inducement. They’ve already committed to enroll if accepted. I wonder if chances of getting the Monroe are actually greater in RD.
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Yes but maybe got admitted in RD and chose not to attend. So while 1614 enrolled including 746 ED, over 6k were admitted. In essence their yield outside of ED is 16.3%or a tad less that 1/6 of accepted students attended.
So the school needs a student like this more than the student needs the school.
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It’s a very reasonable argument! I can absolutely see a scenario where the percentage awarded to RD applicants is higher than to ED applicants, as the ED applicants have already committed.
There are two factors that keep me agnostic, though.
- The first is the existence of ED Monroes. Under the Monroe-as-RD-carrot theory, any ED Monroe is a missed opportunity to tempt a high-flying RD applicant. Now … as to how many ED Monroes there are … I have no idea. But I know they exist.
- The second thing keeping me from thinking that RD is necessarily a better shot at Monroe is that I believe W&M when they talk about the Monroe program as “a community of scholars” that “encourages each other to continue to be exceptional students”. That is, I think that they’re earnestly trying to craft a cohort, and that as they select the students to be in the program they would see desirable candidates across both the ED and RD cycles. If it were just a financial award I could see it being used more bluntly as a yield management tool to get RDs in the door.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle — it’s probably true that the admissions office uses Monroe scholarships as a way to attract RD students who might otherwise go elsewhere, and also true that ED applicants can get awarded the Monroe.
@keepofasterion, seeing as you don’t have a clear sense as to how the Monroe committee does their thing (none of us do!), I still think the thing that makes the most sense for you is to set the Monroe idea to the side and think about the other upsides / downsides to ED vs RD.
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So full confession, I am kinda an academic snob. And William & Mary is one of my favorite college suggestions for academicky kids. Including out of state kids, but if you are a Virginia resident? It is such a unique opportunity to get that quality of experience for in-state costs.
You would in fact be surrounded by the sorts of kids you are looking for, including because Virginia has such an interesting mix of flagship-level colleges with UVA and Virginia Tech as well. The Virginia kids who choose W&M are therefore selecting a certain sort of culture/experience, and again OOS kids are also looking specifically for that sort of experience among all the various OOS options.
Given your apparent experience at your magnet school, I would NOT recommend you prefer colleges like Hopkins or Ivies or such. It is a bit of a shame because academically those sorts of colleges can also be great, but I do think the culture has gotten pretty tough for some kids. Not that there will be no academic competitiveness at W&M, but I think dialing that down a couple notches ends up being a good idea for many.
Honestly if I was going to recommend other colleges for you to consider, it would probably be academicky LACs and universities in, say, the Midwest, which I think can have a similar balance of strong academics and niceness. But would they be as good a deal as W&M for you? Probably not.
In terms of ED, I think the main point of ED is to be able to be done with your college application process early and get on with the rest of your senior year. Obviously it doesnt always work, but it is nice when it does.
So I would suggest keeping this simple. If you are happy with the idea of just being done if W&M accepts you ED, I would go for it. If not, that is fine too.
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Data point of one, but for the record, my daughter applied ED because she KNEW William & Mary was, by far, her favorite school of all those we visited, and absolutely did not want the anxiety of waiting. I may be misremembering, but I’m pretty sure she was given the Monroe not very long after she was admitted, certainly wasn’t spring. But maybe things have changed? That was the 2020/21 admissions cycle.
Among the reasons we let her apply ED (which she very much wanted): We are out of state, and admissions is more competitive for OOS applicants, so I didn’t know how she would compare to other OOS applicants, or what median score or grades were for OOS. She was not a very confident applicant for several reasons. Though she was the #1 student at her school when she applied (would have tied in the end except for one course selection) , it is a small-town public high school (just under 200 in her class) and we didn’t know how she’d stack up compared to students applying from very high-performing schools. No one from her school had attended W&M for years. Also, while she had an almost-perfect verbal SAT score, math lagged behind considerably (though she managed A’s in AP calc and stats). Being completely virtual and home-bound during the pandemic affected her overall confidence and increased her anxiety as well. We had saved all her life for college, she is our only child, and our very good state flagship was way too big for her temperament at her age and not a good fit, so we were OK with paying OOS tuition. All the other options she liked were LACs but she wasn’t terribly enthused about any of them. Once she walked around the W&M campus and talked with a couple of students (outside and from afar…this was the pandemic) she just “knew”. We couldn’t deny her this. Later, Monroe was a huge surprise. We hadn’t even been aware of it.
I think it may be easier for Virgina residents to disregard the very respected reputation W&M has out of state, because you do also have UVA and Virginia Tech, and because admissions is somewhat easier for Virginia students. But even though the academic stars in your son’s high school may be headed to MIT or Dartmouth or Williams, there are other very bright out- of- state students who are attracted to what William & Mary has to offer. My daughter once happened to mention that one of her closest friends (also OOS, across the country) had a 1560 or 1570 SAT, had not been admitted ED1 to the much more competitive school that he thought he “should” apply to, got nervous, and applied ED2 to W&M, the school he actually liked. I believe your son would be in good company at W&M.
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