Mutual admiration: W&M and the admitted Class of 2020
Welcome to W&M: Students look for their names on a banner during last year's Day for Admitted Students at William & Mary. Photo by Stephen Salpukas
You could say it was love at first sight for Michaela Flemming.
“I walked onto campus and literally knew right away that W&M was where I was meant to be,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “If you’ve ever seen Say Yes to the Dress, I looked like one of those brides who just found their dress.”
On March 23, Flemming found her love reciprocated when she was one of 5,093 students to be offered admission to William & Mary. More than 1,000 of those students and their families are expected on campus Saturday for the annual Day for Admitted Students, but the celebration has been ongoing since the offers were made.
“Since I’ve been accepted, I’ve only gotten more and more excited to attend,” Flemming wrote.
The admissions committee pored through 14,380 applications this year, offering admittance to 35.4 percent of the applicant pool. The university is expected to enroll a total of 1,520 freshmen in the fall, including 20 members of the St Andrews William & Mary Joint Degree Programme.
Eighty-six percent of the admitted students with a class rank are in the top 10 percent of their classes, and the median SAT score for the group is 1420.
Seven percent of the admitted students are international, and 35 percent are students of color. Additionally, students in all 50 U.S. states – along with Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands – received offers of admission.
"Beyond their impressive accomplishments and talents, what really stands out to me about the Class of 2020 is the way they've already come together as a community,” said Tim Wolfe, associate provost for enrollment and dean of admission. “I'm confident they will prove to be an excellent fit for William & Mary."
As soon as the offers went out, students took to social media to express their excitement, tagging their posts with #WM2020. Current students and alumni also posted on social media with the hashtag, welcoming the new students to the Tribe and reminiscing about when they received their own offers of admission to W&M. The posts have been collected on Storify and Tagboard.
The Office of Undergraduate Admission also recently launched a social media campaign – #whyWM – to show admitted students why alumni and current members of the campus community love the university. The campaign also seeks to hear from admitted students, like Flemming, about what drew them to the Tribe.
“Better question: why wouldn’t you want to go!!?” wrote Alicia Draper on Facebook.
The campaign will run through mid-May, and the posts are being aggregated on Tagboard.
