<p>I know the two schools are both academically amazing, and big in the NESCAC. I also know they have a good natured rivalry. But I am not in any way athletic and don’t want to feel out of it at either school. Where would I fit in better?</p>
<p>I’m only a prospective student as well, so I can’t say for sure, but from everything I’ve read, Amherst is more diverse and worldly while Williams is more preppy with a definite “jock” vibe.</p>
<p>That’s not what they say on the Williams site, although I guess every individual has their own perspective. I’m guessing they are probably more alike than different this way. I personally love the Williams campus, and the tutorial system, but when I went to Amherst I liked it a whole lot too. If I am lucky to get into either ( its hard for anyone and EVERYONE ), the one worry I have is the jock scene, since I’m not one.But I wonder if there is a SIGNIFICANT, MEANINGFUL difference with it between the two. Any current students care to answer? Please?</p>
<p>I’m not a student at either, but I’m looking into Smith, so I’d like to remind everyone of the 5 colleges. So remember that you CAN still hang out with Smith, Mt. Holyoke, or Hampshire kids, who will not be as jocky. UMass Amherst will have a wide range of people, too…so, that’s something to think about. Even if they ARE both very jocky, you should be a bit safer at Amherst…I think. From what I read, Williams seems more ock-happy, anyway.</p>
<p>^^I would take the above advice with a huge grain of salt. Amherst students, like most co-ed LAC campuses, exist within a bubble which means, for the most part, they restrict themselves to finding everything they need on campus, even if it means making compromises. It is a net importer of 5C students and it takes a lot of coaxing to get them off campus and when they do leave it is seldom for UMass.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, it was likely Williams, but this is a very outdated stereotype that has persisted despite evidence to the contrary. Williams has deemphasized athletic recruiting a bit over the past decade, while Amherst has really amped up its athletic recruiting and emphasis to the point where it is roughly equal to Williams in terms of athletics (I’d say Williams is stronger overall in individual sports, but Amherst has had the slight edge in recent years overall in team sports – just look at Amherst’s fall team sports performance this year – which would stun most casual observers relying on 15-year-old data). Amherst, and not Williams, has made a consistent habit over the past five years of accepting multiple transfers per year from scholarship-level athletic programs to bolster its teams. Amherst, like Williams, has won multiple national championships in various sports in recent years: for Williams, that is old hat, but again, Amherst has really been bringing in more and more star athletes over time to the point where the schools are again roughly equal in that regard. And Amherst and Williams are basically even overall year in and year out in terms of head-to-head athletic competition. Those two, along with Midd and Emory, can claim to have the top overall D-3 athletic program, year in and year out. </p>
<p>The student bodies are very similar, and I doubt you’d notice much of a difference walking around campus. Each has an equal number of highly recruited tipped athletes (66 per class), but Amherst has a smaller student body overall. If there is a difference in this regard, I’d say that Williams probably has among non-varsity-athletes more casually athletic / outdoorsy people into running, hiking, frisbee, and other nature / fitness activities, and Amherst might have more kids with a more preppy / urban bent, but I wouldn’t call those Williams folks “jocks” in the traditional sense you mean, and again, the difference is very slight. </p>
<p>I also wouldn’t say that Amherst is appreciably more “diverse” or worldly. Williams’ first year class is 37 percent American minority students and another 7 or 8 percent international, which is roughly similar (maybe a few points less in terms of percentage, but higher in absolute numbers) than Amherst’s figures. Williams also has a higher percentage of first-generation college students than Amherst. Once again, while Amherst in its publicity places a huge emphasis on socioeconomic diversity, as usual, the two schools are essentially mirroring each other’s policies in this regard, with the end result of a very similar student body composition. </p>
<p>I’d say in terms of differences between the two schools, the bigger differences are the respective settings, the size of the undergrad population, campus facilities and overall campus vibe / feeling, winter study, the five college consortium, and tutorials. Each also has some academic strengths relative to the other, but that is only in a few specific (and generally fairly small) departments.</p>
