Is UVA or Williams better for a liberal arts education?

For the kind of experience you described, Williams is more squarely built around a liberal arts education. It is a small undergraduate-focused college where nearly everything centers on broad intellectual exploration, close contact with professors, and discussion-based classes. UVA absolutely offers a strong humanities and social sciences education, but it feels more like a major research university with a liberal arts college inside it than a pure liberal arts environment.

Williams tends to fit students who want their academic life to feel personal and immersive from day one. Classes are typically small, professors are highly accessible, and the school is especially known for tutorials and seminar-style learning that push students to read closely, write often, and engage directly with ideas. If you want the default culture to assume that undergraduates are the main priority, Williams has a clear edge.

UVA makes more sense for someone who wants liberal arts breadth but within a larger, more varied university setting. The College of Arts & Sciences gives you lots of room to explore across disciplines, and there are excellent faculty and plenty of intellectual resources, but the atmosphere is less uniformly intimate. At a place like UVA, some classes will be small and relationship-driven, while others, especially earlier on, may feel more structured and less personal simply because the university is much bigger.

Williams also has the stronger overall liberal arts atmosphere outside the classroom. The campus culture, advising, and academic rhythm are all shaped by the idea that undergraduates should explore widely and think deeply across fields. UVA has that available, but it also has the social scale, extracurricular sprawl, and preprofessional energy of a major public university, which changes the feel.

So if your question is specifically about broad intellectual exploration, close professor relationships, and a distinctly liberal arts undergraduate experience, Williams is the one that aligns more directly with that vision.