<p>I just took the SATs in May. I did really well on the first two sections, but not so hot on the writing.
CR: 800
Math: 770
Writing: 610</p>
<p>I am also a recruit in swimming. I am not a "slam-dunk" recruit, but definitely a solid recruit. Do you think this will make up for the 610?</p>
<p>Unless things have changed, Williams does not consider the writing section. You can check with the coach on that.</p>
<p>You are correct. They don’t check writing which gives you an insane advantage. 1570/1600 plus a recruit means you have a very good shotI’d say near guaranteed but I’d probably get shot in here.</p>
<p>That is, if you can handle the place. Williams was one of two places I was accepted and upon visiting, I left early because I hated it so much. I’m not trolling and your experience could be entirely different and what you want out of a school could be entirely different. Good luck.</p>
<p>Would you elaborate on the experiences you had that made you hate Williams?</p>
<p>Op, I believe you are in a very good position with the scores you presented and being a recruit.</p>
<p>I described my experience to a fellow student who needed to decide between Williams and UChicago. I will copy and paste my message to him typos and vulgar language included:</p>
<p>I’ll give you the complete run down of my trip from start to finish
So, I planned on going for overnight. Overnight was held on a Monday through Tuesday. I went up on Sunday, planning to stay in a hotel sunday night and the school monday night.
So, first, the place is in the middle of nowhere.
My mother and I were driving in the mountains of new york for a good hour, looking at what seemed to be rural poverty of Georgian levels. Like, clutter, mobile homes, the works. It looked like Mississippi or something like that.
We eventually took a turn, saw a sign that we were in Williamstown and about 2 miles later, took another turn and there was the college. It is seriously in the middle of absolute no where.
To me, that is strike one.
So we go to the hotel where my mother and I are staying and considering it was the nicest and most expensive in the area, I guess I should have expected everyone to be a ******
But still, everyone walked like they had a pole stuck up their asses.
I’m not very humble in terms of intelligence, and I’ll admit that. However, I hate money arrogance. That abounded.
So, I go off on my own to the university to attend a lecture I wanted to see and planned to meet up with my would be host before everyone else.
The lecture was awesome and then I met my host.
He was from eastbum**** no where and seemed somewhat uptight, but whatever.
So we and his girlfriend went to “storytime”, a tradition where one student gets up and tells about his or her life to a large group of people.
That was ok I guess. The dude seemed like a yokel, but that could be my personal bias.
We then headed back to his dorm and I met his friends.
None of them seemed very interested in their studies.
I asked him how much he studied every day and he most of the time it was none.
He said the classes weren’t very hard and he got some As he didn’t think he deserved but did get some Bs he did deserve and was most likely going to get a C that term that he deserved because he wasn’t doing the readings.
So, we go with his friends up to “snacks” which is where every one in a dorm gets together in a common room (very small) to talk about whatever
All they seemed to talk about was getting drunk the previous night and midterms that week.
So after, I left for the night and slept at the hotel.
My mother and I went back to Williams at around 11 and attended the president’s address. It was really by the numbers, but they all are so whatever.
While I was there that day, I talked to a few prospies and they all seemed like asses. One chick said something to me that I thought was quite rude and another group of boys seemed really interested in chicks.
I bid my mom adieu and went into a class
It was an intro to philosophy class and it was actually pretty cool. The professor was awesome.
So when it is done, I have a chat with the professor and head back with my mother to the car to pick up my bag for the over night.
I get there and she says “Hey, check the back seat.”
I see it is our suitcase and I have no idea what’s up
She says “Yeah, this place is so not for you. I checked out. We are going home now. Have fun at UChicago.”
And we stopped by their bookstore, I got a book, and we got the **** out of there as quickly as possible.
