Monroe Scholars and W&M Culture

@rpnick2001 my D was accepted as a Monroe Scholar and I don’t know what the criteria is. Are you in state, I’m out of state, not sure if a certain number of Monroe Scholars are in state VS OOS?

I don’t think in-state and out-of-state status affects Monroe Scholars.

Admission to these honors programs can be mysterious. My daughter is a Monroe Scholar, but I was surprised she wasn’t invited to be an Echols Scholar at U.Va. like her father - though it wouldn’t have made a difference to her decision where to attend. In any case, students can apply to join Monroe Scholars after freshman year if they really want to be one.

Some sort of holistic award to top 3%-5% accepted. Nice jester with several basic perks. 1st year housing location is centrally located. 1st semester early class registration. Couple $3,000 over the summer research scholarships. A trac of sessions. Not much but a nice option…

Are you going to the Monroe weekend invite too. Where from?

Jersey here…

Out if state. I didn’t see anywhere that there was any distinction between OOS vs IS.

@prodesse I agree, my son can certainly apply after freshman year but with all the hard work he put in during 4 years in high school, all the crap he took from me and just recently receiving plenty of rejection letters from the “elite schools” (yes I’m looking at you Yale, Brown and Columbia), it would have been a nice for a high performing university like WM to offer some added objective recognition. No matter. He’s admitted to WM. I know he’s excited and I am thrilled to go visit WM in a few weeks. Unfortunately we will be missing out on the Day or Admitted Students, but we will be there for WM Monday (?) a week later. We are 99% certain he will commit to WM before May 1. I especially got my eyes on the sweet looking WM Dad cap at the bookstore. Thank you @J123D123 and UGG2023 for your responses.

We cannot Day for Admitted Students and Monroe Day because it’s the same weekend as her prom but we will be there for WM Monday on 4/8. She is still deciding between 2 schools…

Has anyone else received an odd email about the Monroe scholars? It’s mainly an invitation to the Sneak Peek program on the 12th, but it appeared in my inbox as “Sneak Peek: Unlock the Door to your W&M Experience” and began to quote the email as “James Monroe Scholar Program Invitation…”. However, the actual text of the email begins “[name], William & Mary is proud to welcome you to the Class of 2023! We want to show you…” and continues to talk about the Sneak Peek day. This is probably an error, but it’s a very weird error nonetheless…

Edit: Just forwarded the email to my mom to see what happened and now the text in the email reads: “James Monroe Scholar Program Invitation [name], William & Mary is proud to welcome you to the Class of 2023! We want to show you all…” Haha what the heck? Sorry if this makes no sense b/c it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

Hi UGG

All set for W&M Monday? Looking forward to hear your experience. Still deciding between two schools?

D18 has to still narrow some things. Still waiting on the University of Michigan as far as Scholarship feedback. Good school too but a good scholarship package ? is a must because U of M didn’t offer any need based grant aid.

We are all set to visit UVA on Friday and W&M on Saturday and Sunday. We have visited both some time back. Different perspective knowing it’s a very real opportunity now.

Hi rpnick

The Monroe is nice but certainly not a dealbreaker if D18 didn’t get it as far as deciding on W&M. Great Campus. Great academics. Great reputation. Great location and Great Kids.

Easy Option

Curious prodesse

Did your daughter decide between UVA and W&M?

Curious what things really mattered most in her final decision as D18 has that same decision to make in the next couple weeks?

@J123D123 My S was considering Echols at UVA and Monroe at W&M last year. Monroe was nice but didn’t fundamentally change the experience in the same way as Echols (with exemption from all general ed requirements) would have done. While he liked W&M more than UVA during the first visit, Echols tipped his preference in favor of UVA, partly because he was OOS (and knew exactly what he wanted to do) and could easily have graduated in three years, which wouldn’t have been the case at W&M. But in the end UVA was the runner up because he decided it would be much cheaper to stay in-state (at UCLA).

@J123D123 My daughter never really loved UVa, which seemed too big to her, and we didn’t urge it. As alums we have great affection for Mr. Jefferson’s University. But W&M is much more focused on undergraduate teaching, has fewer large lecture classes, doesn’t have grad students teaching classes, and is more of a serious-student culture. Less preppy fratty “bro” culture. (Plenty of partying takes place, mind you.) She was a little concerned about the “stress culture” reputation W&M has, but eventually concluded that it was not going to be a problem for her. And it hasn’t, but she already had very disciplined study habits.

People often compare W&M with a large LAC. I think that’s fair. LACs were the competition to W&M for my daughter, not UVa.

I fully agree with much of your description of W&M as a cross between an X and a large LAC. Visiting both this weekend to get a sense of the campus Vibe. Both have good aspects.

UVA has a few fundamental flaws in meeting ones need that has left me asking myself wherein is this rooted. Could easily be the tipping point.

This week is going to be a crazy time to visit Charlottesville!

Do you know if a Monroe Scholar can choose a non scholar to be their roommate in Monroe Hall?

I want to know the answer to this question too! In fact, I just hopped onto CC to ask this very thing.

My D has been communicating with a friendly girl for several weeks and was thinking of asking her this weekend if she’d like to room together. Meanwhile, D just found out she has been selected as a Monroe Scholar. Guess she’ll have hold off the roommate talk until she can get an official answer from W&M admin, unless, per chance, this girl says she is a Monroe Scholar too!