<p>Quick question: If one applies early decision to Whitman, is he or she less likely to get a merit scholarship? Has anyone out there ever applied early decision and still received a merit scholarship?</p>
<p>Hi JIB1958, I’ve appear to be the only one lurking here this summer. Whitties don’t seem to find CC as enthralling as many others do. I was hoping that someone who actually had experience with this would give you an answer. My son received merit aid, but applied regular decision. The conventional wisdom is that if merit aid is important, you should spread the applications out over a broader pool of schools during regular decision. </p>
<p>But it seems to me, if Whitman is the your top choice school, an ED application makes sense. If the merit award isn’t sufficient to attend then you can bow out of the agreement on those grounds, and still be able to put in more applications elsewhere during regular decision.</p>
<p>You could always ask the admissions office, they are genuinely nice helpful people. I think they’d answer truthfully.</p>
<p>Thanks, Bopambo. I thought asking the folks in the admin office might put them in an awkward position, but that may be the way to go.</p>
<p>If the student you’re thinking about has stats in the high range for Whitman and personal attributes that the school values (leadership experience, active involvement in their HS community, deep involvement in a passionate pursuit) then I think it’s highly likely that they’d want to snag them and would offer merit aid to do that whether it’s ED or not. Also, if the student in question will add geographic, economic or ethnic diversity they become even more desirable. Whitman has been valiantly trying to increase the diversity on campus and this year, much to everyone’s delight, Princeton Review named Whitman #14 in race/class interaction.</p>
<p>On the Whitman website under “prospective students” there are links to ask questions of parents of students, and of alumni, maybe this is a question to direct to them.</p>
<p>I hope this doesn’t constitute a thread hijack, but I’d love to get some sense of what sort of stats will get you an offer of merit aid from Whitman, as my daughter is quite fond of the school and it is one of the few she’s considering that offers any merit money whatsoever.</p>
<p>Does anyone have a rough sense of the SAT threshold that would put you in the merit pool at Whitman (assuming that test scores are the dominant merit factor, as I understand they are at most places)? I see that last year’s 75th percentile SAT score was a 2150, and I have the impression that roughly 20% of the class gets some merit aid. Would it be reasonable to conclude that scores above, say, 2200 might get you a merit offer, presuming the rest of the application looked appealing, or is that too low? We’re also from way out of region, if that’s a factor.</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>rayrick: as I said up-thread, I’m a mom, so my information is based on my own son’s experience. I don’t think that merit aid is solely test score driven, but probably taken in the context of the entire application. Whitman does a remarkable job of filling the campus with engaged multi-dimensional students, so grades and extracurriculars appear to carry quite a bit of weight. </p>
<p>That said, my S who received merit aid scored 2210 on the SAT, and took 4 subject tests scoring in the mid 700s on all 4. I don’t think Whitman requires subject tests, but he took them so he could apply to several schools that do. I’m sure it just reinforced that he was up to the work. His GPA was 3.94 and he had impressive leadership ECs.</p>
<p>He became a finalist for the Walter Brattain leadership scholarship and the school flew him to campus to be interviewed for that. In the end, he didn’t get the big scholarship but did get an additional $2500 per year that was added to the merit aid he’d already received. All the finalists who go to the campus interview receive the extral $2500.</p>
<p>We were in need of some financial aid, so he applied to schools who offer need-based aid and merit aid. Falling squarely into the middle-class, we ran into a dilemma that seems to befall many, we own too much but have had falling income and financial loses. The need-based schools calculated our need very differently than we did! Casting a wide net, S applied to 13 colleges and was accepted to 13 colleges. Ultimately, the decision came down to “fit” and cost. </p>
<p>He loves Whitman, and today is preparing to lead a pre-orientation backpacking trip for incoming freshman. He’s gotten great leadership opportunities and finds the academics quite challenging. I think he was surprised at the academic rigor, it hasn’t been a cake-walk by any means.</p>
<p>rayrick, I forgot your question about coming from out of the region. Yes, I do believe that coming from somewhere other than the western US is also a good thing. All the schools want more geographic diversity.</p>
