I didn't go to W&M but very similar school. I could see it being a very very difficult school to be completely honest, much harder than more prestigious schools. No crazy greek or party scene too, so not as fun as bigger state schools.
Smaller more academically focused schools are usually taught in smaller classes by professors themselves. I found the economics, math and accounting classes at my undergrad extraordinarily difficult to get anything above a B in (note things were graded on a curve). B and Cs were given out like toilet paper in a restroom, very hard to graduate with Latin honors, especially in a hard science. Economics classes would have 40 people in it and only 5 or so could get a flat A. This was a school that had a median SAT of 1420. On my math section I got a 710 after taking it once! Not to pat my self on the back since there were kids that got 5s on AP Calculus in my high school but I thought that was strong in those subjects. I would go to my professors and they said that I should be doing 2.5 hours of homework or practice tests for every hour of class I was in and more so on the weekend so I started doing that. That usually meant doing 4 - 6 hours of homework every night and spending about 8 hours each weekend day focused on homework or studying. This wasn't that uncommon for many of my classmates. I didn't run but I am pretty sure it would have been impossible. If I had to guess I bet William and Mary is pretty similar.
When I was interviewing for jobs I would often get told I had at the worst GPA at the superday or just straight up no altogether due to my GPA.
My friend from high school who tested marginally better than me got into Duke (I know there is a lot of mud flung at them and I don't want to start that again). He seemed (emphasis on seem) to party a lot more, go to a lot less class and had much better grades. He was the son of an alumnus and his dad was well connected but he got a pretty cushy finance job after. If he had to guess he would say average GPA was 3.6 or so in his department. Also he said there were a BUNCH of joke classes to make up for the more difficult math and science classes everyone had to take. I am sure it was extraordinarily difficult to get latin honors at duke but it felt like the floor to get to 3.5 (important cut off for a lot of jobs) seemed easier. Again I really don't mean to drag down the school, there are undoubtedly many many incredibly bright and hardworking kids there and I don't want to disparage. Also my friend said a number of amazing companies recruited every year on campus, this was not the case at my school.
I know this in a nutshell isn't completely fair and life isn't always fair but it just I couldn't help but to think myself, if I just had gone to a little bigger school life wouldn't be this hard. It is just hard to test that much material to such a big class imho.
The only saving grace is my friend's dad helped me get my first job, he sort of explained where I was coming from and I got really good reviews based on my work ethic. Also in the workplace I have seen kids come with amazing GPAs from great schools do terribly, mainly because they wind up being lazy about a lot of things. The guys that were scrappy and worked the hardest did the best and have made the most money at my firm.