William & Mary is a top public university with majors and 7,000 undergraduate students. They are known as a college experience, with academics that pack a punch. The campus is beautiful, and they attract students from around the world who want a balanced college experience with loads of opportunities. There are amazing opportunities beyond campus, too, like the . Students also have access to research, internships, and community-engaged learning. The acceptance rate is about
W&M offers Early Decision I, Early Decision II, or Regular Decision, and they strongly prioritize students who elect to follow the ED path. The Early Decision I and II combined acceptance rate for the Class of 2029 was under 50%. This also tells us that the RD acceptance rate is actually closer to 25%. These acceptance rates also don’t account for the preference given to in-state applicants. If you are an out-of-state applicant, your chances of admission are significantly lower, making the ED options and a carefully crafted application all the more important.
In this post, we’ll be focused on one of the most powerful ways of improving your chances of admission to W&M whether you pick ED or RD. Your grades are set, your scores are in (W&M is , by the way), and your activities are what they are. What you can still control is how you write about what you have done over the past four years, and how you have pursued, developed, and discovered a passion that you hope to pursue in college. All that comes up in the supplement.
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W&M has an optional supplemental essay. Now, we often repeat that optional isn’t optional if you want to get in. We are going to say it again here, too. Optional is not optional if you want to get in. So, yes, you will be writing the William & Mary supplement.
They offer the supplement because they from you, beyond the general college essay, in your authentic voice. They also have some really for writing a strong essay for their admissions officials. A few of our favorites are:
Do not tell a story that another teenager could tell. It should be truly your own.
Do not try to tell them what you think they want to hear. Instead, share what you need to say.
Do not write about someone else. Your grandpa may be amazing, but this needs to be about you.
But what is the prompt, you ask? Let’s get into it because there are a few options.
THE SUPPLEMENT
W&M invites you to select up to two of the prompts below and respond to each in up to 300 words. It should not be surprising, then, that we advise our students to do exactly that: you’ll be picking two, and responding to each in 250-300 words.
Below are the options. Remember, you’ll be picking two:
Option 1: Are there any particular communities that are important to you, and how do you see yourself being a part of our community?
We love community prompts because they invite you, the applicant, to share something that is important to you and that has shaped you into the awesome person you are without it all being about you in a way that could appear self-obsessed or like you are not community-minded. The key to pulling it off, though, is with story.
Let’s go into an example.
Perhaps you work in a program at the Boys & Girls club in your area, and it’s a program that you were part of as a younger student. You could write the essay about an experience helping a kid navigate a frustrating social situation, talking them through being upset and towards understanding, in the same room where you were mentored by students about your age now. This story would show leadership, responsibility, empathy, compassion, and a deep care for your community.
The same type of structure and format can be applied to almost any community. How did it help build you? And how are you writing the next chapter?
Option 2: Share more about a personal academic interest or career goal.
We read this prompt as really being a curiosity prompt along the lines of “tell us about something that makes you curious.” It’s not all that interesting to hear a teenager write about career goals a decade or more in the future, but it’s fascinating to hear about the underlying interest(s) driving those goals and sparking those dreams, and that’s the academic interest bit.
The aim, for you, is to convey a level of enthusiasm in your writing of a response here that it’s genuinely contagious. The reader should not be able to leave this prompt without wanting to know more. Enthusiasm isn’t the same thing as effusiveness, though. You don’t need to use exclamation points to convey passion. Instead, do it through detail. Go deep into detail on a particular aspect of what you love. For example, if you are really into economics, write about one tiny thing or event within economics, or in history as relates to economics, that you are super interested in.
Keep this supplement focused in breadth. Go deep, not wide.
Option 3: How has your family, culture and/or background shaped your lived experience?
This prompt is one that many students jump to as an obvious pick. We don’t love it, though. This applicant needs to be about you and the ways in which you have directed and driven your life, not as much about the things over which you have no control. If you are intent on responding to this one, though, make sure to make yourself the protagonist. You need to be doing things, not simply having things happen to you. Your family, culture, and background may have shaped you, but how have you played an active role in that experience or process?
Option 4: What led to your interest in William & Mary?
This is a really important prompt for W&M, especially if you are highly qualified. W&M wants to know that you know — and want — them, and this prompt gives you an opportunity to make it abundantly clear that you not only know the W&M program, but you’re a perfect fit for the precise type of education (and the options) they offer.
Don’t, then, address this prompt in a strictly linear way. Sure, you may have heard of W&M from a friend, teacher, or parent, but there is no benefit to even including that in a single sentence of this supplement. Instead of spending time on the ‘meet cute’, focus on what developed your interest in W&M. Ideally, you can find 2 ‘buckets’ of interest: academic and community. Write about your prospective major, courses you are drawn to, and a professor or two you hope to study under, and then about the community things that make W&M awesome to you, like specific clubs or student groups, traditions, or programs.
Option 5: Tell us about a challenge or adversity you’ve experienced and how that has impacted you as an individual.
This supplement prompt is not a good option for most applicants. Ultimately, responses devolve into a bit of a hardship test. Whomever has struggled the most wins, right? Wrong. That’s a terrible game to play, and the wrong approach to college admissions. So, unless there is something truly distinct and, importantly, relevant to your future academic path, we don’t suggest picking this prompt.
An example of what could work, though, is if you have faced something that led you to your dream for the future. If you want to become a doctor, for example, it could be because of a medical experience. Or if you want to become a teacher, it could be because of how a teacher supported you through an academic challenge. If there isn’t a clear connection between your future at W&M and whatever challenge or adversity you would be focusing on, this isn’t a good option.
Option 6: If we visited your town, what would you want to show us?
Hmmm. This one is intriguing. It is possible to write a fabulous answer that strengthens your application, but it requires a particular approach. Don’t take the reader on a tour of your town. Instead, pick one or two landmarks to focus on that communicate key interests and values for you. It could be, the children’s room of the library could be a meaningful spot, the pond where you watched turtles, the house that was your first lawn-mowing job, or the bus stop where you met your best friend. It isn’t about telling them all about your town, but about showing them pieces of you they wouldn’t see in your application otherwise.
Every applicant who wants to get in needs to answer two of these prompts, and nearly every applicant should select either #2 or #4 as one of their two to respond to. This is especially true for highly qualified applicants who have scores and grades above of recently accepted students. This is because W&M will be on the lookout for signs that you are using them as a backup, and they may not let you in even as a highly qualified applicant if they think you aren’t all that into them.
As a strong applicant, it is more important than ever to emphasize your interest in W&M specifically, and why you can see yourself thriving on campus.
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