<p>SAT: 2320
SAT II: 740, 790, 800
GPA: 4.0 UW
Rank: school does not rank. probably 1st out of 400
AP: by graduation 13 APs.
EC: Captain/President in 5 clubs/teams.
Community: 100+ hours.
Hook: none.
Domestic international applicant needing full aid.</p>
<p>Please rate chances: 10%? 50%? 80%?</p>
<p>Academically you should fair well in the admissions process, the aid you require won't be taken into account when the adcom decide (at least that is what they say!), bearing in mind that the intl admit rate this year was around 8%. However, as the applicant pool at Williams is around 5,500 as opposed to the ~20,000 pool at the vast majority of universities, you can assured that your application will be given a detailed examination...at least that is what I felt in my experience. As LACs like Williams are highly personal, your recs and essays are important in the sense that you are able to let your personality, opinions and passions shine through in an attempt to charm the adcom with your qualities. As a final note, applying ED is a big advantage over RD, as you most probably already know.</p>
<p>would you say i should consider it as a reach? low reach? match? safety??? (kidding for the last one)</p>
<p>Schaden, could you please clarify your citizenship? Are you an American who lives overseas or an international who lives in America? </p>
<p>This makes a big difference as does the country involved as does your race and ethnic background. You definitely have the grades, scores and rank for Williams and your sports involvement is also a plus. What will push you over the top especially if you are an international will be something beyond your academic statistics: What will make you interesting to Williams? It could be your multi-national experience. It could be one of your sports, especially if you are able or willing to play at the varsity level. It could be your community service. We would need more information about what makes you tick. </p>
<p>Williams is generally generous with need based aid even for internationals. The catch is that they admit very few internationals and those whom they choose often contribute to their diversity percentages. If you are international and Caucasian, then Id say its a super reach. </p>
<p>They do not offer merit aid so please be very clear on your familys financial situation.</p>
<p>momrath, you clarified a lot of things. I am an international completing high school in the U.S. I guess the question is if Williams is need-blind for internationals and also meeting 100% need (like HYP). I mean, USNews does place it at the top of the LACs, so I thought it might have a large endowment to support even the international students.</p>
<p>Yes, Williams is need-blind for internationals, and meets 100% need. Momrath's point is a good one: admissions is extremely competitive for internationals.</p>
<p>"A recent edition (2005) of the Williams Alumni Review has an article on admissions by Doug Lederman, editor of Inside Higher Ed., on admissions generally speaking, and on the Williams admission process in particular. While not particularly eye-opening, the article should put to death, forever, the question as to whether Williams (or any other prestigious college for that matter outside of Olin or Cooper Union or the service academies) is actually need-blind. </p>
<p>According to the article, students who hail from obvious modest/low income backgrounds have socio-ec tags placed on their applications. At one point in the considerations, the Williams Dean of Admissions says, Were down a little bit on IVITs (those with extraordinary academic depth/talent) from last year, so we may want to a little more there. Were ahead on socio-ecs, so thats good. It is clear that there is a target for socio-ecs at which the school feels comfortable, which is determined in advance of seeing applications. Now, this can be a good thing colleges cant go out of their way to admit low-income candidates unless theyve labeled who they are. By the same token, the college can use the tag to limit spending on financial if it so chooses. I dont happen to think it is a bad thing to be doing this (frankly, if I were a college admissions officer, I think it is precisely what Id do), only that its about time we threw away the need-blind deception.</p>
<p>So now that you know for sure that 1) Williams is not need-blind for anyone; and 2) that they do use need status as they are making decisions, you need to ask what your hook is? Williams DOES meet 100% of need (as they define it) of all those they accept, but internationals are accepted at less than half the rate of everyone else. Competition is fierce, and as Momrath notes, you need something else to push you over the top.</p>
<p>I thought it might be interesting to post once again the actual outcomes of two internationals one a domestic international and the other applying form a northerern European country to HYP plus Williams.</p>
<p>Both girls have an identical(European) ethnic background, have similar classical/modern languages training, virtually identical Finaid need and both are first in their class at very distinguished schools. The SAT score of girl A is 800 CR, 720 M, 680 WR. SAT score of girl B is 800 CR, 800 M, 730 WR. </p>
<p>Girl A expresses interest in doing neuro-psychology and theatre and has the course profile to back this up, Girl B expresses interest in mathematics, languages and music and has the course profile to back this up i.e., Phys. C and BC calculus etc etc.. </p>
