I was admitted to the Williams program, and people keep talking to me about its "traditional" approach. I think it has something to do with the program's embeddedness within the discipline of "art history," but I'm not really sure how this differs from other not-so-interdisciplinary programs, like Tufts.
That said, I don't think having a "traditional" program means that the students and faculty are all super traditional or formalist scholars. I absolutely would not consider my interests to fall within "traditional" art history, and the program seems very open to letting me bounce my approach against the discipline's boundaries to see what will happen. From what m-ttl says, I suspect she was not admitted because the program really looks for broad, generalist scholars. It allows people to come to the program with areas of interest, but discourages specialization, at least in the beginning.