Good luck to her!
I don’t think Williams offers EDII.
Tufts might be a good choice if need be. A " little Ivy" like Williams but a university that includes engineering .
This exact situation is playing itself out in my house, almost same scores, grades etc. My spouse and I are grads of two well regarded universities which we believed that my child would love, apply to ED and that would be that. Then we looked at a 'lottery" school and he loved it. My childs sibling currently attends a different lottery school so the requirements are well known. No one realistically expects for my child to get in, especially my child. But they cant live without knowing. I respect that, but there have been a lot of stories of kids ending up at bad fits in RD. We are somewhat fortunate because my child recently toured what, in all likelihood, would be a safety and really liked it. We are all aware of the risks and I dont think the coming year will be without more anxiety than it needed to have but I respect my childs thought process. The chips are going to fall where they may and I have A LOT of faith that my child will succeed anywhere.
A safety that you can afford and that your kid really likes is the ultimate insurance policy wchatar!
I am well aware. He actually really likes a target that he will very likely get money from (long story) and also this new safety. Im caring less and less what HPYS has to say.
@KnightsRidge Pffft. If she likes Williams so much, they can have her. Amherst wouldn’t want her anyway. Stupid purple cows 
Both of my sons did the legacy interview at Williams, and were told that they would still have their “legacy edge” in the RD round and to not feel that they had to apply ED. (They both ended up applying ED elsewhere).
Williams doesn’t have ED2.
@ThankYouforHelp I didn’t bring my kids to see Amherst!
@jrpar To be fair, Amherst and Williams are basically twins.
Of course, Amherst is Arnold and Williams is Danny.
Williams alums would say Williams is Arnold and Amherst is Danny. 
@cobrat of course they would. The truth is too painful for them. 
@ThankYouforHelp I know that, but still wasn’t going to bring them there. I know that’s completely ridiculous. I did end up seeing just about every other school in NESCAC. Both sons went elsewhere in any event!
A quick update. D was deferred EA from Princeton but doesn’t regret (yet) taking her shot. She knew it was a long shot without a hook so she had her RD applications pretty much ready to go. She submitted Williams and Amherst this weekend. Now in the process of finalizing her remaining RD applications. She’s been admitted to Pitt’s honors program with a generous merit award so she knows she’ll be going to college somewhere, and she’s waiting on hearing back from UVA. She’ll have applied to a total of 8 schools when she’s done which seems to be on the low end compared to her friends. Most of her friends are in the same boat (deferred or rejected from their EA/ED choices). She’s taking everything in stride and seems remarkably relaxed amid the uncertainty of this crazy admissions process.
Based on early results so far at her HS, this year seems to be the most competitive yet when it comes to applying to the top colleges. My question is how much more competitive can it get at these schools? The US college age population is leveling off yet application numbers keep rising and acceptance rates keep declining.
She has a good fallback option. It seems to be a rough ED year for unhooked kids. There is a large influx of applicants from outside the US to all the top schools. The top schools seem to be very focused on admitting first generation and URM kids and kids from all over the world. Programs like Quest Bridge are sending more and more kids to the top schools. These hit the ED figures along with athletes etc.
@KnightsRidge We are in almost the exact same situation that you are, Princeton def etc. What is interesting/ frightening is that my wife and I assumed that if our child had applied as a legacy to one of the schools that we attended that he would have been admitted. Several well qualified legacies from our sons high school applied ED to these schools and NO ONE, not even the legacies were admitted this year, one well qualified legacy got outright rejected. This is an anomaly in the pattern from previous years and doesnt bode well for RD. My son is into an honors program with aid as well and its great to have that in his pocket but this is shaping up to be a brutal year.
