Williams, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, has a transfer acceptance rate that rivals the Ivy League. It is difficult to find statistics online that came directly from Williams, but it has been reported that their transfer acceptance rate is 3%. We’ll break down their supplements below, but be sure to check their website for additional requirements.
In no more than 650 words, please tell us your reasons for transferring and what you hope to achieve at your next institution.
There’s a lot to cover in this supplement, which works out perfectly because you have 650 words to do it. That’s the length of your original common app essay, and while there are necessary key factual points to hit here, the end result should still read as a story with a beginning, middle, and end.
Your goal is to prove that your academic interests are best pursued at Williams, and that your needs are not being met at your current school. The best way to do this is to start by telling Williams your origin story, which is a story about how your academic interests came to be. Your origin story is the backdrop for your entire essay and a way for the admissions team to get to know you. Think back to when you first realized you wanted to major in Biology, perhaps as young child examining frogs and turtles by a lake or in an AP Biology lab during high school. Tell them what happened. After reading your origin story, the admissions team should be able to easily discern what you plan to major in.
Whatever major you choose, find two upper-level classes that you want to take and a professor who you would like to conduct research with. It has to be upper-level classes because you’ve likely already taken the introductory courses and high-level classes are more specific to Williams. At this point, if you’re serious about wanting to transfer, you should already be “specializing” in something. So, you’re not transferring to Williams just to be an English major. You’re hoping to study Irish Literature at Williams while doing research alongside X professor. Pitch yourself as a terrific research assistant by explaining how what you’ve done in the past (coursework, jobs, internships, online classes, extracurricular activities) makes you a good fit for their team.
It’s also important to address how you’ll be spending your time outside of the classroom, so you should find an extracurricular activity that you plan to join should you get in. You can choose anything you like, and it doesn’t have to be related to your major, as long as what you choose is a logical extension of the activities that you did in high school and/or college.
By this point, you should have fleshed out why Williams is your ideal academic environment. But you’re not done yet. You also need to explain why you’re currently attending X school, and why things have gone south. But you should do so in a mature way, aka don’t complain and talk poorly about your current school. Just tell them why it’s not a good fit for you and move on. In terms of explaining why you’re currently attending X school, honesty is key. Perhaps you chose the school because it was close to home, you misjudged the academic programs, or you’ve recently decided to refine your major. A lot of transfer students that we work with are reluctant to admit any mistakes or wrongdoing, but it’s crucial to explain your current situation.
Once you have all of the facts written it, look at what you have and find a way to craft a narrative around the information. Then edit, edit, and edit some more. 650 words is a lot, which means that things can get wordy, so make sure to avoid repetitive information. When it doubt, shorten the sentence.
Please respond to one of the prompts below in a short essay of 300 words or fewer.
1. At Williams we believe that bringing together students and professors in small groups produces extraordinary academic outcomes. Our distinctive Oxford-style tutorial classes—in which two students are guided by a professor in deep exploration of a single topic—are a prime example. Each week the students take turns developing independent work—an essay, a problem set, a piece of art—and critiquing their partner's work. Focused on close reading, writing and oral defense of ideas, more than 60 tutorials a year are offered across the curriculum, with titles like Aesthetic Outrage, Financial Crises: Causes and Cures, and Genome Sciences: At the Cutting Edge. Imagine yourself in a tutorial at Williams. Of anyone in the world, whom would you choose to be your partner in the class, and why?
Whatever you do, don’t start with the person. It’s a trap, and you’ll drive yourself crazy trying to choose the perfect person. There is no perfect person, but there are nearly perfect topics. The best way to go about brainstorming your response is to think about your hobbies, offshoots of your academic interests, rabbit holes that you’ve gone down, and anything else that you enjoy learning about and/or doing during your free time. The key here is to pick something that you’re passionate about. It’s interesting to listen to people talk and write about things that they truly care about it, and it’s boring to read something that you can tell is forced.
Once you have your topic narrowed down, then you can start thinking about the person that you’d like to invite to your tutorial. You might want to pick someone that could shed new light on your topic, or even someone that could challenge your beliefs. The person that you pick is the vehicle through which you’ll discuss your unique and interesting topic, so you should avoid anyone at the head of the issue, anyone problematic, or celebrities that you’re obsessed with. You should then provide context as to why the person that you’ve chosen is the absolute best person to discuss X topic with. It’s okay (and better) if they require a bit of an explanation, but don’t waste all of your space writing a biography.
As for the writing, you’re not simply interviewing the person who you’re on stage with. Write about what your dynamic is like, the back and forth, and the well-researched discussion that you’ll have.
2. Each Sunday night, in a tradition called Storytime, students, faculty and staff gather to hear a fellow community member relate a brief story from their life (and to munch on the storyteller's favorite homemade cookies). What story would you share? What lessons have you drawn from that story, and how would those lessons inform your time at Williams?
The mistake that most students make here is to try to choose an earth-shattering, heartbreaking, poignant lesson. That doesn’t work. We strongly prefer to answer this question by telling a light-hearted story that is also funny. Yes, humor writing can be difficult. But the admissions team at Amherst is reading thousands of these responses, and we’re certain that reading something light (think: using salt instead of sugar the first time you baked) would be a welcome change of pace. It also tells them that you don’t take yourself too seriously. Think about simple mistakes that you’ve made, or that day that nothing seemed to go your way and all you could do was laugh. When you start writing, drop them into the scene directly and let everything else be implied.
If you need help with a transfer application, contact us here.