<p>Good advice, thanks</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing that detailed info, Bopambo. That’s very encouraging. Sounds like my daughter would have an excellent chance of getting some merit aid, based on your son’s experience. That could end up being a big factor for us, since I have a sinking feeling that we’re in just good enough a financial position to be offered virtually no need-based aid, without, you know, actually being able to AFFORD $50K+/yr. </p>
<p>Plus, Whitman sounds like a wonderful place that I think would be an excellent fit for her (she’s smart, unpretentious and friendly, loves outdoorsy stuff, into theater, likes small classes with lots of discussion, liberal without being a hipster or a hippie, etc.). Getting my wife to sign off on the notion of sending our first born clear across the country is another matter, however, particularly when there are a lot of very fine liberal arts colleges virtually in our backyard, and D’s done the hard work to put herself into a position to have a good shot at getting into them.</p>
<p>Which brings to mind another question, if you don’t mind my asking. Did your son (or you for that matter) sweat the fact that he was turning down a number of schools that were more selective than Whitman (I presume this was the case given his stats and the fact that he went 13 for 13)? My daughter’s thoroughly sick of being labeled ‘the smart kid’ in a very small class, and is pretty jazzed up about the prospect of being surrounded by really bright, interesting peers in college. I feel a little embarrassed bringing it up, since I know Whitman is only a small notch down in selectivity from the upmost tier of liberal arts colleges, but it is something I worry about a smidge.</p>
<p>Oh, I totally understand your question, don’t feel badly about asking it. Yes, he was accepted to more selective schools and his top choice initially was Bowdoin. All the other east coast schools paled by comparison in his eyes. Even though the financial aid wasn’t enough, we made the trip to campus for the accepted students’ day and he did an overnight visit. I thought a personal appeal to the FA office might make a difference, but they remained unmoved. Son was very sad.</p>
<p>When he flew off to Whitman for the scholarship interview weekend, he thought the answer to Bowdoin was no. While he was gone, my husband and I decided we would take whatever austerity measures it took for us to get him to his dream school. Returning from Whitman he was euphoric and said that he liked everything about it. When we told him that we’d thought of a way to get him to Bowdoin, instead of being happy he was angry, saying we’d given him an impossible choice. For 10 days he made lists, went back to the guides, scoured the websites and drove us all crazy trying to decide between the two. </p>
<p>The night before the deadline for his decision, I finally told him to stop being rational and to just remember how he felt on both campuses. Half an hour later he showed up at our bedroom door and said that he’d picked Whitman and he was happy about it. All I could think of to say was “really?”. The next morning I asked what had made him choose Whitman. He said that Bowdoin was perfect, but Whitman had more heart. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but once he made the decision he never looked back.</p>
<p>I, on the other hand, had a harder time. Would he be less challenged? Would he be bored? Would he be able to find intellectual peers? I decided to attend an event that Whitman was putting on in the Bay Area for perspective students, it included a panel of alums sharing their experiences and answering questions. The panel included two Whitman grads who had gone on to Harvard, one to medical school, one for a PHD in history. There was a graduate student in geology at Stanford. One very recent Whitman graduate had just been hired by Google and was very excited. There were several others with equally impressive outcomes. These were articulate successful people who loved their experiences at Whitman and valued the education they received. When I asked my son over Christmas if he was the smartest guy in his classes, he looked shocked and asked if I was kidding. </p>
<p>I’ve come to believe that if Whitman was on the east coast instead of a somewhat isolated charming small town in the Pacific Northwest, it too would be more selective. Of course, there’s the question of whether you care if any of your friends have ever heard of it. But really, the people around here had never heard of Bowdoin either.</p>
<p>Good luck in your search!</p>
<p>You’ve been a fount of useful info, Bopambo! Great to hear your son is having a good experience, feels challenged, and has no shortage of intellectual peers.</p>
