Hi! I’m a 2025 senior and I’m choosing between these two schools. I didn’t receive any scholarships or honors from either university but I’m in-state so cost is not a factor. I’m coming from a tiny high school which makes me worried I’ll feel trapped at W&M or I’ll drown in the size of Tech. Career wise, I’m not sure what I want to do, but I’m considering law school after undergrad. I like the big school aspect of Tech, but I think W&M has more of a name in law school admissions but I don’t know how much that really matters. Also, I’m African American so the DEI closings and budget cuts are also a concern. This is where I think W&M would be a safer campus in that sense. Everyone keeps telling me they’re both amazing schools which I know, but I can’t really envision myself at either school so advice is appreciated! Thanks
So William & Mary has an excellent IR program, which makes it the somewhat more obvious choice. Your concerns seem to center around size. W&M has around 7000 undergrads, which is definitely smaller than most publics, but about the same as many prominent privates, like Harvard, Yale, and so on. I think many students find that a pretty good size, in that you will only know a fraction of the people, so will be meeting new people regularly, and so on. But it isn’t so large you will feel lost in the crowd.
Congratulations on two fantastic acceptances!
W&M isn’t small (if your HS is small, W&M will feel huge at first!) and is nationally known for its IR program. That’d be my pick
Have you been able to spend an Admitted student day there?
W&M is not that large (really) for a college and will be a stalwart in IR. But Va Tech is no slouch - and is rated a top 3 in America in food - and food/daily fuel matters.
While you are 17/18 so you can’t predict the future, I will tell you both will equally work for law school - and for that matter so would Christopher Newport, Mary Washington and more.
Harvard, as an example, has 146 schools in its first year class of 560. Whether Arizona State, Grand Valley State, Oklahoma State, or Louisville, they’re there.
Penn has 213 colleges represented in their law school.
Cornell has 216 enrolled from 143 law schools. Now others will say - but they mainly come from elite colleges - and they would be not correct. 28 are from Cornell, 3 from Columbia and 2 from Penn. None of the NESACS or other Ivies are listed with two or more students. So that 143 schools is spread but there are at least two or more kids from Alabama, Nebraska, SUNY, CUNY schools, Gonzaga, St. Bonaventure, Kentucky, Kansas, UCF.
The point being - studs get into top law schools. The undergrad is unlikely to matter - but your GPA, your LSAT especially and what you do while at school - will matter. So you have every chance of success from either school.
So don’t pick a school based on reputation.
Pick the school you want - in other words, take law school out of the equation.
Va Tech is huge - but the campus is much larger than the parts you’d likely experience daily. W&M is manageable as well.
Best of luck to you.
I live in Brazil so I wasn’t able to attend admitted students day for either school.
As always, I feel compelled to note the fact that there exist some people from both William & Mary and Virginia Tech who will go on to highly selective law schools, that is not sufficient evidence to support the claim they will “equally work” for all individuals (or similar claims like that your undergrad choice is “unlikely to matter”).
This is a very complex topic, but aside from just looking at whether anyone ever goes from College A to Law School B, we can observe that the range of per capita placement rates from different colleges to the more selective law schools can vary widely, and in ways I am personally not convinced can be explained by LSAT scores alone. How much is then self-selection and how much is added value is extremely hard to assess, but simply assuming there is no value added in any individual case is not really warranted just because it is a very hard question to investigate.
And then there is actual preparation for law school, which a lot of people seem to ignore. But just getting admitted to a good law school (willing to cash your checks) is not the end of the process of having a successful legal career. Generally speaking, how you do in law school can play a large role in what options are available to you next, and that can have long-term career consequences.
Again, that doesn’t mean I think it is impossible to get well-prepared for law school at a place like Virginia Tech. But I do think colleges like William & Mary are popular for law school intenders in part because they tend to focus more on the sorts of skill-building that are useful law school prep (among other things).
