Interesting. Reed and Whitman are the only A schools, but they also have per-capita endowments that are more than double all the other schools. UPS is the only other school that has an endowment over $300 million and it is in the $380 million range compared to the $550 to $600 million range for Whitman and Reed.
BTW, just a minor correction. University of Portland is Catholic but not Jesuit. It is run by the Order of the Holy Cross, which is the same as Notre Dame, but not Jesuit.
Per capita endowment was 15% of the grade, FYI. And thanks for the clarification of Catholic versus Jesuit, in my mind they were the same!
Yep. Per capita endowment is by far the easiest financial metric for us ordinary parents to look up and compare. Because it is easily googled.
There are other measures of financial health that are much more difficult to ascertain and parse. Like capital debt. One school might have gone on a recent debt-fueled construction spree and have a huge annual debt obligation that it must service to stay solvent. While another school may have older facilities but be debt free. That sort of thing is difficult to actually pull out of the annual reports.
And, of course, different schools are going to have different expense structures based on salaries, benefits, administrative costs, service and maintenance contracts, and so forth. Again, those are hard things to compare.
So that leaves us parents basically looking at endowment as a proxy for financial health. And hoping that these other analyses like the Forbes one are actually taking a more sophisticated look and not just creating the appearance of rigor by virtue of the public data they are using.
It does look like the financial grades posted by Buckythedog do pretty much exactly match per-capita endowment. At least for the schools that I’m familiar with. I think the 5 LACs are ranked by their exact order of per-capita endowment. I doubt that is coincidence.
Forbes used 9 categories to calculate the grades, ranging from 7.5% to 15% of the grade (3 categories with 15% contribution). I would have thought 15% alone was not enough to dominate the grade, but maybe the endowment per student varied much more than the other categories and therefore ended up dominating the grade?
I expect they are all related. If you have a strong endowment you are likely to be on more sound footing on the other metrics as well. If your endowment is broke then you are likely to look worse on the other metrics as well.
Yes, good point, many of the categories might be related to endowment.
My daughter was waitlisted at Whitman. Apparently over the last few years as few as 29 students and as many as 100 students were offered admissson from the waitlist. Does anyone know what financial aid packages might look like if one is admitted from the waitlist? Would the be lower, or about the same if one was admitted regularly? Thanks for any info or insight about this.
The final Financial Sustainability reports were released earlier this week, with some clarifications from the president. They can be found here: March 3, 2021 - Final Working Group Reports. Some specific changes from the preliminary reports is to retain current staffing in Classics and Environmental Humanities for now. There were also some other changes in the reports.
The letter from President Murray and the final reports are all worth looking at if you are interested in Whitman.
Thank you! I’m glad they are keeping their Japanese program. DS is signed up for one of Whitman’s Admitted Student Saturdays on the 27th of this month. We’re excited to visit!
We signed up for the April 4th Admitted Saturday session. Anyone else here doing that one?
Google Maps says the door to door drive from our house in the Portland metro is 3:45 so we’ll probably just get up early and make it a day trip. D21 will not be happy getting up that early on a Saturday. If she wants to drive our Friday night then I guess we can do that but I don’t see the point.
She is mostly interested in seeing the science facilities, hopefully there will be some opportunity to do that.
We just did their admitted Saturday. There is a quick COVID test (nasal) that takes about 10-15 minutes, then a walking tour of the campus which is an hour long. Then a second tour of a dorm room (outdoors - we peeped into a dorm room, lounge area, kitchen - from outside). Then we take a break eating lunch at their cafeteria. The best part (and only indoor part of it) was a one hour class with a professor - both student and their guest participate, socially distanced, masks on, but in a classroom. That ends the tour. You can then wait and optionally chat with admissions counselors and other tour guides (current students).
It was a good experience to get a feel of picturing yourself at the school, talking to current students.
We did the L&C outdoor-only tour as well - it was also interesting talking to the students there.
How would you compare L&C to Whitman? Biggest differences? We toured L&C today, Willamette yesterday, UPS this coming Tues, and Whitman next Sat.
We visited both multiple times and live 30 min from L&C so have seen the campus quite a bit.
Whitman, perhaps due to its isolated location, seems to foster a greater sense of school community and comradery. It seems really special that way. Students seem especially loyal to the school. And there is frankly more going on in terms of clubs, organizations, and such. At L&C with Portland at its doorstep, students tend to vanish into the city more and don’t need to rely on the college to provide as much in the way of events, social life, amenities, and so forth. Whitman is the only LAC in the Pacific Northwest that is in a truly isolated rural setting. The others are all in or adjacent to large cities.
Whitman also seems to be a step up in terms of facilities and amenities. The science buildings and library are more impressive. The cafeteria is more impressive. That sort of thing. Probably mostly because Whitman is a step up financially (3x larger endowment) and seems to be able to command higher tuition (less merit aid). L&C is in a truly gorgeous wooded setting in an affluent residential part of Portland. But the facilities are just average for a LAC of that caliber.
We visited all five secular LACs in the PNW (Reed, Whitman, L&C, Willamette, and UPS). We concluded that Reed and Whitman are roughly peer institutions (although very different in style) and that L&C, UPS, and Willamette are roughly peer institutions that are all a step behind Whitman and Reed in terms of academics and financial resources.
In terms of student body? My impression was the Whitman is more intensely and uniformly academic while L&C has a broader range of students from some very high achievers to perhaps more slackers at the other end.
L&C had a very Pacific Northwest vibe (we’re from WA). My son loved it and could see himself there. The campus is small and they have a few clubs/activities that seemed interesting. For us Science labs (psychology, biology) were important and we got very little info on the tour itself, but met a Biology senior at the end.
Whitman had a more academic feel with a lot of students studying in Sciences (that we met and statistically). They also have an all inclusive culture where clubs/events are open to everyone, even if you don’t join a fraternity (my son is not interested) and are not into sports. My son loved it equally and so for now, its between L&C and Whitman. He has more merit aid from L&C.
He will tour UPS next weekend.
I am a science teacher and I worked for over a decade a a marine fisheries biologist with NOAA before getting into teaching. D21 is also interested in majoring in biology so we gave special attention to the science departments at all three schools when we visited pre-pandemic. I would rate Whitman as having the stronger science facilities and offerings and I think it has the highest percentage of students in life science majors. Bio is the top major at Whitman compared to Psych at L&C and Business at UPS. The main difference with UPS compared to the other two is that UPS has a business school which is their largest major whereas Whitman and L&C are more strictly liberal arts and both have higher percentages of students in the natural sciences than UPS. So science majors are spread a bit more thin at UPS. But I think the differences are pretty subtle. The all have good science programs.
Does anyone know how the drive is from Tacoma to Walla Walla? We’re heading to Tacoma tomorrow and then Walla Walla on Thursday. Just wondering if it’s all flat roads or driving through mountains?
It is a 5 hour drive, about 3/4 of it is on interstate. But you will cross the Cascade Mountains at Snoqualmie Pass on I-90 and you could encounter snow up there this time of year.
None of the drive is really flat. Even when you get to the eastern half of the state there are still rolling hills, mountains, and canyons.
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. 
Bump
We submitted our deposit this week! So exciting! Has anyone else joined the Whitman College Parents group on Facebook? Everyone there is so nice and questions are answered immediately. 