<p>D is a first-year student at Amherst and an athlete. Based on her experience, I think you’d be just fine at Amherst. While she spends a fair amount of time with her teammates out of practice, she spends just as much time socializing and hanging out with kids from her dorm. Roughly 1/3-1/2 the kids on her floor are athletes, but all the kids hang out together. These kids are from all over the country with a few internationals as well. Two months into school, they already are extraordinarily close.</p>
<p>Ephman,</p>
<p>Do you know whether Amherst (and Williams) each accepts all the 66 tipped athletes you mention on an Early Decision basis? </p>
<p>Also, do you know how many recruited, but non-tipped athletes, each college annually accepts and whether these recruited, but non-tipped, athletes have an admission advantage over non-hooked applicants once overlapping factors such as legacy or URM status are taken into account? </p>
<p>I ask these questions because each school seemingly accepts far more than 66 varsity athletes each year, Amherst, for example, has 27 varsity teams, and its football team alone has almost 100 players.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>jmilton- A large portion of the student body at Amherst plays varsity sports, but many aren’t recruited at all. It results in a student body that fairly athletic, but doesn’t give off the ‘jock’ vibe. Also, Amherst doesn’t overly stress athletics. A lot of students are involved in them, so they’re present on campus, but academics are first-and-foremost, both for current students and the admissions board. What that means is that almost every varsity athlete gets into Amherst of their own accord and their own academic achievements, and most just happen to play sports (once again, athletic but not jocks). There are certainly a few recruits, but it’s a very small number, so most varsity athletes are likely regular-admits who coincidentally play sports.</p>
<p>There’s a huge population here that doesn’t do sports at all though, and there’s no tension whatsoever between them and athletes. You’ll still take classes together, and you’ll have friends on teams whether you follow sports or not.</p>
<p>Williams may be similar, I can’t say for sure, because I can only speak for Amherst</p>
<p>Amherst13,</p>
<p>Thanks for clarifying matters.</p>
<p>jmilton, some of what Amherst13 isn’t entirely accurate. The majority of kids on NESCAC rosters (especially team sports like football, basketball, lacrosse soccer, where it is virtually all) are heavily recruited by coaches ahead of time. Amherst and Williams have exactly the same system. Each get 66 TIPS per year, basically kids who would not have much of a chance to get accepted without athletics. Most but not all of those kids apply early decision and they are spread throughout all sports, with football getting the biggest concentration. </p>
<p>Then there are another 100 plus (I forget the exact number, but it is well north of 100) “protects,” these are still recruited athletes who the coaches flag for admissions, but they have academic numbers that put them in the general ballpark for the general admission pool so they MIGHT get in without an athletic attribute. Of course, there are several thousand kids who apply with similar numbers, so being flagged by a coach is an ENORMOUS advantage to make you stand out among this big and ever growing pool. If you do the math, the vast majority of varsity athletes at both Williams and Amherst are, indeed, kids who the coaches recruited and who received an admissions edge accordingly, even if their academics are still very strong. Heck, even the TIPS at Williams and Amherst would get into many NESCAC schools without any athletic ability, so we aren’t talking kids who are egregiously underqualified like you see at many D-1 schools, but it can be a difference of 150 points on the SAT, for example. </p>
<p>Some sports like varsity crew are almost entirely composed of walk-ons, some like cross country and track and field have a good number of walk-ons, but I can tell you that you will rarely see (no more than 1-2 per sport per year, and that is generous) true walk-ons in the D-3 sense of the word (meaning, the coaches were not aware of them prior to their application / did not advocate for their admission) on a final ice hockey, or football, or basketball, or lacrosse varsity roster at ANY NESCAC school. More kids will try out, but it is rare for them to beat out kids who the coaches advocated for and knew about prior to admission. </p>
<p>In sum, being a recruited athlete at Williams and Amherst is just a HUGE advantage, similar to being an URM, MUCH more than being a typical alumni kid (other than a SUPER rich alumni kid). Obviously, the more the coach wants you, the more they will go to bat for you, and the coaches don’t always get the kids they most heavily advocate for if the academics are too much of a stretch. But yeah, the idea that it is very common to walk on, with no involvement during the admissions process by a coach, to a team sport with a limited roster at Amherst or Williams is in large part a fiction. </p>
