I wanted to give an update. My son has been leaning towards Whitman for months BUT it was way out of our original budget (like $17k a year more even after his $14k a year initially). We attended their Admitted Student Saturday in person 2 weeks ago and then immediately came home and drafted our appeal (with some tips from Camasite). We qualify for zero need based aid so our only hope was way more merit. My son wrote a letter basically saying what drew him to Whitman (including specifics from attending the Admitted Student Saturday), told them that our budget all along was the price of a UC school (we’re in CA) but that a small liberal arts college is what is the best fit, and that Whitman was his first choice but the most expensive choice out of the 8 schools he had gotten into. We included a comparison spreadsheet of all the current colleges’ net costs and attached the aid letters of each school he’s been accepted to. We just heard back that they gave him an additional $16k a year in merit, bringing the total merit to $30k a year! That puts Whitman squarely in our budget and now he can commit. We knew from day one that we would always appeal his first choice school. You have nothing to lose and a ton to gain! Colleges are a business and in the end they need to make their yield and financial goals. If they didn’t budge in price then we could walk and they’d get $0 from us. So in the end it was a win win situation. We got the price we wanted and they are still getting money from us and another student to add to their yield numbers. I looked over their Common Data Sets from the past couple of years and saw that their class from last year was significantly smaller due to Covid. I assumed they were at risk for not making their yield again (they are actually still accepting applications) and therefore we had the upper hand as the consumer. Also, most small liberal arts colleges skew very heavily female, with Whitman being 60% female, 40% male. I knew they needed more males. If anyone is still on the fence with Whitman due to the cost alone, appeal! And in another crazy turn of events my in-laws have actually offered to pay for Whitman, but now that the price is in our original budget, if anything goes awry with the in-laws we know we can still afford it on our own. 
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