So take that all for whatever you think it is worth, but I again feel compelled to note that simply assuming everything is always equal for every individual at every college is in my view not a good idea given how complicated all this ends up being.
William and Mary and Virginia Tech are both great schools but very different size wise and by fit. My kids were also instate and went to UVA and VT. They did not consider William and Mary. It was not the right fit for them but may be for you. Only you can determine that.Good luck with the decision!
Are we voting? If so, I would vote for WM for the major.
But you also need to consider what else you want in college life…big football games or not? Larger campus vs smaller one?
Look at all the virtual tours and info again for both colleges. Maybe this will help.
Virginia residents are really in an envious position in the sense their state basically has three flagship-level universities with very distinct characteristics. So highly-qualified Virginia kids can choose to focus on whichever of those are actually the best fits for them.
Well done, Virginia!
@student61, my daughter is a graduating senior at W&M and has LOVED her experience there. She grew up in a town of less than 20,000 in a rural, mountainous area (out of state) and a public high school class of about 180 students….not a tiny high school, but pretty small. I’m not sure what you are looking for in a school experience but the size of W&M has been just right for her…small enough to feel like she’s an individual within a community but large enough that there are always plenty of new people to meet (from all over the country and world) that you don’t already know. What do you like to do recreationally that you hope to do in college?
As it turns out, my D’s freshman roommate (now apartment-mate along with two others) is an IR major and she has other friends in IR. A good number of IR students double major in policy, government or history (which is HUGE at W&M, and not just for American history). I know that her roommate has been happy with the IR major, and has studied abroad in summer (there are numerous study abroad summer, semester and January opportunities that are great for IR and ther majors). You also might want to check out W&M’s summer and semester in DC program as well, where you’d combine classwork with an internship. FWIW, my D is not African American but she is a racial minority and has been comfortable socially and in her coursework. I don’t know how/if some of the diversity-related coursework will change but, so far, she has had some amazing class discussions and content and I feel sure that professors will not simply drop all their convictions and teach to the current administration, though they may have to be more circumspect in how they label some course titles, descriptions etc (pure speculation on my part). Finally, my D was recently accepted to a strong law school that she is super-excited about! In her junior year she had the opportunity to apply to (and was accepted to) a legal scholars program at W&M that met online weekly for a semester. It provided a free Kaplan LSAT study program, general coaching about applying to law school, and each student was assigned a mentor attorney from the area that met periodically online and in person (my D’s mentor was awesome and came in from Richmond). Legal Scholars is specifically a program to support minority students planning to apply to law school… I have no idea where the funding for it comes from or whether or not it can continue in the current state of things…but want to say that the school itself has a pretty strong record of students having success in law school admissions. I know that you can get to law school from any college or university but I do think that W&M is a known thing (and respected) in law school admissions. Feel free to message me if you have any other questions (I can relay them to my D!)
Virginia Tech is an Engineering school, W&M is more like Liberal Arts. If you would choose between W&M and UVA, I would be on the fence. However, in your case W&M is clearly a winner in my opinion.
The students in the well over 130 non-engineering majors at Va Tech might disagree with that statement.
Agree. Although engineering is very well known, engineering students are only a fairly small percentage of the undergraduate population at Virginia Tech
Yes, different “tech” colleges do things differently, but I think of Virginia Tech being one of the ones where you can actually do a pretty full range of stuff (at least what you would normally expect at a flagship level public).
Now it is true if you were looking at, say, English majors, there would probably be more at UVA, and at least proportionately more at W&M. But there would still be a healthy number at Virginia Tech.
Edit: Might as well look it up, in fact. Per latest NCES data, UVA graduated 134 primary majors in IR, Virginia Tech 130, W&M 85.
Now, Virginia Tech had about 5 times as many graduating students as W&M, 1.8 times as many as UVA.
But still, that is a lot of students “voting with their feet” and choosing the IR major at Virginia Tech, even if proportionately more do it at UVA, and even more so W&M.