Hi everyone! Thanks for taking the time to read (and hopefully respond to) this thread.
Ive been having a dilemma. It’s my junior year and I’ve been thinking more and more about colleges.
I’m down to my top 3 , two of which offer Early Decision and one that offers Early Action.
They all have fantastic pros, but also have cons that make me nervous about each school.
I want to be in Virginia so these schools are my favorite and best options!
UVA has the social scene , good students and academics but it’s huge
William and Mary has the right size, academics and good sororities but apparently social life sucks
Washington and Lee has social scene, good students, and academics but it’s small
What do you guys think?
I’m a fairly outgoing person, but I don’t drink and I’m not a huge person on partying but I don’t mind it. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who only care about their money and looks, but I feel like that’s inevitable at every school. I just get nervous, I come from a small town and small high school so W&L and W&M are in my comfort zone but I don’t know!
These schools are very competitive. I assume you know about this and your test scores and grades make admission a possibility.
W&L is a private school, so you need to be sure your parents can and are willing to pay for it.
In terms of school size, social life and the prevalent outlook of the student body - you should visit all three colleges and see which ones resonate with you. It’s pointless to argue with your assumptions about these schools, because they are theoretical at this point.
While William & Mary does have the reputation of attracting very studious kids, that doesn’t mean the social life is going to be nonexistent. It seems to do a good job of building community. It’s not a huge party school, but it does have a lot of social activities
I love each of those schools too! As a graduating senior who has applied to each of these schools, here is my advice. If you have a solid application with excellent grades, excellent test scores and challenging coursework, I would apply Early Action to UVA in the fall. If not, just do RD. Next, I would do more research on W&M and W&L. If you happen to absolutely fall in love with one of them between now and the fall, and if money is not a big factor in your college decision, think about applying Early Decision to one of them. But if you go EA on UVA and RD on W&L and W&M, then you’ll get to hear back from each of them before you make a decision. And if unfortunately you do not get accepted into one of them, at least that will help you narrow things down! Things will sort themselves out, don’t worry.
"I’m a fairly outgoing person, but I don’t drink and I’m not a huge person on partying but I don’t mind it. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who only care about their money and looks, but I feel like that’s inevitable at every school. "
I just don’t think you are a good fit at all for Wash & Lee.
It seems like you prefer the size of W&M over the positives that you mentioned for UVA. Therefore, I would just apply ED for W&M and RD for UVA (as it appears that there is no advantage to applying EA at UVA anyway.)
