How difficult is it to get admitted to Williams compared with MIT?

MIT is usually harder to get into than Williams, though both are among the most selective colleges in the country. MIT draws a huge volume of applicants who are specifically strong in math, science, and engineering, and its admissions process is especially demanding for students aiming at technical fields. Williams is also extremely selective, but its applicant pool and institutional priorities are different because it is a small liberal arts college rather than a STEM-focused university.

One major difference is the kind of academic profile each school tends to attract and reward. MIT is looking for students with unusually strong quantitative preparation, often including advanced math, science research, engineering projects, or competition-level achievement. Williams certainly values academic excellence at a very high level, but it is evaluating students across a broader liberal arts framework, so the path to being a compelling applicant is a little less narrowly technical.

Another differentiator is scale and demand. MIT has an outsized global reputation in STEM, which means many applicants treat it as the top choice for engineering, computer science, physics, and related areas. Williams has tremendous prestige too, especially in the liberal arts, but it does not attract quite the same concentrated volume of applicants chasing a small number of spots in those heavily subscribed technical areas.

In practical terms for your college list, it makes sense to think of both as reaches, with MIT sitting at the more difficult extreme for most applicants.