<p> National Youth Leadership Conference (11)
Saint John's (H.S.) Leadership Institute (12)
Student Newspaper (10, 11, 12)
Yearbook Staff (10, 11)
Precalculus Summer Course (11)
Varsity Golf (12) State Champions
JV Golf (10)</p>
<p>Service:</p>
<p> Service Day (9, 10, 11, 12)
Volunteer at Massachusetts Special Olympics (11, 12)
St. Joan of Arc Tutoring Program (11)
Student Ambassador Activities (9, 10, 11)</p>
<p>Awards/Honors:</p>
<p> National Honor Society
First Honors (minimum of B) or Headmaster's List (All A's) every quarter throughout high school
Hanover Insurance Company Scholarship award (1 of 36 winners of 250 applicants)</p>
<p> Essays: very good
Recommendations: very good
Hook: none
AP Exams: US History: 4
Taking 4 APs this year: AP Calculus, AP World History, AP Spanish IV, AP Literature and Composition (5 total </p>
<p>Your SATs for OOS are on the low side, and while it's hard to speculate as to how competitive your school is, top 15% with those SAT scores might make things a little dicey. </p>
<p>That being said, your SATs are higher than mine, though my rank/EC's were better. It could all balance itself out, so I agree that while your chances are fairly slim, you do have a chance.</p>
<p>ya my class rank would be higher but i could not take honors classes freshman year becasue of my middle school curriculum so my strength of schedule which factors into he rank weighs me down, but it shows on my transcript that as i took harder classes i did much better</p>
<p>SATs are decent and probably put you in the median range of applicants, although your SAT II History score might seem a tad low. Your GPA and rank are about on par with what mine were, and I got accepted last year. (I'm an OOS student from a private high school too.) As soccerguy said, you're a solid candidate but not a definite; the problem is over 11,000 apply to W&M every year and your application is probably similar to roughly 7,500 of them. The difference for you will be whether there is something in your essay, extracurriculars, or recommendations that will cause an admissions officer to choose one way or the other. I'd say your chances for admission are about 45-55% - which is considerably better than the 30% overall acceptance rate - based on what I've seen here. I know it's annoying to hear, but isn't this whole process one coin flip after another?</p>
<p>Best of luck to you, and hope to see you on campus.</p>
<p>you mentioned your non-legacy, legacy like really won't even help someone at wm, i know parents who have gone their with bright children who have not been accepted, its a public institution so money giving from alum isn't that great, which is why wm is broke right now</p>
<p>while WM does fall very low in monetary resources compared to the other schools that are around it any rankings, WM is also far from broke, and there are multiple projects being worked on and recently completed. =)</p>
<p>soccerguy315 just wanted to say thanks for all your encouraging advice a while back...I sent my dd's stats, you made astute comments and you'll be seeing her around campus come August...she got in ED!</p>
<p>thanks for the kind words atrmom. I'm just a normal student who is very happy here (and who applied ED elsewhere, I might add) who tries to help out as best he can. Hopefully the ED acceptance has reduced some of the senior year stress =)</p>
<p>W&M is hardly broke... they just completed a $500 million fundraising campaign and are about to start a $1bn. Granted, the Botetourt Complex could greatly use to be demolished, but they're making progress. The new science addition will be nice when it's done, and the new Jamestown dorms are beautiful.</p>
<p>really that's good to know, my sister always comes home on break and says they lost another professor because they cant afford to keept he or she on staff, i guess she's just complaining about nothing</p>
<p>There have been complaints about that, but I don't know how widespread they are. I do know that they are trying to rein in costs even in spite of the fundraising campaign. I think the worst of the financial crunch is over, but there are still some areas that are underfunded.</p>
<p>The reality is that many WM professors are top notch. They care strongly about their field, and more importantly, they care about educating undergraduates, which IMO, is the biggest strength of W&M. At any school, there is professor turnover every year, for many reasons. It is hard to measure which professors are leaving for pay, and which are leaving for other reasons. Personally, I think the issue of professors leaving for higher pay is overblown, but WM is taking steps to increase their pay, which the professors deserve. I had a professor that everyone loved, personally I thought he was one of the best professors that I have had, but he was only here for one year. However, he didn't leave for higher pay, he left because he wasn't asked to continue to be a professor here. You cannot just assume that a professor who doesn't come back is leaving for higher pay. That said, many professors at WM could leave and go to many schools and earn more money, and steps are being taken to decrease this gap. However, the reality is that with the money WM has, it cannot pay salaries that match those of the top private schools in the country.</p>
<p>and yes, the newly completed projects on campus are top notch, including the Jamestown dorms, the Rec, the new wing of the Physics building for the magnet, Swem, the parking garage, and the Caf.</p>