<p>The reputation/heard-of-it factor is a funny one. It’s really not a big deal to me or my daughter (I’m primarily fixated on seeing to it that she has the best possible experience our astronomical investment can provide) but I don’t profess to be immune to all external pressure on that front. My inlaws have gotten fixated on the notion of D going to Stanford (they live in the bay area), though I still don’t think they get the fact that their granddaughter, for all her excellent qualities and sterling record, still probably has no better than a 1-in-5 shot at getting in.</p>
<p>Princeton is another very big name that’s actually somewhat less of a long shot, since wife is an alum. So yeah, we may well be hearing voices down the road saying “She’s going to Whitman (or Carleton, or Middlebury, etc., etc.) when she could have gone to PRINCETON!?” I guess we’ll cross that bridge when and if we come to it. I don’t see it ever superceding other, more meaningful considerations.</p>
<p>In our community they say “He’s going to Whitman when he could have gone to Cal!?” As things have evolved, it’s pretty evident that he’ll want to go to graduate school. Whitman can prepare him very well for that next step. And yes, he wants to go to Stanford. Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t spend every dime on undergraduate school.</p>
<p>That’s another conversation I’ve had with a few of my co-workers (and has, no doubt, taken place in various incarnations on these boards): if your kid is going to grad school anyway, is it a good idea to allocate substantial resources to send them to a premier undergraduate institution, when the reputational advantages of said institution may be largely moot by the time they’re headed out into the job market with a graduate degree from Big Time U (assuming they do well enough to get admitted into grad school at Big Time U)?</p>
<p>My co-workers’ step-daughter actually got a perfect 2400 on her SATs. She’s headed to Clemson, because she’s got in-state tuition via her biological father, and, I imagine, substantial merit aid. Not to diss Clemson, but I’m sure she would have had other, higher-profile options. But he’s a whole-hearted believer in the why-waste-your-money-on-a-high-falutin’-undergrad-school-when-they’re-going-to-grad-school philosophy. And I’m certainly not prepared to argue that he’s entirely unreasonable.</p>
<p>To me, however, that philosophy is overly dismissive of the value of a truly outstanding undergraduate experience. I want my kid to have access to genuinely inspirational teaching, and to be immersed in an environment that hopefully makes her four years of college among the most amazing, enriching, growth-promoting and fun periods of her life. And I’m willing to pay up for that. The reputational piece is secondary, at best.</p>
<p>That being said, if an institution like Whitman can provide all of those things, and leave my wallet ~$50 - 60K fatter at the end of four years, that’s a pretty attractive proposition. And, from everything I’ve read, it sounds like it can.</p>
<p>“(she’s smart, unpretentious and friendly, loves outdoorsy stuff, into theater, likes small classes with lots of discussion, liberal without being a hipster or a hippie, etc.)”</p>
<p>Well, that does sound like Whitman.</p>
<p>Although we did endless research we found the college visits to be vital. Our kid had a pretty clear picture of what he wanted and some of it seemed a little wacky to me. He knew he wanted small classes with access to the faculty, but Carleton came off the list because the students he saw walking to classes were alone with hulking big backpacks and determined looks. He decided he wanted rigorous academics, but not to study every moment of every day. That also eliminated other places like Swarthmore, Pomona etc.</p>
<p>The layout of the campus was equally important to him, there had to be a central quad where the students hung out and all the buildings had to be integrated architecturally. There had to be a town he could walk to (that eliminated many), not necessarily a big town but a friendly place with some amenities. He also needed an active sporty student body, an outdoor program, and club and intramural sports were imperative. He wanted friendly and accepting classmates who were well rounded and fun.</p>
<p>I liked Amherst a lot, but he thought they were too consumed with edging the lawns, I think when translated that meant pretentious. In the end, Bowdoin and Whitman are very similar in many aspects: gorgeous campuses in small nice towns; down-to-earth outdoorsy well-rounded types who are very intelligent but interested in more than academics; with dedicated, accomplished, accessible faculty. </p>
<p>However, you won’t know what your daughter thinks about it until she’s actually sitting in the classroom, eating at the dinning hall, and chatting with the students. Your daughter sounds great and I’m sure she’ll have many amazing choices.</p>