<p>Both girls are deferred EA at Yale. In the regular admission round both girls get into a range of Ivy's/First Tier Lacs with virtually full Finaid. Girl A gets into Yale but not Harvard; girl B gets into Harvard but not Yale. Both get in everywhere else.</p>
<p>The bad news implicit in these histories is that the admission process is a crapshoot. There are no guarantees even with a 1600 SAT and a gold medal from the best school in the country. The good news is that you will get in at a school which is as good or better than the one that turned you down. So take mini/momrath's advice, tell Williams why YOU want go and what you are bringing to the piece. Neither of the two girls noted above had any special hook, the surest way not to get in is not to apply. Go for it!</p>
<p>Schaden, Williams DOES provide generous financial aid for internationals, but (there is always a but :) ) you have to get accepted first. If they accept you they will figure out a way for you to attend. </p>
<p>Need based aid is not a strict formula. What your family thinks they need may not be the same as what the school calculates and School A may calculate differently from School B. Aid is also negotiable: If a college really wants you you may get them to bid against another school with a better package.</p>
<p>The nuances of needblind-ness are subtle. The adcoms doesn't actually review the details of your financial situation but they are able to deduce a lot from your profile. For example it is a safe bet that a kid who attends a Swiss boarding school will require less aid than a kid from a village school in Nepal. Which one they accept depends on which one THEY need. If they feel theyve given out too much money theyll go with the former; if they need more people of color or low income theyll choose the latter.</p>
<p>In order to appraise your chances, take a look at the admissions statistics by country of a recent class. You will see that they favor underdeveloped countries with non-white, non-Christian populations. This bias helps them balance their diversity percentages. So thats why your chances as an international are affected by who you are as well as what you have accomplished. This isnt to say that they dont accept white, middle-class Europeans (and Canadians and Australians). Of course they do, but the competition is severe.</p>
<p>ahhh it's that music thing that'll kill you every time at Yale. International or not. grrr.</p>
<p>Because Williams has some difficulty attracting low-income students compared to its peer school, applying to Williams as an economically disadvantaged student may actually give the student a "leg-up" in the admissions process.</p>
<p>I still think Schadenfreude has the credentials to mount a more than credible application to Williams and if they turn him/her down because his diversity quotient zigs where theirs zags, that is Williams' problem not his.</p>
<p>paleo, agree, thousands of smart, talented, capable kids get turned down by selective colleges every year. For internationals the odds of a rejection are even greater. My point was that we couldn't begin to give Schadenfreude an idea of his/her chances of admission without more information.</p>
<p>I always hear elite schools like HYP saying they could have filled their freshman class three times with qualified applicants, but there is not enough space. Knowing Williams, would you say that it is similar to these schools in its admission philosophy? that is, to create a complete campus diversity at the expense of individual rejections? </p>
<p>(On the other hand, I think MIT is much more "if you qualify, we will accept you")</p>
<p>What difference would it make if you or I knew how important 'diversity' however defined is to Williams? As far as I am concerned you either want to apply to Williams or you don't. If you do, you'll be facing international student admission odds which as everybody has told you are about half of domestics. You've been told about a dozen times now that your odds of admission at Williams are quite good. Since you haven't provided some crucial information like verbal/math scores or whether you are male or female it is impossible to say whether you would be facing longer or shorter odds at MIT nor would it matter a great deal. You can probably improve the odds consderably at either place if you tell them why you want to be there.With an appropriate essay I think your odds at either place are about the same--very good. </p>
<p>Admission,like genius is a combination of talent, self confidence and luck. You have what it takes to mount a credible application. The only piece you control at this point is how you write the essay and whether to apply ED or not. If I were holding your hand I would. Stop worrying about diversity. At the end of the day you have to believe that any place that would turn down obvious academic quality like yourself in order to achieve its diversity targets with obvious second raters is not a place you would want to go to anyway. If their diversity targets are met by applicants every bit as strong as yourself, they could equally well have been selected on strict academic grounds.</p>
<p>Yes, exactly. Geez. Your race is not something you can change.. what're you gonna do, paint yourself green?</p>
<p>i've never thought about changing race. that's a good idea, though...</p>