Williamsburg might seem a bit crowded this weekend, as new undergraduate and graduate students at the College of William & Mary get acclimated to their new home.
Move-in and orientation began Friday. Classes will begin on Wednesday, and convocation will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Wren Yard later that day.
The new undergraduate class of 1,474 comes from a pool of more than 13,600 applicants, a new record for the university. This year also set new highs for enrolling students of color and the top quartile of SAT scores for enrolling freshmen.
About 30 percent of the new freshmen are students of color, and 6 percent are international students. Another 10 percent are first-generation college students; by contrast, 9 percent of the new Tribe members are legacies. The average SAT for the class of 2017 is 1250-1460, and 79 percent of the new students graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school classes. Twenty freshmen are enrolled as part of the joint program with the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.
The campus will also welcome 214 transfer students, 78 from the Virginia Community College System, 39 of which had guaranteed admission agreements.
At the graduate level, 196 new students have enrolled at the Law School, with a median undergraduate grade point average of 3.74 and a median LSAT of 164. The Law School is also welcoming 27 new students into its LL.M. program, which serves people who have received law training outside of the United States. These students hail from China, India, Jamaica, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.
At the Mason School of Business, 92 new students make up the Class of 2014. They represent 20 U.S. states and 18 countries, bringing an average of four years of work experience. Forty percent of the MBA seekers are women, and 40 percent are international students.
The second cohort of Major General James Wright MBA Fellows from the U.S. Army will also begin their work at the Mason School this semester. The 20 fellows have a collective average of nine years of experience.
More than 200 new students will be attending the School of Education, along with 52 fifth-year students who have transitioned from undergraduate to graduate studies.
Applications to the Arts & Sciences graduate programs are at an all-time high. The 128 new graduate students will be studying American studies, anthropology, applied science, biology, chemistry, history, physics, psychology and public policy.
At the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, 20 students will begin studying. They include a former intern with NOAA, an award-winning sailor, multiple students who have already been published and a student who helped to monitor the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
