I was accepted and awarded the Garrett-Sherwood Scholarship along with very generous need-based aid. I’ll only need to contribute less than two thousand!!!
Congrats to everyone who was accepted as well!!! 
12 Likes
Congratulations!! Are you an international student?
No, I am actually from Houston 
Thank you!!!
Daughter was accepted RD but with less than 1/2 of the merit aid offered by Lewis & Clark and University of Puget Sound. Not sure that Whitman is worth the extra $15,000 or so per year it will cost relative to those other two schools. She is still waiting to hear from UW-Seattle before deciding how much to appeal the aid offer from Whitman. UW is her top choice public school and Whitman is her top choice private school. If she gets into UW then she and we will have to decide if Whitman is ultimately worth double the cost. It is very much apples and oranges I know. She ultimately wants to pursue graduate studies in molecular biology so undergrad is just going to be a stepping stone to grad school for her.
Daughter was admitted. She’s happy and loves imagining herself at Whitman and in the PNW (we are near St. Louis). However she only received $14K merit scholarship, so the cost is much more than the other schools she’s been admitted to so far. It seems like it would be very difficult to justify the additional expense (could save the extra money and send use it for study abroad, etc.). I sure wish it didn’t come down to money, but…
1 Like
$14K must be their standard merit scholarship because that is also what my daughter was offered and I see that same number upstream. The other PNW schools my daughter applied to are offering $30 to $33K merit awards. Gonzaga offered $24K but they have lower tuition to start with. I guess Whitman comes at a premium price. At least it isn’t Reed where they do no merit aid whatsover and over 50% of the student body is on full-pay at $76,000 per year. Which is also what you get at schools like Stanford, Pomona, USC, etc.
1 Like
Just curious…did anyone who was admitted NOT get merit aid?
I have one twin at UW and one at Whitman this year. They are very different experiences, both in this Covid year and otherwise. We’re out of state so my Whitman kid is actually paying less than my UW kid. Let me know if you have any questions about either experience.
3 Likes
According to their website they offer merit scholarships up to $25,000 per year, but who knows if that’s to like a total of 5 students!!!
Even with a $25,000 scholarship it would still be more expensive than UPS, L&C, and Willamette for us!
Are there any more applicants that are yet to receive their decisions? If so do you know when you will be receiving your decision status.
You didn’t receive your decision yet?
Well, I was just wondering why the acceptance rate was so much higher this year compared to the last couple of years?
Do you know that it actually is? Based on what? Has Whitman actually made their acceptance rate public? The students and parents posting here are hardly a random sample. I expect that kids who don’t get into certain schools don’t spend a lot of time going back and posting on the forums of the schools that rejected them.
This is concerning, especially since I thought Whitman was the most financially stable school that my son applied to! Proposed cuts to multiple departments. They name history and Japanese, which are both areas that my son is interested in studying.
1 Like
Whitman was just awarded an A for its financial stability by Forbes: College Financial Grades 2021: Will Your Alma Mater Survive Covid?
I’m not concerned about their financial standing as it’s clear Whitman is in a good place to be able to weather the challenges facing small liberal arts institutions. But they are going to have to adapt, and that is what they’re looking to do through their Financial Review process. I wish they didn’t have to cut any programs. But I do like the looks of some of the changes they are looking at making in order to attract top students. There could be some new academic programs offered, including International Trade and Finance, Neuro Science, Public Health, Social Justice and Human Rights, and Creative Arts, to name a few. You can find a lot more information here: February 2, 2021 - Preliminary Working Group Reports. If you go to the button labeled “Academic Program Preliminary Report”, the justification for making cuts and changes is outlined. It’s all pretty transparent. They are also considering adding a “short term” course to their calendar, as some other SLAC’s have done. I think this would be very attractive to students.
My son will be attending Whitman in the fall. He will major in the humanities, and he is keeping an eye on all of this. It may be upsetting to see changes and budget cuts, but I am hoping that Whitman will accomplish all of this and come out stronger in the long run.
1 Like
I’ve read all these proposals in full and it seems as much a reworking of the strategic plan as cutting costs. There are certainly cost cutting efforts - reducing printers on campus, changing athletic team travel rules, and library subscriptions - but a lot of the academic changes are demand based, with additional majors being proposed, and others being shrunk or reworked.
This year has hit all colleges really hard, but as the article said, they were expecting decreases in revenue coming up anyway, and had already started to plan for it. My daughter is a Whitman freshman, And I see these proposals as a responsible pivot and not as a harbinger of doom. I would worry more about colleges that weren’t addressing the elephant in the room.
1 Like
The Forbes article Whiskeyyankee cited had this quote - “ “Colleges are not going to come out of this period and return to ‘business as usual,’ as too much has changed in the way we do business and the priorities of students,” predicts economist Lucie Lapovsky, former president of Mercy College. “Those schools, which have trimmed down and positioned themselves to be able to grow in new ways once the pandemic is over, will survive and thrive.””
1 Like
Thank you for this! Excellent info. I still worry about them getting rid of professors in the departments my son is interested in. I think we’ll have to ask some specific questions when we visit.
1 Like
Thank you, this was very interesting. My son will be also be attending Whitman in the fall, so I am happy to see that they are in a good financial position. Here is a summary of the financial grades for some of the Pacific Northwest private LACs and Jesuit colleges:
LACs:
Reed A 4.14
Whitman A 4.04
UPS B+ 3.29
Willamette B- 2.75
Lewis&Clark C+ 2.17
Jesuit:
U of Portland B 2.93
Gonzaga C+ 2.37
Seattle U C+ 2.17