Does UVA or Williams have a better small-school feel?

Williams has the clearer small-school feel. It is a small liberal arts college, most students live in a concentrated residential setting, and the academic structure is built around close faculty contact through seminars and the well-known tutorial system. Day to day, that usually translates into seeing the same people often, recognizing faces across campus, and having a more contained social environment.

The biggest difference is scale. UVA is a large public university, so even though parts of it can feel intimate, the overall campus experience is broader and busier. You can absolutely find close communities there through residential colleges, student groups, and majors, but the baseline experience is not as naturally tight-knit because there are more moving parts.

Williams is also set up in a way that makes community feel unavoidable in a good way. The town is small, campus life is central to students' routines, and social life is less spread across a huge university ecosystem. That tends to make the college feel more personal, but also more enclosed, which some students love and others find limiting.

UVA has strong school spirit and plenty of smaller communities within it, but it is easier to feel anonymous there, especially early on. If what you care about most is a place that feels less overwhelming and more like people actually know one another across classes, housing, and daily life, Williams is much more likely to deliver that experience.