Done.</p>
<p>Wow what a story. As a williams alumni and a parent of a sophomore daughter (chick) I am so glad you left that day and never looked back. You succeeded in slamming every gender, ethnicity and socioeconomic element that exists in the world. Thinking that you and my daughter could have been classmates brings a chill down my spine. Finally, some elements of your story sound fishy to me, like the lack of studying, the easy A, the preoccupation with “chicks”, to name just a few.</p>
<p>My sentiments exactly, Finnsdad. What a complete tool.</p>
<p>If you take offense to my language, which i will admit was not originally targeted toward adults on an internet forum, that is fine. You would have to take me at my word that I am far from sexist and to me “chicks” isn’t an more offensive than “dudes,” a word I also use a lot. As for slamming socioeconomic statuses, I’m sure we have all met uptight rich people. They exist and to deny their existence is do a disservice to reality. All around me, I saw people who seemed like they thought they were better than others because they had more money, and to me, that totally isn’t cool. As for what I’m sure you thought was my slamming “rural poverty,” let me assure you I was only talking about it to evince just how “in the middle of no where” it is. I, unlike what I perceived at Williams (I even talked to a waitress in Williamstown who made fun of them), don’t think I am better than they are. Also, to call into question anything I said doesn’t make sense. I can assure you that I talked to a few people who said that the classes were relatively easy without studying and the three guys I met were indeed very preoccupied with…women. Also, how did I slam ethnicity? I don’t recall writing anything that would make you perceive that.</p>
<p>Anyway, I probably should have reconstructed the message to fit the forum better and I didn’t. I was lazy and it was really late at night. You still probably don’t believe me and that is your deal. I’m only giving you my perception of what happened. For what it is worth, the student I was in communication with ended up choosing Williams and I said to him:</p>
<p>“Hey man, my experience isn’t the be all end all of experiences. You will probably dig it. Have fun dude.”</p>
<p>But hey, I guess I’m just a tool.</p>
<p>Hevy - I appreciate your willingness to share your unfiltered comments with a potentially hostile audience of Williams alums, admirers, and aspirants - and for sheer entertainment value, I give your story high marks. But I’m having trouble understanding why you applied to Williams in the first place - did you really have to shlep through upstate NY all the way to Williamstown to figure out that the college is in an isolated area? The rural character of Williams should not be a secret to anyone applying there. </p>
<p>Anyway, glad it worked out for you at University of Chicago. </p>
<p>-CC</p>
<p>I am on my phone so please excuse errors and terseness.</p>
<p>Regarding the area being rural, well, I didn’t think it’d be that bad. I thought it would be rural within the college and then have stuff to do around it. I was wrong. Like, I thought it would be like Vassar, where my girlfriend is going. The college area might be small but there are things around it.</p>
<p>Also, I largely applied for a poor reason. I wanted to be closer to my girlfriend. It is a terrible reason and the only reason I applied to Amherst as well. We both thought shed end up in mass but we were wrong. I convinced myself that I liked the small environment and applied because of the tutorials, a concept I still love. After visiting, I realized that even though I would be much closer tomy girlfriend, I would hate my time spent there. I need a bigger environment and a more intellectual, less preproffesional atmosphere. Not saying that all the kids at Williams are interested in money over learning but it was certainly what I picked up from both the administration when they talked and a lot of the students I talked to.</p>
<p>I hope that makes sense.</p>
<p>who went to Williams and since that time has lived in three urban areas (UChicago, then Boston and D.C.). The description of the Berkshires by hevydevy based on his single day spent there is simply not accurate. It is a place that I treasure and love going back to, notwithstanding all of the urban areas I’ve lived in. To me, in fact, and to most Williams students and alums, the Berkshires are magical. I certainly thought there was a heck of a lot more appealing things to do in Williamstown than in Hyde Park (although not, of course, than in Chicago as a whole). </p>
