It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was killed in the French and Indian War in 1755.

[2] Williams's main campus is located in Williamstown, in the Berkshires in rural northwestern Massachusetts, and contains more than 100 academic, athletic, and residential buildings.

This policy was challenged by Lucy Terry Prince, who is credited as the first black American poet,[8] when her son Festus was refused admission on account of his race.

[9] Prince, who had established a reputation as a raconteur[10] and rhetorician, delivered a three-hour speech before the college's board of trustees, quoting abundantly from scripture, but was unable to secure her son's admission.

[20] In April 2022, Williams transitioned to an all grants system for financial aid, one of the few institutions of higher learning in the United States to do so.

[25] In response to the Committee on Coordinate Education's final report, the trustees voted in June 1969 to regularly admit women undergraduate students in fall 1971.

After several years of planning, the college decided to group undergraduates starting with the Class of 2010 into four geographically coherent clusters, or "Neighborhoods".

[41] To meet those goals, the college set up the Zilkha Center for Environmental Initiatives and has undertaken an energy audit and efficiency timeline.

Falk, dean of the Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, began his term on April 1, 2010.

[44] Dean of the Faculty William G. Wagner took the position of interim president beginning in June 2009, and continued in that capacity until President-elect Falk took office.

[2] The early planners of Williams College eschewed the traditional collegiate quadrangle organization, choosing to freely site buildings among the hills.

Later construction, including East and West Colleges and Griffin Hall, tended to cluster around Main Street in Williamstown.

[50] Hopkins Hall serves as the administration building on campus, housing the offices of the president, Dean of the Faculty, registrar, and provost, among others.

The Chapin Library supports the liberal arts curriculum of the college by allowing students close access to a number of rare books and documents of interest.

The library opened on June 18, 1923, with an initial collection of 9,000 volumes contributed by alumnus Alfred Clark Chapin, Class of 1869.

The Chapin Library's Americana collection includes original printings of all four founding documents of the United States: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

[61] In 2021, Williams' endowment-per-student ratio was one of nine colleges or universities to exceed $2 million along with Princeton, Yale, MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Amherst, Pomona, and Swarthmore.

Williams follows a 4-1-4 schedule, with the month of January dedicated to "Winter Study", a time when students take one course (or more) on campus or engage in an international program, an internship, or independent research project.

A significant number of Winter Study courses are taught by Williams College alumni, and feature topics otherwise not covered in a traditional liberal arts curriculum—such as financial accounting, entrepreneurship, journalism, and yoga.

[115] There is now a diverse offering of tutorial courses that span many disciplines, including math and sciences, and cater to students of all class years.

The professor takes a more limited role than in a traditional lecture class and usually allows the students to steer and guide the direction of the conversation.

Teams of students, alumni, professors, friends, and others compete to answer questions on a variety of subjects, while simultaneously identifying songs and performing designated tasks.

Lasting just eight hours, a typical Williams Trivia contest will demand between 900 and 1,200 separate "bits" of trivial information,[123] delivering twice as much content as its "competitors" in a fraction of the time.

[126] A story explaining the origin of purple as a school color says that at the Williams-Harvard baseball game in 1869, spectators watching from carriages had trouble telling the teams apart because there were no uniforms.

The bells ring, announcing the event, members of the Outing Club unfurl a banner from the roof of Chapin Hall and students hike up Stony Ledge.

The first known mention of Mountain Day was made in 1827 by Williams president Edward Dorr Griffin in his notebook on college business.

Williams played in the 2003, 2004, 2010, and 2014 men's basketball Division III national championship games, winning the title in March 2003.

The Towne Field House, constructed in 1970, is a multipurpose facility, which includes an indoor track, tennis courts and a climbing wall.

It provides a state of the art 50-meter swimming pool, a gymnasium primarily for basketball, squash facilities, wrestling rooms, various fitness centers and administrative offices.

Cabinet secretaries, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, a President of the United States, 3 prime ministers, CEOs and founders of Fortune 500 companies, multiple Emmy, Oscar, Tony, and Grammy award winners, and professional athletes.