<p>That's very odd. What were your stats, hooks, ecs?</p>
<p>It's John Stewart's alma mater, so he may come to speak (he came to speak at graduation last year I think)--in my book that's a plus.</p>
<p>Soccerguy, like I said, I think W&M is a great school. You won't see me arguing that it isn't, but you say that it has higher scores than Berkeley. What scores, other than a slightly higher average SAT, are higher? Because Cal's average GPA his higher, so I'm not sure what other scores we're talking about. Its also not quite fair to either school to try to place them next to each other. Isn't W&M an LAC? Cal is a rather large research schools that exels in a larger range of fields (as far as rankings go). My argument with the op was in his assertion that somehow W&M is somehow as prestigious as Harvard or other schools in that group, which for me it is not. Now, prestige means different things to different people, and if you're on the east coast maybe things are viewed differently, but I've just never thought of W&M like that.</p>
<p>Berkeley and W&M are about equal on the selectivity "meter." At any rate, they are the top two state-supported universities in the nation.</p>
<p>W&M is not a LAC. It has 5 graduate schools: arts & sciences, business, education, law, marine science. It is also developing an applied science (de facto engineering) school. "College" is maintained for hiostorical purposes in the name of the school, just like at Dartmouth.</p>
<p>No, William & Mary is not comparable to Harvard in terms of selectivity (10 vs. 28% acceptance rates), endowment or faculty size but W&M does have a greater historical tradition and academic commitment. William & Mary's antecedent's actually predate Harvard's but an Indian attack pushed building from the early 1600s to the late 1600's. Technically, W&M is the oldest US "university" and Harvard is the oldest "college."</p>
<p>Equating Berkeley and William and Mary as universities is like equating a top of the line Mercedes and a Honda Civic. Berkeley does many things W&M does not even dream about.</p>
<p>You are using a mixed metaphor here based on size and quality. A more appropriate comparison would have involved similar quality/prestige vehicles of different sizes. Berekely's Achilles' heel is its large class sizes. Freshman claases are probably 300 or more and taught by TAs instead of professors. You won't find that at W&M.</p>
<p>I am looking at the overall quality and depth of the schools. Berkeley is a leading research university with 200 NAS members on staff. W&M is a small university with few pretensions of doing major research work. The size of some undergrad class has little to do with the overall scope of the school. If you want small classes you can find them at any community college too. Does that make cc's great universities? A great university is far more than just undergrad. Great universities are world leaders in creating knowledge and educating people to the highest level in order to teach future academic leaders.
If you want to say W&M offers a better undergrad experience, fine. It probably does in some areas. But it's not a great university.</p>
<p>Research at William and Mary
A nationally known research university, the College of William and Mary last year received more than $48-million in research funding from federal, state and local agencies and from private industry. Whether it's identifying marine pathobiological agents, creating ways to map the human genome, studying 18th century slave culture or developing methods to employ technology in the schools, research at William and Mary is advancing the frontiers of knowledge. </p>
<p>Research Centers</p>
<p>Ash Lawn-Highland
Center for Archaeological Research
Center for Conservation Biology
Center for Excellence in Aging and Geriatric Health
Center for Gifted Education
Center for Operations Management, Process Engineering, and Technological Expertise (COMPETE)
Center for Public Policy Research
Computational Science Cluster
Courtroom 21
Institute of Bill of Rights Law
Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
SciClone Cluster Project
The Technology and Business Center
Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS)
W.M. Keck Environmental Field Laboratory</p>
<p>$48 M does not put you in the top 100. Actually it's about 168th.</p>
<p>So bigger is always better, huh? Absolute dollar spending wins the race? I think observers of the federal government would differ with that logic!</p>
<p>SouthernBoy, Do you attend W&M? If not, why are you defending for it?</p>
<p>It's a GREAT school, EXCELLENT school, one of the best in the nation, better 99% of all universities in US. The ONLY downside is the career service (most of the top companies, which i want to go in, don't recruit on W&M's campus...) :( yea, it's a great school overall.</p>
<p>No, but bigger is different and has more depth in more areas. Berkeley has a library with nearly 10 million volumes, William & Mary about 1.6 million. Virtually every major dept. at B will have its own building and up to date labs and highly sophisticated equipment.</p>
<p>Barrons, have you seen the list of W&M alumni? W&M was/is good enough to attract people like U.S. presidents, CEOs, politicians, pulitzer prize winners, award winning actors, etc. (it's a long list, take a look)</p>
<p>haha...like college students will actually use so many damn library books anyway...haha...that's why I transferred to UVA, you know, because they have more millions of volumes.</p>
<p>Haha...did anyone catch the sarcasm?</p>
<p>Barrons, what good are all those things if you're not going to use them? The equipment at WM and most LAC's is plenty good for an undergrads purposes. An undergrad is still a begginner...you don't have to worry about fancy libraries and equitment until you're at the grad level.</p>
<p>Berkeley vs WM is the new title of this thread lol</p>
<p>we are comparring apples and oranges...we really shouldn't get into this...</p>
<p>I will agree with that. The schools are more different than similar in many ways. Better to compare WM with Dartmouth or Georgetown.</p>
<p>W&M is really prestigious in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, NC, SC, GA area</p>
<p>OP:</p>
<p>I don't know if the interviews are that important. They are very new, and I remember hearing somewhere (this is not promised to be true) that they are more for the student to get to know the school rather than the other way around. I don't think it's worth a trip from FL for one. Remember, these are interviews with students, not alumni.</p>
<p>(and yes, 8 classes over 2 semesters + music stuff. It was 18 and 16 credits, and I did... ok. I also did like no work (esp 1st semester, this was a mistake), because I'm a slacker like that.)</p>
<p>And for the record W&M has ~5600 undergrads and about 2000 grad students. Grad students live in the grad housing or off campus, and the undergrads, about 3000+ live on campus, and the off campus ones are mostly together in a couple apartment/townhouse complexes. Small/Medium/Large are obviously relative.</p>
<p>GentlemanandScholar </p>
<p>I agree that W&M is not as prestigious as Harvard. However where it counts, the name is well known and widely respected. I've seen job postings from the career center at W&M where the employer (politics related) is looking for "a W&M grad".</p>
<p>... I was going to comment on other stuff but it's good it has been agreed that Berkeley and W&M are different schools with different goals. W&M does do research, but it is definitely not the main focus of the school. It does not have the full range of graduate schools either.</p>
<p>Untitled</p>
<p>I don't speak for SouthernBoy, but he was probably defending W&M because barrons was making arguments full of holes. (Berkeley = mercedes, W&M = civic, then what do the other 2500 schools =? fred flinstones car? and then what about community colleges? a drain on the economy?)</p>