Williams College
Williams publishes 8.6% (Fall 2025 entering class). Early Decision applicants got in at 27%; everyone else at 7.4%.
Acceptance rate
What Williams's 8.6% is made of
The published rate averages groups with very different odds. These are the splits Williams reports itself.
By application round
Fall 2025 entering class (CDS 2025-2026, Section C1: 1,336 admitted of 15,520 applicants)
Read the full decomposition →Part of Real Acceptance Rates, our series decomposing published rates from each school's own Common Data Set.
Testing
Test-Optional for 2026-27
- Policy
Secondary sources report Williams' test-optional policy 'will remain in place for the 2025-26 admissions cycle'; no announcement of a reinstatement was found, so test-optional is the best current assessment for 2026-27, but this could NOT be verified directly against Williams' own site (see flags) and should be re-checked before publishing.
- SAT middle 50%
- 1490–1570sum of section 25th–75th percentiles
- ACT middle 50%
- 34–35
- Average HS GPA
- Not published by the school
Applying
Deadlines, essays and AI policy
- Early deadlines
- Nov 15, 2026 (ED)
- Regular decision
- Jan 4, 2027Source
- Supplemental essays
- None beyond the personal statement
Confirmed directly on williams.edu: 'Williams does not require a writing supplement.' An optional 'additional writing supplement' exists alongside separate optional arts-portfolio and scientific-research-abstract submissions. Only ONE Early Decision round exists (no ED2) — deadline Nov. 15.
- AI use in essays
No Official Policy
We reviewed Williams's how-to-apply hub and first-year applicant pages (via a rendering proxy — the site blocks automated readers) — no published guidance on applicant AI use.
Full cycle calendar: Application Deadlines.
At a glance
Size and cost
- Undergraduate enrollment
- 2,076
- Tuition (out-of-state)
- $68,560
- Category
- Liberal Arts
- Admissions site
- www.williams.edu
What should this school mean for your list?
A published rate is one input. Working out what it means alongside the rest of your list is the part that actually changes an application. Free 25-minute call, no commitment.
Sources
- Williams test policy (2026-27)
- Williams admissions pages
- Williams admissions pages
- Acceptance rate, test-score percentiles, enrollment and tuition: U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, pulled 2026-08-19.
Test policy and deadlines last verified 2026-08-17.
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