<p>First, apologies to the OP–there’s no sugar coating it at this point–I’ve hijacked your thread. Each new, interesting tidbit you offer, Bopambo, seems to generate more questions. </p>
<p>Sounds like you had quite the nationwide tour of liberal arts colleges! That’s not easy, logistically or financially. Did you do all of this visiting prior to your son’s applying, or after he was accepted all of these places? We’re hitting up most of the schools that are within driving distance (headed to Williams tomorrow, in fact), but when plane rides are required, it ups the ante a bit. We’re going to Carleton in mid-September, but we don’t have plans to visit Whitman as of yet. I was thinking we might wait until after she’s (hopefully) got some acceptances to choose from before heading to some of the schools that are further afield.</p>
<p>Substitute performing-artsy for sporty and our kids and their priorities sound very similar indeed. She also is cool on Swarthmore due to it’s uber-grind rep, though Pomona’s still on the list because she didn’t think it was in quite the same category. I’m surprised to hear of your son’s reaction to the students at Carleton, since they have a reputation for not taking themselves too seriously. Still, personal impression > reputation.</p>
<p>She’s also lightly scratched Bowdoin off of her list since they seem to not have much of a musical theater scene there (Amherst has the same problem), but hearing your enthusiasm for the school makes me wonder if we’ve been too hasty on that front.</p>
<p>Academically, she’s not very clear on what direction she wants to go, but it will probably be in a math/science-ish direction. Do you have any impressions about the strength of the sciences at Whitman?</p>
<p>I would just echo the rhapsodic posts in favor of Whitman.</p>
<p>My daughter is also there and she and we are so happy with it. It wasn’t her first choice but she was rejected or waitlisted at all the schools on her list above Whitman. So we found ourselves at admitted students weekend and she never looked back. She just loved it and I thought the campus held its own against the other LACs we had visited on the East Coast. After visiting she didn’t even try to get off the wait lists at the other schools, she wanted to go to Whitman.</p>
<p>She is very bright but not the smartest kid in her classes. I would say she is surrounded by a lot of unpretentious, nice, smart kids. Since Whitman is close to our home we ended up wondering why we had ever looked anywhere else. (I suppose that is why we looked everywhere else first).</p>
<p>She did receive a merit scholarship. To the OP, I would say it couldn’t have been driven by her test scores because her scores were good but not great. The academic considerations had to be based more on her high school grades. I would agree, Whitman evaluates the applications for merit aid holistically.</p>
<p>I can’t speak to whether you are less likely to be offered a merit scholarship if you go early decision instead of regular decision. I would be very surprised if that is the case but I don’t really know. I will offer Whitman does not fill up nearly as much of its freshman class in the early decision round as compared with other LACs so you wouldn’t lose much of an advantage to being admitted by applying regular decision.</p>
<p>Pea, it’s so nice to have reinforcements! I’ve been carrying on and on. </p>
<p>rayrick, just a quick answer. We made three trips during son’s junior year and the summer before his senior year: one east; one midwest; and one upper west coast. We were able to visit the UCs and Stanford by taking driving excursions from home. I know many people make the applications first and then visit, but it seemed really worthwhile to visit beforehand and be able to make more informed choices. When I say informed I’m using that word pretty loosely, sometimes it was purely gut reaction. Each of these places have a distinct personality, so we found that sometimes you just liked the atmosphere or didn’t. It all gets pretty subjective.</p>
<p>It did take time and money, but it was also loads of fun. Husband and I split up the trips, the guys went west and midwest, and son and I did the east coast. We rented a car in Boston and visited 6 schools around MA and New England. I have very fond memories of that trip.</p>
<p>After acceptances he chose 5 to revisit, he did overnights at his top 3. Not the way everybody does it, but after 2 in-depth visits to his favorites he had a pretty good feel for them.</p>
<p>We weren’t looking into theater at Bowdoin and honestly no one talked about it much. However, the theater department at Whitman is alive and well. Lots of son’s friends are singers, musicians and actors. I was greatly impressed by the play I attended during parents’ weekend last year. Here’s a link to the 2011-2012 season [Harper</a> Joy Theatre - Current Season](<a href=“http://www.whitman.edu/hjt/current_season.html]Harper”>Harper Joy Theatre)</p>
