President Cronin's Letter to a Prospective Student Dear David, I'm delighted you are considering Whitman College. I believe it could be an ideal college for you. You asked me what set Whitman apart from other colleges or, in effect, what is distinctive about Whitman College. The most important factor is Whitman's impressive faculty and their dedication to working individually with every student. Whitman faculty plainly set high expectations for their students, yet they go out of their way to help students rise to meet these expectations. Whitman is a learning-centered and student-centered college. Everything we do is rooted in making Whitman a superb place for learning, scholarship and personal growth. Doubtless, this is why US News and World Report calls Whitman one of the top three national liberal arts colleges on the West Coast. And why The Princeton Review lists Whitman as one of the top 20 undergraduate educational programs anywhere in the nation. This is also why Loren Pope devotes a whole chapter to Whitman in his best-selling Colleges That Change Lives. No college is the right match for everyone. Getting the right fit is important, and only you can determine which college is the right one for you. Still, the fact that Whitman has the highest retention and highest graduation rates in the Northwest says a lot about student satisfaction. One first-year student told his parents recently, "If I had known Whitman was so great, I wouldn't have even bothered to apply to all those other colleges. . . ." Most students here feel this way. Whitman students are serious about learning. Most of them graduated with various honors and, like you, took a lot of AP courses and were high achievers in high school. They want a demanding curriculum. They love the fact that Whitman's library computer labs are open 24 hours a day and that we have one of the best wired college campuses in the nation. And they often use Whitman as a critical foundation for graduate work at Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Cornell, Stanford, Berkeley and similar top graduate and professional schools. Whitman students are remarkably talented and engaged. We proudly boast about having one of the top debate programs in America, one of the most active and impressive theatre and performance music programs, one of the nation's most successful ski programs and one of the top student-run radio stations (KWCW). We also have a thriving tae kwon do program. Different student groups produced four CDs this year. Half the student body does regular community service work. With all this activity you might assume that Whitman is a competitive place. The opposite is true -- collaboration and helping each other to succeed is far and away the dominant value. Many people call it a family atmosphere of nurturing and sharing and collegiality. I think our location has a lot to do with our campus culture. We are about halfway between Seattle and Boise, halfway between Portland and Missoula, and halfway between the towering Cascade Mountains and the vast Rocky Mountains. We are located at the edge of a beautiful and accessible mountain range (the Blue Mountains), which provides great skiing, hiking and mountain biking. The town itself is a small, friendly college town, sprinkled with art galleries, coffee houses and local businesses. We have a main street we even call Main Street. It only takes minutes to be out in the countryside, which my wife sometimes calls "van Gogh country" because of our scenic rolling wheat fields, bucolic wine vineyards and nearby mountains. We don't have rush hours here and rarely even a rush minute. We are without most of the distractions of metropolitan areas. And this is a blessing when you want to concentrate on studies, personal fitness and all the co-curricular opportunities that abound here. Our campus grounds and buildings are very much like a traditional New England college. We plant nearly 100 trees a year to add to the grandeur of the campus. A creek runs through the campus as well, providing a source for a beautiful duck pond. We have a new dance studio, an indoor tennis center, an excellent weight room/conditioning area with state-of-the-art workout equipment, and an exciting new Center for Communication Arts and Technology. We are midway through an ambitious renovation and expansion of our main library. We've recently acquired a beautiful 26-acre mountain property which will become an environmental studies field station and a retreat center for campus workshops and leadership development. Whitman also owns about 24,000 acres of farmland within this region -- and all of the proceeds of our farms go to help run the College and provide scholarship monies for Whitman students. Whitman is financially strong. We have one of the biggest endowments per student of any of the colleges or universities in this part of the country. We have eliminated deferred maintenance and work hard to achieve efficiency as well as excellent customer service. We have the resources to help most students afford a Whitman education. Whitman's strength also comes from our remarkably dedicated alumni. Our alumni care deeply about Whitman and its continuing success and have helped it build an impressive endowment of over $280 million. Whitman is among a select few colleges nationwide that boast an alumni-giving rate of 53 percent or higher each year. Our alumni insist on excellence and contribute and volunteer and encourage us to be among the best liberal arts colleges in America. They are also a great network for our undergraduates. I could go on at length. In sum, Whitman is an uncommonly good place for learning to prepare for a lifetime of learning and leadership. It has a great record. It is winning all kinds of national recognition for its academic programs. It is a place that takes students seriously. It just might be the ideal place for you. Sincerely, Thomas E. Cronin President P.S. The Princeton Review of Best Colleges, 1999 edition, is worth quoting. "This highly competitive . . . gem of the inland Northwest has almost everything going for it: a beautiful setting; a rigorous, 'difficult' curriculum; a dedicated and 'exceptionally willing' faculty; an attentive and 'helpful' administration; and a phenomenal success rate among its graduates. . . . Students proclaim that their school is the land of 'accessibility.' . . . "As one student exclaims, 'I can't rave enough about this school.' . . . [Says another,] 'I love the close-knit, family atmosphere here. You feel like hugging every one of your classmates.' " Back to the President's Homepage