The William & Mary scandal of 1951 was a transcript-altering scandal at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Prior to World War II, William & Mary tried to become a formidable NCAA Division I athletics powerhouse despite its incredibly tiny size (fewer than 1,000 males attended the school in the late 1930s). Although the school had always been known as a top tier liberal arts university, pressures to be as equally successful in sports—especially football, men's basketball and baseball—had been mounting for over a decade by the time the scandal was discovered in 1951.