<p>Now, all that being said, half the student body at both schools are NOT seriously involved in athletics, so it’s not as if this is a dominant culture. And most of the athletes at Williams (and I’m sure at Amherst) are not defined solely by their athletic prowess. That is what makes NESCAC so great – you have star athletes in acapella groups, or leading student government, or leading community service orgs, or getting 3.9’s in physics majors, or playing the lead in theater productions. So while NESCACs have a MUCH higher percentage of kids participating in club or varsity athletics than you will find at virtually any other school, they also have a MUCH higher percentage of varsity athletes who are seriously involved in non-athletic extracurricular pursuits in addition to their sports.</p>
<p>^^^Interesting post.Some of the numbers are a little off, or Williams is lying on their official materials-they reported 49 recruited athletes in their ED pool last year. I also doubt the 100 “tips”, unless they are mostly for large roster teams like LAX and Football.</p>
<p>An important figure is that all the team rosters can be divided by 4-Baseball or Hockey for example, may want only 5 newbies. Track/XC have overlap, and only get to pick a few.
Swimming coach at Amherst told me he had only 4 “slots” for men’s and women’s teams, and that tells you most swimmers are “WALK-ONS.”</p>
<p>Anyway, in answer to the OP(IMHO), Williams, but it shouldn’t stop you.</p>
<p>OldbatsieDoc, 66 TIPS for both W and A is a fact (again, there are two categories, 66 TIPS, which any admissions officer who is honest will acknowledge, and the 100 plus protects, which operate differently). Most other NESCAC schools have 72, by the way.</p>
<p>Williams is not lying, I think what that references is the 49 high priority athletic admits in the early pool, which sounds about par for the course not only for Williams but for every NESCAC school, since most of the TIPS are admitted early. “Protects” probably aren’t considered in that figure since they could have also been admitted for other reasons as well. </p>
<p>And the swimming coach may only have four “slots,” but that does NOT mean the other swimmers are walk on in the sense of, the coach didn’t know anything about them in the admissions process. I can guarantee that basically anyone who can make an impact on virtually any NESCAC sports team will have had contact with the coaching staff, and the coaching staff will talk to admissions about them. Now, they could have 1500 SAT’s and a 4.0 gpa, but that doesn’t mean that the coaches didn’t go to bat for them, giving them a leg up over other candidates. Athletic recruiting at NESCAC is serious business, and again, it’s uncommon for varsity athletes, particularly on team sports, to arrive on campus as true unknowns to the coaching staff. It does happen regularly across sports, but it is the exception, not the rule. </p>
<p>Again, the terminology “walk on” carries a different meaning in D-3 since there are no athletic scholarships – so by the D-1 definition, EVERYONE is a walk-on. But the way I view the D-3 definition of that term (someone who makes a varsity roster and wasn’t in recruiting contact with the coach during the admissions process), it is without any doubt a minority of all varsity athletics teams (other than crew) at every NESCAC school that could be considered “walk ons.”</p>
<p>So Ephman what you’re saying is for the most part, lower-profile sports generally have lots of recruits but that many of the “recruits” are “protects” or people who would get in normally, and some of these people had little to no help getting in but were in contact with the coach, while higher-profile team sports are comprised mostly of recruits, including many tips.</p>
<p>I guess it makes sense that most people who have a chance to play would contact a coach to see if he could help them out.</p>
<p>What that means is that almost every varsity athlete gets into Amherst of their own accord and their own academic achievements, and most just happen to play sports (once again, athletic but not jocks). There are certainly a few recruits, but it’s a very small number, so most varsity athletes are likely regular-admits who coincidentally play sports.</p>
<p>Are you kidding???</p>
<p>Just to clarify a few of the numbers that have been posted above that are a little off.<br>
1)The NESCAC has a roster limit of 75 for football. The top programs (Williams and Amherst) have had to cut some kids in recent years–not a fun thing. Other programs are under the roster-size limit without having to resort to cuts.
