<p>Why does Williams have a much higher admissions rate than Amherst/Swarthmore/Pomona, but Williams is ranked 1 in liberal arts colleges?</p>
<p>It is more isolated, which could make it less well known and/or be desirable to fewer students</p>
<p>Williams admission rate for last year was 17%, Swathmore 15%, Pomona 14% and Amherst 13%. Why do believe Williams’ rate is “much” higher than the others? Differences of a few percentage points really mean nothing. Also, admission rate is one factor among several used by the rating companies to determine rank. Moreover, the usual actual difference in total score for ranking purposes between a college ranked first and one ranked fifth is so miniscule that no one should believe one is better than the other.</p>
<p>cc24: what is “admission rate”? # of admits/# of applications.</p>
<p>For some reason, Williams has fewer applications, it appears, than peer schools. Maybe they don’t send out as many mindless fliers as the others. Maybe there is an extra hurdle in its application (I’m only guessing – I’ve never seen one) that some students don’t push thru.</p>
<p>Regardless, it’s certainly no decrement to Williams reputation. Nor should you be searching for schools based on that number either.</p>
<p>Admission rate is only determined by three things: number of applicants, number of spaces in the class, and expected yield. There are plenty of great colleges that you’ll overlook if you only look at admission rate. Grinnell is another LAC with an an anomalously high admission rate because of its isolated location.</p>
<p>A number of factors play in:</p>
<p>(1) Williams has a somewhat larger student body than most of its peers (only Middlebury and Wesleyan have larger student bodies, and they both typically have higher admissions rates). Swarthmore and Bowdoin, in particular, have substantially smaller student populations, which has an even bigger impact on the application rate than the size of the applicant pool. So, even though Williams generally receives more applicants than Swarthmore, Swarthmore admits many fewer students than Williams since its entering class is only around 70 percent as large, resulting in a lower admit percentage some years. </p>
<p>(2) The biggest factor is likely that Williams has a supplemental essay, which many liberal arts college do not have. A lot of people who are marginally interested and would apply just for the heck of it by clicking on the common application button will be dissuaded to apply by this essay. The essay was added just a few years ago, and Williams had a big drop in application volume the following year. Williams typically has the highest yield among top liberal arts colleges, meaning that it is doing a very good job culling applicants by interest level.</p>
<p>(3) The isolation factor definitely plays a role, most people aren’t going to bother to visit Williams unless they are highly interested in the first place, since it is 1.5 hours from Amherst and much further from any other peer school. </p>
<p>(4) I don’t get the sense that Williams really works hard to aggressively market itself the way some of its peers do. I do think Williams could stand to do a bit more outreach to applicant pools who are unfamiliar with what it has to offer, rather than just letting applicants find it on their own. The school’s website (which is being radically reworked) is also not particularly appealing / inviting, and the school is one of the few in its peer group that doesn’t even offer an online video tour. </p>
<p>I am sure that Williams could easily, if it wanted to, get its admissions rate down to the 12-13 percent range, but since it is enrolling the student body it wants to, and since the vast majority of the additional applicants would either be rejected or ultimately would not attend if admitted, I am not sure the school has much incentive to do so, other than for college rankings / appearances purposes.</p>
<p>"(2) The biggest factor is likely that Williams has a supplemental essay, which many liberal arts college do not have. A lot of people who are marginally interested and would apply just for the heck of it by clicking on the common application button will be dissuaded to apply by this essay. The essay was added just a few years ago, and Williams had a big drop in application volume the following year. Williams typically has the highest yield among top liberal arts colleges, meaning that it is doing a very good job culling applicants by interest level."</p>
<p>I guessed correctly! LOL</p>