• Percent of students choosing Williams who rate receiving personal attention in college as very important
• 86
• Williams students assigned to each Williams first-year advisor
• 3 or 4
• Amount annually allocated in the College budget for faculty to host informal student dinners and gatherings
• $23,000
• Faculty-student ratio in an Oxford-style tutorial
• 1:2
• Percent of students who take tutorials
• 46
• Percent of Williams students who write a thesis
• 21
• Students who did independent study projects with a faculty member in 2004-2005
• 268
• Number of faculty members and administrators who play intramural sports
• 40
• Number of Williams students who play intramural sports
• 900
• Williams faculty and administrative committees/those on which students have full vote and voice
• 17/12
• Percent of Williams science faculty members actively involved in research
• 100
• Percent of Williams students who feel that the College emphasizes spending significant amounts of time studying and on academic work
• 94
• Median number of hours Williams seniors report spending on academics per week
• 37
• Winter Study courses offered, January 2006
• 134

If you’ve ever spent five days visiting ten liberal arts colleges you may never want to hear the words “small classes” or “close working relationships with professors” ever again. We have both at Williams but promise not to belabor it.

Here is a sample of what we’re talking about.

Oxford Tutorials

Every year, nearly 500 students participate in our tutorial program which places two students and one professor in a class for the entire semester. With intense emphasis on critical writing and oral presentation skills, these weekly Oxford-style sessions raise one's skills of analysis and presentation to a significantly higher level. At the conclusion of a tutorial, students have the ability to present their original thinking in a way that is cogent and powerful, and occasionally masterful.

Scientific Research

Williams’ science programs are among the nation’s best, and at their core is one of the largest paid undergraduate research programs in existence. Every summer nearly 170 students spend two months on campus performing research with our faculty, 100% of whom are working scientists. Williams science faculty receive more National Science Foundation grants than any other liberal arts college faculty, and our graduates consistently receive more NSF graduate fellowships than students from other colleges—sometimes nearly twice as many. Williams students who take part in summer research enter graduate school with an unusually powerful research portfolio—in fact, a significant number have already co-written a scientific journal article.

Experiential Programs

Williams in New York places students in Manhattan for a semester of combined academic/experiential work in an urban studies context. In addition to a tutorial, students have a field-work placement in an organization germane to their course of study. Unlike internships, which allow students to observe from the periphery, fieldwork placements put students at the heart of the organization for active participation.

Williams-Mystic is a fully interdisciplinary semester of maritime studies at Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. Combining coursework in maritime history, literature of the sea, marine policy, and marine ecology/oceanography with hands-on skill training in celestial navigation, boat building, or the music of the sea, Williams-Mystic students also perform original research in the social sciences or humanities. Open sea voyages to the Grand Banks or Caribbean Sea are supplemented by travel to the Mississippi Delta and the Pacific Coast.

The newly-created Williams in Africa Program, which will launch in the Fall of 2007, offers not only a study away opportunity, but also internships and postgraduate fellowships. The program will work closely with alumni who work in HIV/AIDS awareness and other non government organizations.

Winter Study

The one-month January term provides students and faculty with a laboratory for academic experimentation. The curriculum frees up faculty to create and teach courses which are not traditionally associated with their professional expertise: the statistician teaching ballet; the political scientist teaching glass blowing; the economist teaching LEGO Mindstorm robotics. Courses are often more hands-on than “heady,” though there are some more traditional courses. “Free University” offers student-taught mini-courses which complement the main offerings and, beginning sophomore year, students may propose “99s,” self-designed courses that may be completed on or off-campus. Winter Study is a requirement unto itself (courses do not meet divisional or major requirements) and is graded pass/fail, ensuring that students approach their work during this period unencumbered by grade pressure.

Senior Thesis

For those who seek the challenge, the Williams thesis is the capstone of four years of study and intellectual development. Theses are often born of fascination: an unsolved problem in plane geometry, an untranslated work by an Early Spanish poet, the inscrutable writings of an 18th century philosopher who has thoroughly gotten under one’s skin. Thesis work is an enormous commitment for students and faculty both, and interested students must submit a proposal to apply. Those chosen are paired with a faculty advisor with whom they work closely throughout the process in authoring an approach to research, writing and revision. For some, a thesis is done in anticipation of doctoral study; for others it represents an irresistible opportunity to spend a year fully engaged in an area of interest that might have no relation to their professional destination.

Contract Majors & Independent Study

While Williams offers more than 600 classes per year on campus, students have the opportunity to explore additional areas of interest through independent study and even an independent contract major. Students may propose topics directly to faculty mentors for approval for a semester-long class, or, in working with a professor, they come up with an idea for collaboration. Contract majors provide the ultimate flexibility to those students who wish to undertake coherent study of an interdisciplinary subject not covered by a regularly offered major. Students work closely with faculty members, often across several departments, to create their own major curriculum.