Whitman is a great school. It is in the boonies, and it’s tiny, but students love it there. Had my son not wanted to be an engineer, I’m sure it is a school he would have considered.
thank you for your comment. I will tell you why I’m so concerned about this. My older son graduated from UC Berkeley 2 years ago with a double major, Astronomy and Physics. he is currently pursuing his Phd at Arizona State in their Astronomy department. for those that would like to know, he graduated from high school with a 4.7 gpa, he only missed 1 question and got a 780 Math SAT. I never worried about him academically. I was very proud of him because I attended UCB after transferring from UCLA my sophomore year. I transferred to be near the family business because my dad was in ill health and in the process of getting a divorce from my step-mom. So I tried as a junior to commute to Berkeley, 40 miles away every day and come back home to run the family small printing business and make sure the bills were paid. I only lasted a year doing this, it was too hard doing sales, running printing presses and getting out orders while trying to maintain my classes. Now 45 years later I still regret not finishing, but my oldest son helped by accomplishing something that eluded me. My younger son is not the same as his brother. He’s an athlete, his brother was not, he’s very intelligent but was not as strong academically as his older brother mostly due to having 1 ear frequency deaf. So since birth he has dealt with 2 inputs to audio information. He has had to decode what people say and sometimes he guesses wrong. We did not know of his condition until the 4th-5th grade. My main concern is how he will function in a large classroom setting or lecture hall. He needs to lip-read to confirm what he hears. At Whitman his class size would be small and intimate, at Cal Poly I’m sure the lectures will be bigger. I don’t want him to get lost in the shuffle and he’s too proud to ask for help. Fortunately I closed the business and retired from it which prevents him from having to face what I did at his age. But like any parent, I want my children to be successful at whatever they do.
Whitman sounds like a good fit. Does he not want to go?
@Jollysammy If you are concerned as to how your son would manage lecture halls at cal poly, you should talk to the Disability Resource Center (main page link - https://drc.calpoly.edu/content/how-request-drc-services ), link to page with possible accommodations available https://drc.calpoly.edu/content/apply/possible_accomodations
There staff are extremely helpful (and nice) and should be able to provide information on resources available to your son.
My (latino/Hispanic) son was also accepted at Whitman (swim team athlete) with a generous scholarship. It is an excellent college, however, Cal Poly was always his #1 choice, and that’s where he went (and graduated in June ’17). Your son has excellent colleges to chose from.
Thank you for the suggestions. Ultimately I look at college as a race, and I don’t mean racism. I mean that you will be there starting with an entire freshman class and everyone is striving for the finish line. Some will be very prepared and race to the head of the line, others will be in the middle and some will be in the back of the pack. It doesn’t always matter how well you did in high school as a measure of how well you will do in college. Its like the difference between playing high school football and playing in the NFL, still a ball, still the same size football field, what could be the difference right? If you fall behind, you get left behind fast. Unless there is someone there with a vested interest in making sure you succeed. He’s being recruited to be the #1 golfer on the team. We already visited, he’s already played with the other teammates. I know what the coach is trying to do. His women’s team has the #1 in the nation for D3, they are ranked 4th nationally. He wants my son to be the vanguard of a men’s team that will do the same as the women’s. I would love that too, but more importantly I want my son to graduate and be ready for the world of working reality. Not a day goes by that I regret not finishing. When UCB was advising me they said under my situation they would allow me to simply take 1 class a quarter, it was still too hard to commute, work a small business and compete with others who were studying full time. I want him to have every advantage that life didn’t give me. I want him to succeed, like all of us do for our kids. I think he can make it at either place. Its just that I have one place where I will have a free for me person to personally kick him in the rear every day to get across the finish line.
My younger daughter just committed to CalPoly, following on the footsteps of her older sister. Very exciting times 
@Jollysammy, why is this a discussion then? Does he not want to go to Whitman? It sounds like that is a good fit for him.
Despite a generous financial aid offer from Whitman, it is still 50 percent more expensive than Cal Poly. We are not rich, we are what you call working poor living in Silicon Valley. I am retired, my wife is the only one working. If we were homeless he could get need based scholarships, his disability hampered him from merit based. He’s decided on Cal Poly even though it means the end of his golf career probably because after my wife and him looked at the numbers, he didn’t want us to give up eating for the next 4 years. The allure of Whitman was strong, free country club privileges as well as all the top golf courses in the area, a beautiful campus, everything 5 minutes walk from anywhere. he didn’t like the idea of being so remote from us, but he loved the campus. There are some very nice people at Whitman, really nice. He would’ve been a big fish in a small pond. We are Chinese-american, so we look like a minority. I was born here in SF. I don’t even speak Chinese, but I am aware of racism. Heck I went from 2nd grade wondering how a white italian kid in my class felt as the only non-chinese kid in class to being moved to the suburbs and walking into my new 3rd grade class and thinking to myself, well, now I know how Jimmy felt. I was the only minority in the entire elementary school. There were no blacks, hispanics, asians at all, only me. Guess what, I never felt different than everyone else, only a few times from a few ignorant guys. Unfortunately in some ways we’ve become so tribal and extreme, for some reason you have to take sides, there is no longer a middle. That’s sad. I wish everyone tried to be a good American first and foremost instead of being a liberal or conservative.
Cal Poly is in the news again, another blackface incident.
If you haven’t watched President Armstrong’s video response, you should. It is very good.
Wow. Very sad to see that Cal Poly SLO is so racist 
I’ve been reading some national stories about how utterly racist the university is. A blackface incident, another blackface incident. Confederate flags, nooses, anti-Mexican, anti-LGBT, anti-Jewish rhetoric. What’s going on?
I think we’ve exhausted this conversation. Closing thread.