<p>Friday we visited Williams College during the annual summer open house held each August for prospective students. My wonderful DH good-naturedly spent his birthday traipsing around Williams on the hottest, most humid day of the year in the Berkshires. In addition to campus tours, general info sessions, and financial aid info sessions, tours were offered by faculty of the science center, music school, and the 62 Center, the brand-spanking new gorgeous theater complex funded by, yes, the Class of 1962. The new black box theater is absolutely cool, with state of the art digital seating the director wants a seating arrangement, pushes the button, and the seats rotate to the proper place. Also, sample lectures were given by faculty on 3 topics: Leonardo: The Scientist as an Artist, South Korea and the Strategic Balance in East Asia, and Sound, Music, and Perception given by the chair of the Physics department. Only the students were permitted to attend the lectures, undoubtedly due to the large number of attendees. My D was totally charged by the physics lecture, though she commented a bit on its simplistic nature until the professor explained that it is actually a lecture given for a physics for non-science majors course. The whole day was organized beautifully and ran smoothly for the several hundred students and their families present.</p>
<p>Williams is a lovely mixture of very old and very new architecture with half of the campus straddling each side of Rte 2 in the Berkshire Mountains. The ?south (Im LOUSY at directions) part of the campus blends directly into the very small town of Williamstown (pop 8,000). The 62 Center and an addition to the science center are new. A student center is under construction and will be finished in January 2007. Almost all student activity occurs on campus as there is little nearby except MassMoCA (the MA Museum of Contemporary Art) in nearby North Adams. Freshman may not have cars; many upperclassmen do and there is plenty of parking to accommodate the cars. The nearest large airport at Albany is 40 miles away. The adcom emphasized that Williams is first and foremost a residential college and that the students almost all stay on campus on the weekends (she noted that the dining hall serves 2000 meals/day during the week and 1950 meals/day on the weekend). Freshman housing is similar to Harvards with entryways, but Williams features JAs, junior advisors who live in residence instead of grad students or masters. This is an unpaid position for juniors who apparently vie competitively for the right to do this. Approx 40% juniors go away (the Williams term for study abroad) for one or both semesters.</p>
<p>The academic year is divided 4-1-4 and the winter month activity is mandatory. Freshmen must spend the month on campus taking one course intensively in a variety of areas, including teaching a class themselves if they desire and it is otherwise not available. Upperclassmen may spend the month anywhere in gainful activity, including as part of a semester away. The other unique feature of the Williams curriculum is the Tutorial modeled after the Oxford tutorial and taken advantage of by many, but not all students in their sophomore or junior year. In the tutorial, the student is paired with one other student and a professor, though the professor may have 10 to 15 total students taking the course. The student studies intensively and presents a paper every other week to the other student and the professor for critique. At times, there are lectures as part of this which more than one pair of students may attend. </p>
<p>Two students noted to us that Williams has acknowledged a weakness in their advising program that they are working on: freshmen are assigned an advisor who may or may not be in fields of their interest whose job is to make sure you dont make stupid schedule decisions. There is no advisor formally for the sophomore year. Then an advisor is assigned in the students major when they are juniors. A senior may also have a thesis advisor for honors.</p>
<p>Strengths of the academic program appear to be art history (a huge strength...Williams is very proud that head curators at many of Americas major museums are Williams grads, and there is a masters degree offered in art history), all of the sciences, and many other fields including English, political science, Classics, and others. Weaknesses are romance languages (only 3 courses in Italian are offered, e.g.) and, arguably, music. Williams only graduates 6 to 7 total music majors each year though they do offer a performance major. They have a voice major every couple of years. Music and non-music majors may participate in the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra which performs 4 or 5 concerts a year (at Williams). Approx 25% students double major, others have a major and a concentration (minor). Theater is a popular 2nd major. Most students have MULTIPLE extracurricular activities in addition to their academic load which is acknowledged by the faculty we met to be difficult and time-consuming. 50% of the students are involved in some kind of sport in some capacity (not just intercollegiate teams, but intramural, etc), and 50% have no involvement in sports whatsoever. The students we spoke with acknowledged that those who are not on a sports team are almost all active in some way with running, cross-country skiing, biking, dancing, or something else. Many students are both athletes and actors or singers in either University choirs or non-university sponsored a capella groups. I will not address the issue of alcohol at Williams (a hot button issue on these boards) since I know nothing about it other than that the students we spoke with acknowledged it is present as at all college campuses, but not an important part of their social lives and noted that no student is disdained for choosing not to drink.</p>
<p>With regards to admissions/financial aid, the adcom noted that admissions are need-blind and that Williams meets 100% of demonstrated need. She told us that 45% of students receive financial aid, a surprisingly small number for a school which is, by her report, searching for low-income students who are the first generation to attend college or have only one college graduate parent. We could conclude that mostly people who apply to Williams are rich (have no demonstrable financial need), that admissions is not really need-blind, or a bit of both. She was quite upfront with her take on ED at Williams: approx 30% of freshmen are admitted from the ED pool. ED decisions are to admit, defer, or reject. She stated unequivocally that students deferred from the ED round are very unlikely to be admitted during the regular round since the bar is set equally high for both rounds, unless there are major changes in the student profile. Interviews are informational only and not used for evaluation because they dont predict academic success. She encouraged students truly interested in the school to return for an overnight visit in the fall.</p>
<p>Well, thats all I can remember for now. If I can answer questions, Id be happy do so if and when I get internet access again. Our current hotel is having real problems. Likewise, I (and Im sure other parents) would appreciate similar visit reports on other schools you have visited with their kids. A weekend to play, then Vassar on Monday.</p>