<p>Sciences are strong. Son’s majoring in Geology/Physics an interdisciplinary major. They have a Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology (BBMB) major which not every LAC has, as well as a totally unique environmental science program called “Semester in the West”, check it out: [Semester</a> in the West](<a href=“http://semesterinthewest.org/]Semester”>http://semesterinthewest.org/)</p>
<p>Ah, a physics major (or reasonable facsimile thereof)! A man after my own heart – I’ve got a Ph. D. in physics. My daughter’s taking AP physics this year and I’m hoping she likes it. Has your son been impressed with the dept. there so far?</p>
<p>D is quite interested in that BBMB program; she really loved her bio class this year. I was aware of the Semester in the West as well, which sounds really neat. She’s got her heart set on studying abroad in some Spanish speaking country, so I’m guessing if she leaves campus for a semester, it will be to do that.</p>
<p>The theater dept. at Whitman does indeed seem very strong. D wishes they put on more musicals, but you can’t have everything. I understand they just renovated the theater as well.</p>
<p>It’s interesting you mention getting a feel for each school’s distinctive character in a short period of time. I’ve actually been cognizant of how challenging that is. We do the tours, the info sessions, try to corner a few students to talk to, poke around the facilities D’s most interested in (science and arts buildings), check out the town…but I still come away wondering if we’ve gotten an accurate sense of what it’s REALLY like to be a student at the schools we’ve visited. Maybe we’re not asking the right questions, maybe it’s just the paranoia associated with making important judgments based on inherently limited data.</p>
<p>I console myself with two truths. First, there is no way to know “what it’s REALLY like” to be a student at a particular institution, since each one follows his or her own path. Second, the places we’re looking at are terrific institutions (or we wouldn’t be looking at them), and I’m sure my daughter could have a great experience at most, if not all of them. </p>
<p>Still, she will need to ultimately decide on one, and I’m hoping we can make that decision as well-informed as possible. The posters on these boards help :)</p>
<p>rayrick, although I loved seeing the schools and traveling with my son, the whole gigantic college search drove me nuts! We parents really try to be rational and knowledgeable when choosing what we perceive to be the most important gift we can give our precious children, but like many human endeavors, the process is deeply flawed. There is so much hype and external emotional input that gets factored in from HS teachers, family and friends that it can overshadow our common sense. The rankings start taking on monumental proportions as we try to grab pearls of insight from teenagers walking backwards and speaking into the wind. Those info sessions get a tad repetitive and more than once I caught the son nodding off! </p>
<p>Son fell in love with geology at Whitman last year (his freshman year) and that department is terrific. He has come up with the geology/physics major because he’s become excited about environmental engineering, specifically hydrology. He didn’t take physics at Whitman last year, but knows he likes it after getting an A+ in AP physics in high school. We’ll see how it goes in the physics department soon. </p>
<p>A Ph.d in physics must take you to realms the rest of us find pretty unfathomable. What do you do with it?</p>
<p>Bopambo, did you guys make it to Middlebury? I’m curious, because you said your son felt that Bowdoin was head and shoulders above all the other NE LACs, while I’ve heard it said that Middlebury and Bowdoin are very similar in many respects and that people often apply to both. I’m asking because D really liked Middlebury when she visited (it is now high on her short list), but we haven’t ventured up to Bowdoin, as of yet.</p>
<p>As far as what I’m doing with a physics degree, it’s been an interesting journey, involving some shifts in area of expertise and a stopover in academia before ending up in private industry. I’m now part of a team that models and analyzes weather-related perils for a reinsurance company. A buddy of mine who works as a headhunter once said, “If you’re doing reasonably interesting work and you’re working with smart people, that’s the definition of a great job.” By those metrics, I have a great job :)</p>
<p>Oh, and “…as we try to grab pearls of insight from teenagers walking backwards and speaking into the wind.” was very nicely put :)</p>