<p>Yes, they are rural. But it is also in one of the most culturally rich areas of the country, not even remotely comparable to a trailer park strewn wasteland in the “middle of Mississippi.” I mean, every summer, a slew of celebrities descend on Williamstown. Wilco hosts every year a major music festival next door in North Adams. The point is, a lot of very cool, very cultured people love the Berkshires. And for good reason. There are numerous major art museums, more than you will find in all but a small handful of cities in the U.S.: The Clark, MassMoca, Williams College Museum of Art, Norman Rockwell museum, and so on. There is Jacob’s Pillow. There is the Berkshire Symphony and Tanglewood. There is the Williamstown Theater Festival, and all of the great performances at the spectacular college theater throughout the year. There is Images art house cinema in town, and the Williamstown film festival. And so on. Many of these institutions host a variety of interesting events throughout the year, even though summer is the primary focus. And that doesn’t even get into the LOADS of events hosted by the college itself every single week. </p>
<p>You also have a spectacular array of natural beauty and outdoors activities, from Mt. Greylock which is part of the Appalachian trail, to the best college golf course in the country, to skiing practically adjacent to campus, to Hopkins Forest. </p>
<p>Williamstown also has a lot of very solid food options, yeah, it’s not a city, but it’s a far, far, far cry from rural Mississippi when you can go to places likes Mezze or Hops and Vines or the Orchards, or have Tunnel City and Pappa C’s, or get Thai, Indian, Mexican, in addition to various pizza and burger options, right on Spring Street. </p>
<p>The point is, Williamstown, and the Berkshires in general, are the sort of wasteland described only if you have on interest whatsoever in art, culture, or mother nature. If they were, it would not have one of the most thriving tourist-based economies in the entire country. Basically, if you are really into bar hopping and/or clubbing, and require a huge array of places to eat off campus, Williamstown will not remotely be for you. But as others have said, that is obvious from a brief Internet search. </p>
<p>It’s OK that Williams was not for you. Clearly, you would not have been a good fit. But it’s also important to correct your “impressions” of the surrounding area when those impressions were clearly not formed after any sort of careful exploration or observation. </p>
<p>And the money over learning thing is just simply b.s. Williams provides one of the most intellectual learning environments in the country. Folks choose Williams purposefully because they DON’T want a pre-professional environment where everyone is an aspiring entrepeneur or engineer. That is why the school places so much emphasis, both in recruiting and in institutional resource allocation, on the image of Mark Hopkins and The Log, and in the campus tutorial program, small class sizes, deep student engagement with education, and so on.</p>
<p>Please stop knocking Mississippi. Every state has a healthy trailer park culture – be it CA, NY, CT, etc. In fact, when I attended Williams, Williamstown had the largest trailer community I had ever seen anywhere, including Mississippi. It was called Bay Colony Park and had hundreds of trailer homes, but I digress… Williamstown is truly a great place for college, even with the trailer park, which is no where near the campus! There is more art, culture, beauty and intellectual power in those few square miles than in many major cities. There will always be more to do there than you will be able to take advantage of because you do have to study and attend classes. Williams doesn’t give away grades. Sure, you won’t find night clubs there, but I didn’t hear too many people complain about nothing to do at night or on weekends. And I came to Williams from an major urban area. If you need an urban fix, you can get to Boston or New York for a long weekend or holiday, but I only felt the need maybe once a semester. But a quick day trip into the city is not practical, nor likely to be necessary once you become part of the Williams community. Oh, by the way, I was not a sports enthusiast either, but it made no difference. I was more of an arts and culture person who enjoyed my Williams experience.</p>
<p>Just wanted to give my opinion after spending some time at Williams today. I LOVE the campus and can picture myself at the school. I found the area around Williams to be quite nice. However, as you drive a little further I see where hevydevy saw the trailer park, but honestly that doesn’t bother me. On how rural the college is, I think it has everything a college student needs. Is there a club? No. But there’s always going to be parties on a college campus and I’m not really a club type person. On the people, I wasn’t there on a tour, but everyone I met was really nice. Hopefully I will be going back in the fall for an overnight, and then I can really give you my opinion on the people.</p>