William & Mary

Overview

William & Mary

William & Mary (W&M or The College of William and Mary in Virginia) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia. It was founded in 1693 through a royal charter by King William III and Queen Mary II. It is the second-oldest university in the United States and is known for several pioneering feats, including establishing the first law and medicine graduate programs, housing the oldest still operating academic building, and founding the oldest law school in the country. W&M is recognized for its contributions to the fields of arts and sciences, marine science, and American colonial history.

William & Mary Key Statistics

The university comprises one faculty and four schools, offering over 40 graduate and professional degree programs and more than 45 undergraduate programs. Its academic units include the School of Marine Science, School of Education, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. It has three campuses, the William & Mary main campus, The Washington Center in Washington, D.C., and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in Gloucester Point.

William & Mary's student population is approximately 8,817, including 6,377 undergraduates and 2,440 postgraduates. It has a student-to-faculty ratio of 12:1 and employs 738 full-time and 183 part-time teaching personnel.

Its notable alumni include four signers of the United Declaration of Independence, three American presidents, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and John Tyler, and numerous significant political, academic, and business leaders.

Other William & Mary key statistics include its main library, the Earl Gregg Swem Library, which houses more than two million books, journals, and e-resources, and its Special Collections Research Center, which is home to rare books, manuscripts, and artifacts. Its academic affiliations include those with Space-grant, Sea-grant, the Universities Research Association, and the Oak Ridge Associated Universities.

William & Mary Research

The university has a long tradition of research excellence and has been recognized for its knowledge creation since the 17th century. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High Research Activity." Its major research funding sources include the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.

The top fields of William & Mary research are physics, computer science, and mathematics. Its research outputs have been published in prestigious journals like Physical Review Letters, Physical Review D, and Social Science Research Network. It also publishes several internationally recognized journals, such as the William & Mary Quarterly and the Bill of Rights Journal.

Its researchers have attended major scholarly conferences, such as the International Conference on Computer Communications, International Conference on Software Engineering, and Computer and Communication.

The most cited William & Mary research publications is Hagiwara et al.’s (2012) “Review of particle physics: Particle data group” (Physical Review D, 10,891 citations), Its second most cited research output is Tschannen-Moran and Hoy’s (2001) “Teacher efficacy: capturing an elusive construct” (Teaching and Teacher Education, 8,273 citations), while the third most cited research article is Aarts et al.’s (2015) “Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science” (Science, 6,168 citations).

The university has more than 20 research institutes, centers, and external affiliates. These include the Commonwealth Center for Energy and the Environment, the Global Research Institute, and the Comparative Legal Studies and Post-Conflict Peacebuilding.

Its other research units are the Institute for Integrative Conservation, Institute for Historical Biology, and the Center for Geospatial Analysis.

You can also learn more about the educational performance of William & Mary in our ranking of US universities & colleges.