2)The NESCAC permits each school to admit 14 “slotted” students per year for football. They are slotted for “athletic factors”. These students are typically not at the academic level of achievement of the incoming first year class, but they’re not dopes either. However, they are stand-out football players and if it weren’t for the “athletic factors”, they would probably not be admitted. As one Head Coach put it, “the lower your GPA and SAT’s, the more you will cost me to admissions, so the more of an impact player you have to be”. I think the term most NESCAC coaches use for these 14 admits are “slots”. At a top LAC, a real impact slotted football player is still going to have around 1200 SAT’s and be in the top 25% of his class. Most of the slotted players are more distinguished academically than that even if they are a standard deviation or 2 away from the incoming class mean.
3)A school like Williams or Amherst will also recruit and help with admissions an additional 10-12 prospects. These are “tips”. Their level of academic achievement is typical of the rest of the incoming first year class, and they are good at football. Were it not for football, though, they would stand a good chance of not getting that offer of admission–after all, there are valedictorians and perfect-SAT-scorers routinely rejected by these top schools. Amherst accepts about 15% of applicants, but 80% of applicants can do the work there (including the “slotted” players described above) and 50% of those rejected are probably statistically no different than the ones who are offered admission. So for these “tips”, football is the thing that gets them in. They have 1450+ SAT’s, top 5% of class, leadership extracurriculars, AND they are really good football players.</p>
<p>bellybones,</p>
<p>Do you have comparable statistics for other helmet sports such as lacrosse or hockey?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Sorry, jmilt. My only first-hand experience is with football. However, there was a really good multi-part series in the NY Times on D3 recruiting a few years ago. Here’s a link to the original series [The</a> New York Times > Sports > A Series: The Athlete’s Edge](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/ref/sports/2005_RECRUIT_SERIES.htm]The”>http://www.nytimes.com/ref/sports/2005_RECRUIT_SERIES.htm)
and a link to a follow up that they did with the same schools a few years later. [Unexpected</a> Turns on Recruits? Path to Graduation - NYTimes.com](<a href=“Unexpected Turns on Recruits’ Path to Graduation - The New York Times”>Unexpected Turns on Recruits’ Path to Graduation - The New York Times)
Lots of reading, but good, first-hand reporting on how it works at top LAC’s, particularly Haverford (the subject of the series).</p>
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<p>Is it also true at Wesleyan and Bowdoin that the coaches know about the athletes ahead of time? My Jr D is interested in Wes, Bowdoin and Amherst, but has not yet settled on a sport (she excels in 3) or even which of those schools is of most interest (hard for us to visit during the school year due to sports schedules and distance) and is therefore hesitant to contact coaches. At what point in the admissions process does a good athlete need to contact the coaches at NESCAC schools?</p>
<p>^^^They certainly do. Wesleyan, for instance, has the same number of athletic “tips” as fellow Little Three members, Williams and Amherst:
[Barnard</a> examines role of athletic tips in college admissions processes ? The Williams Record](<a href=“http://williamsrecord.com/2003/02/18/barnard-examines-role-of-athletic-tips-in-college-admissions-processes/]Barnard”>http://williamsrecord.com/2003/02/18/barnard-examines-role-of-athletic-tips-in-college-admissions-processes/)</p>
<p>There are also a number of other threads that deal with questions involving NESCAC recruitment: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1363472-football-recruiting-ivies-nescac-patriot.html?highlight=nescac[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1363472-football-recruiting-ivies-nescac-patriot.html?highlight=nescac</a></p>
<p>The best advice is to contact the coaches for each sport at each school.</p>
<p>Overall, I’d say the biggest difference between Wesleyan and the other SLACs within NESCAC is scale; with 2800 students and nearly 11,000 applicants this year, it is bigger than its nearest Little Three competitor by about a third. What that means, is that it has much more flexibility with which to select a class once all of its athletic slots are used.</p>