“The top schools seem to be very focused on admitting first generation and URM kids and kids from all over the world” Exactly @Houston1021. And its only going to get worse for ORM kids in high income suburbs in blue states, as the top schools look to counter accusations they are too focused on these “preppy” students and try to attract more people in red states as another source of diversity http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/2026996-how-an-ivy-got-less-preppy-princeton-draws-surge-of-students-from-modest-means.html
There are just too many ORM kids with top grades and ECs in blue suburbs like ours. Its great for the colleges to be giving a chance to those who’ve had to overcome major disadvantages, but it means explaining to your kid that there’s almost nothing they can do to get in unless they have a parent working there or have some truly compelling story like a life threatening illness (the two successes at our school, certainly really great kids, but if you ranked the class academically they wouldn’t be the top two).
Our solution was to apply to the UK where they don’t care about any of that, its simply whether you’re the smartest kid academically. We will see what the result is in January, but if it does work out OK, I’m sure this will become a more common approach at our high school now they understand what’s involved and have seen the top kids get shut out of Ivy League schools. It won’t suit everyone to go that far and focus on a single subject, but it helps that if you’re close to full pay its a lot cheaper. Of course the top UK universities end up with much less diversity, which is certainly a problem for those schools. But as an individual you do what is best for your own kids.
@Twoin18 I think that assessment, while largely correct, is a little dire. Oxford and Cambridge, which I think correspond most closely to the schools we are talking about, are no cake walk in terms of admission either. That and the curriculum , the concentration on a single subject, seems limiting, to my child at least. I think that there are a lot of US schools that arent Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stamford, or MIT that ORM blue state kids can get into. Its not easy, the next tier of schools is getting that much more difficult to get into but the corollary to this trend is that this tier of schools is getting a better quality of applicant.
@wchatar2 It certainly has been a humbling experience to observe today’s college admissions scene. To be honest, a year ago I had much higher college expectations for my D than I do now. I didn’t understand how much the admissions dynamic had changed for high achieving UMC kids like my D whose scores and transcript are far superior and show more rigor than mine did in the 80s. I certainly don’t think I would have been able to get into Williams today. Back in my day, UChicago was my safety school! Now I realize that even legacy status doesn’t assure my D of anything. I still have faith that she will have some good options to choose from come April since she did take her counselor’s advice and apply to a range of schools. Hopefully your child will have solid options this spring as well!
@KnightsRidge It is daunting and this year seems to be shaping up as a horror show. My oldest is at Yale, slightly inferior stats than my youngest, but he had something that Yale wanted, a hook I guess. All I can say is that these kids have a different set of expectations placed on them than we did. I went to Vanderbilt which, while certainly a respectable school when I attended, was not even close to what it is today. I have faith in my son and know, with 100% certainty, that he will excel wherever he goes. Its hard because my youngest has seen the opportunities that Yale gives its students, astounding, and he is keenly aware that, short of a miracle, he will not have the same resources at hand. Having said that, he wanted nothing to do with Yale because he doesnt think the students there are “normal”. And he is right. Its a tough situation which Im sure will turn out well for both our children. Not without a little white knuckling between now and then:) Best of luck to you and your daughter.
@wchatar2 Completely agree it won’t be appropriate for the vast majority of US students, and our curriculum makes it very difficult in some subjects, for example you need more math than Calc BC to be competitive for science subjects. So most students will just have to look at the next tier down of US schools instead. That’s fine, we have plenty of those schools to choose from.
But I’d expect a surge of top applicants to Oxbridge in the next couple of years anyway. At the moment there are very few of them, about 600 per year for Oxford from the US, a bunch of whom expect to go elsewhere in the UK but just put it in anyway as part of their UCAS form and treat it as a free lottery ticket. If even 2% of HYPSM early applicants applied there (which you can do as well, no limits on overseas applications) then that number will double and the number of highly competitive applicants could be 4 or more times higher.
The admissions process is the exact opposite of a cakewalk (S18’s interview started, with no preliminaries whatsoever, “Here are two sentences, Jack kicked Jill; Jack saw Jill, discuss”), but you come out of the process feeling it was an outcome determined by your own efforts in the admissions test and interview (long tail testing is great for that, no perfect scores here!), rather than where you live/what your family circumstances are. If Tony Blair’s son gets in instead of S18 (and I mean that literally), it won’t be because of who his father is, they both have the same opportunity and are judged on the same basis.