At a Glance
William & Mary admits 37% of applicants.
What You'll Actually Pay
See what families at different income levels actually pay after aid.
Net price data temporarily unavailable. Visit each school's net price calculator directly.
Where the Sticker Price Goes
Sticker price
Not reported by this school
Debt at Graduation
Not reported by this school
receive need-based grant aid
$28,934
average debt at graduation
William & Mary graduates carry an average of $28,934 in debt.
Merit Aid
662
students received merit aid
$5,615
average merit award
Getting In
William & Mary admits 37% of applicants.
College of William & Mary's Early Decision applicants are admitted at 1x the rate of Regular Decision applicants — 49.8% vs 35.7%. Note: ED is binding — you commit to attending if admitted.
SAT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 48% of the class submitted
ACT — Middle 50% of those who submitted · 14% of the class submitted
78.7% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What They Value
Academic
Nonacademic
College of William & Mary rates your personal essay as Very Important — equal weight to your GPA. Don't underestimate it. Demonstrated interest is Considered — showing genuine engagement with this school may help your application.
Student Life
47.6% of William & Mary classes have fewer than 20 students.
Share of undergraduate class sections at each size, from CDS Section I-3. More red = more large lectures.
At William & Mary, 47.6% of your classes will have fewer than 20 students.
Class size data reflects all undergraduate sections including labs, seminars, and lectures. Large research universities often have smaller upper-division and graduate-level sections that improve the overall distribution. First and second-year students typically experience larger classes than these averages suggest.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section I-3 (class sizes)
11:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus Life
Live on campus
64.7%
In Greek life
~27%
Greek-life participation from W&M FSL (2025) — not reported in William & Mary's 2025–26 Common Data Set.
Who Attends
Racial and ethnic breakdown of enrolled undergraduates, as reported in each school's Common Data Set. "Unknown / Other" includes students who did not report or selected "other."
William & Mary's student body is 63% white.
Popular Majors
Will They Graduate?
William & Mary graduates 82.1% of students in 4 years.
Graduating late means paying for extra semesters. The 6-year rate tells you who eventually finishes — the 4-year rate tells you what it actually costs.
William & Mary graduates 82.1% of students in 4 years.
What finishing late actually costs
Based on each school's published cost of attendance. Public school costs shown at in-state rates.
William & Mary
82.1%
4-yr grad rate
Data pending
* In-state cost of attendance. Out-of-state students pay significantly more.
Graduation rate data from Common Data Set 2025–26, Fall 2018 cohort (most recent available). 4-year rate = students completing in 4 years or less. 6-year rate = students completing within 6 years.
88.3%
Overall 6-yr rate
80.3%
Pell recipient rate
An 8 point graduation gap between lower-income and overall students suggests financial or academic challenges for some students.
Freshman Retention
95.3%
95.3% of first-year students return for sophomore year.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in Williamsburg.
William & Mary sits directly beside Colonial Williamsburg, the restored eighteenth-century town, so the campus edge blends into a working historical district of brick streets and costumed interpreters. Williamsburg itself is small — roughly 15,000 residents outside the student body — and quiet, with Richmond an hour west and the Virginia Beach coast about an hour southeast. The campus divides between the Ancient Campus around the Wren Building, the oldest college building still in use in the United States, and the modern academic buildings beyond Crim Dell.
Notable Alumni
Thomas Jefferson
Author of the Declaration of Independence and third president of the United States. He enrolled here in 1760 and studied mathematics, philosophy and law for two years, leaving in 1762 to read law under George Wythe — himself a W&M professor and the first law professor in America.
Robert Gates
U.S. secretary of defense under two presidents, of opposing parties, and a former director of the CIA. He returned to serve as the university's 24th chancellor.
Class of 1965
Glenn Close
Actress with eight Academy Award nominations, three Emmys and three Tony Awards, from Fatal Attraction and Dangerous Liaisons to Damages. She took her degree here in theatre.
Class of 1974
Jon Stewart
Host of The Daily Show for sixteen years, winner of more than twenty Emmy Awards, and the person most credited with turning satire into a primary news source for a generation. He studied psychology here.
Class of 1984
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
The City
College town
Williamsburg, VA
Best For
Traditions
The Yule Log Ceremony
Begun in 1934, and held in the Great Hall each December: students crowd in, the president reads to them in costume, and everyone throws a sprig of holly into the Yule log fire — the sprig carrying whatever you want to leave behind that year. Hot cider and sugar cookies follow.
The Crim Dell Bridge
An ornate red-and-white footbridge built in 1966, crossing the lily pond that separates the old campus from the new. The legend is precise about the terms: cross it with someone and kiss at the crown and you will be together for life; cross it alone and you stay single.
The Sunken Garden
A 2.7-acre rectangle of lawn set below the surrounding ground, running west from the Wren Building. It is the campus's front lawn and its default venue — where people study, throw frisbees, hold the spring carnival and gather for anything that needs the whole college in one place.
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from Williamsburg
Virginia Beach & the Coast
1 hourThe Atlantic, the boardwalk and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, an easy warm-weather run southeast from campus.
Richmond
1 hourThe state capital and the nearest real city — a strong restaurant and music scene, the VMFA, and the government offices where a lot of W&M internships live.
Washington, D.C.
2 hours 45 minutesThe reason many students are here: the museums and monuments for a weekend, and the federal agencies, think tanks and Capitol Hill offices for a summer.
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Newport News/Williamsburg International (PHF)
20 minutes from campus
For international flights: Washington Dulles International (IAD) — about 2 hours 45 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Norfolk Tides MiLBAbout 1 hour away
- Norfolk Admirals ECHLAbout 1 hour away
- Washington Commanders NFLAbout 2.5 hours away
Career Proximity
William & Mary's pipeline runs on government and public service rather than on a local industry cluster: Richmond's state agencies are an hour away and Washington under three, which is why so much of its internship traffic points at capitals rather than at campus.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- U.S. federal agencies
- Commonwealth of Virginia
- Jefferson Lab
- Huntington Ingalls Industries
- Capital One
- Deloitte
Richmond, 1 hour
Who Thrives Here
William & Mary is among the smallest public universities a family is likely to consider — 6,951 undergraduates, with 64.7% of them living on campus, which keeps the social life on the grounds rather than scattered across a city. Founded in 1693, it wears its age openly: the Yule Log ceremony and the Crim Dell bridge are traditions students genuinely organise a year around. Academically it behaves like a private college, with 47.6% of classes under 20 students and an 82.1% four-year graduation rate — the practical measure of whether students finish on time, and a strong one. Cost is where the word 'public' misleads. In-state tuition and fees run about $27,200, William & Mary meets 82% of demonstrated need, and graduates leave owing roughly $28,900, so this is not the cheap in-state option its label suggests. It admits 49.8% of Early Decision applicants against 37.0% overall; those are published rates for two different pools of students, not a tactic, and ED is binding, so it only makes sense once the money already works.