<p>1) Finances are relatively as bad as they are at every other public Virginia university. The endowment is small for a school of W&M’s stature, (at between 400 and 500 million) but is still the second largest per capita of the Virginia schools. One thing that people say is that “W&M does more with less” when comparing it to its peer institutions. However, last year was the best private fundraising year to date, and there have not been any layoffs, and a few departments are still hiring faculty. Tuition has gone up a few hundred dollars, but not drastically like it has had to elsewhere. I don’t think the financial situation has effected student resources to any significant extent, relatively speaking. If anything, student resources have increased this pased year due to an effective Student Assembly. For example, the SA helped pay for and organize Swem (noted as the 6th best university library in the country) to be open for 24 hours a day during finals.</p>
<p>2) I know a LOT of people because of all the activities I am involved with. There are days when I will walk across the terrace and be able to say hello to everyone there, and there are days when I’ll get lunch in the Caf and walk around this large building twice and not see a soul I know. There are always new people to meet. There are plenty of courses too, and one of the great things about being a university is that you can take classes in the graduate public policy or law school if you want. There are also a ton of organizations. I think I heard that there were more per capita organizations here than at any other VA school. Despite my best efforts, I have not been able to join them all, much less get on all of their listservs. If anything, the oppertunities at W&M are even greater than at a large university, because you can become the president of a well established club your sophomore year, or even do some graduate level research with professors your freshman year. And at 6000 undergrads, W&M isn’t the smallest of schools, but operates at a middle ground that, if comparing to the Ivies, I feel would be most like Princeton.</p>
<p>3) W&M is strong all around. I’ve heard that our Neuroscience programs is one of the best in the country, we have freshmen biology students discovering new microbes, and chemistry is strong as well. W&M is known as a pre-med powerhouse, so the hard sciences are very strong and well respected. The sciences just got a huge new complex of buildings called the Integrated Science Center, and a new wing is set to be built soon. Computer Science is a smaller program, yet it has very nice facilities. The only person that I knew doing Comp Sci actually just got a job working at Facebook this past year, so I’d guess its a pretty good program. All of the math majors I know are very smart and intense about the wonders of math, and all of them are doing some crazy named research with professors. The math building isn’t the best, but its comparable to what the government and economics departments are in. For business, a HUGE new $75,000,000 building was just completed. About 1/6th of campus is in some way involved with the B-school, so its pretty big. Us non business majors call it “The Palace of Capitalism” because of how amazing it is.</p>
<p>4) Someone who took the hardest classes in high school, did well in them, and did well on the AP tests. He would ideally have lots of EC activities including leadership roles and sports, and (well?) over a 1400 Math+Verbal SAT. So… yeah, I have no idea. Admissions looks at things holistically, so its hard to even estimate an average. The above would be a strong OOS candidate though.</p>
<p>5) There is a large new Career Services being built with lots of interview rooms. I would assume W&M has the best alumni connections in Richmond and DC, but there are plenty of accounting majors (I’ve heard its one of the top accounting program in the country, too) I know who’ve gone on to work with big firms in the Northeast. I really don’t know that much else about this.</p>
<p>Hope this helps!</p>