Current Students
Student Account
Your student account includes charges for tuition, housing, meal plan and Cash Flex, course fees and miscellaneous charges accrued by using your Whitman ID card to purchase things on campus. Finance charges at 8% per year are assessed on balances over $100 that are more than 30 days old.
Staff in the Student Accounts Office will email instructions for downloading per-semester statements to students’ WhitMail addresses twice a year. The first, our Fall Semester notice, is sent in mid-July, and includes estimated financial aid for half of the school year. This information will allow you to calculate the payment amount that must be paid by mid-August in order to be able to finalize your registration for Fall semester classes.
Parents who have provided their email address to Whitman will receive an email notice that the billing notices have been sent to students. Our email to the students will have instructions for them to forward the billing notice and a downloaded statement to the bill payer(s), if they don’t pay their Whitman bills themselves.
Please complete the ‘Account Authorization’ item on the ‘Student Tools’ menu on the left column in myWhitman, so that we can discuss your account details with your parent(s), guardian, or other designated person. You'll need to give us their full name and relationship to you.
*** Fall semester payment is due August 15, 2026 ***
We send another billing notice to students for the Spring semester in mid-December. It will include the upcoming semester's charges, estimated financial aid credits, if applicable, and any balance forward from the previous semester. You will receive this email notice if you have preregistered for classes prior to December. Payment is due shortly after the New Year's holiday, approximately two weeks before the first day of class. Though the campus is usually closed during much of Winter Break, we will deposit payments and process mail during this time.
*** Spring semester payment is due January 10, 2027 ***
During the term, we notify students via email, once a month, of their account balance if there is an amount due. These notification emails will be sent around the fifth of the month starting in October for the Fall semester, and February for the Spring Semester. There will be no email in June and December, as we will be preparing the billing statements for the upcoming semester.
Our email notices will include the amount due as well as a link to our payment website. We currently only have the capability to send reminders to students (the account holders) at their WhitMail address. Please forward these emails to anyone who helps you manage your expenses. For those who wish to have a detailed list of charges that created the amount due, the reminder email will include instructions for accessing and printing a statement of account. This online statement is ‘live’ and is updated as soon as items are posted/processed in our office.
Your preregistration may be delayed for the coming semester if you have not completed loan paperwork, or made arrangements with Student Accounts to cover an amount due. You may not finalize your registration for the current term until the previous term's balance is paid in full.
Payment Plans
At our new Flywire payment platform, you may elect to spread your payments for the upcoming semester over three or four months by enrolling in a payment plan. The first payment is due on Aug. 15 for the Fall semester and Jan. 10 for the Spring semester. The remaining payments are due on the 15th of each subsequent month. There is a $60 set-up fee each semester for this service, and finance charges are assessed at 8% annualized interest on the declining balance. For an estimate of those finance charges, use our Payment Plan Calculator.
Students who have a Payment Plan contract will receive a separate "payment-reminder" email for this account during the months that the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th payments are scheduled (September, October and November for Fall semester contracts; and February, March and April for Spring semester contracts).
Closing your Student Account
When you graduate or withdraw, the Student Accounts Office checks with campus departments for any final charges to your account. Then we move your $300 Enrollment Deposit to your Student Account, hopefully covering any remaining amount due. If your Student Account balance was over $300, we will send you a final billing statement by regular mail.
We strive to work with our students as much as possible. If you leave school or graduate with a balance owing, please contact us to work out payment arrangements.
If you have a credit balance (overpayment) on your account at the time you leave Whitman, we will refund that balance to you and close your Student Account. This refund will be sent as an e-check, direct deposited into your bank account if you are signed up for this service. Otherwise, we will mail a paper check to your home address. Please contact us to discuss other options for this refund.
If you have made an international payment to your Student Account using Flywire, your final refund will be sent via Flywire, back into your bank account in your home currency.
IRS Form 1098-T
1098-T and Tuition Tax Credit
The IRS Form 1098-T Tuition Statement reports the payments made for qualified education expenses during the calendar year. This form, in conjunction with personal financial records, is used to assist you and your parents in calculating any educational tax credits you may be eligible for. To help determine the tax credit you may be eligible for, please review IRS Form 8863 - Education Credits, Instruction for Form 8863, and IRS Publication 970 - Tax Benefits for Higher Education. For more information, please visit the IRS website.
IRS Form 1098-T Tuition Statement
As of the 2018 tax year, IRS Regulations require colleges and universities to report all payments received (up to the amount of qualified tuition and fees) in Box 1 of the 1098-T.
- (Box 1) Amounts paid for qualified tuition and related expenses (QTRE), include Spring 2018, Summer 2018 and Fall 2018.
- Amounts reported as payments include personal payments, loans, and scholarships/grants received during the calendar year for qualified education expenses less any refunds issued due to over-payments on the account. Total payments reported in Box 1 cannot exceed the amount of applicable qualified education expenses.
- Qualified education expenses include tuition and fees required for enrollment. Other charges, including housing and meal plans are not considered qualified education expenses for 1098-T purposes.
- The amount reported in Box 1 is NOT reduced by scholarships and grants reported in box 5.
- (Box 5) Scholarships and Grants received during the calendar year, includes Spring 2018, Summer 2018 and Fall 2018.
PER IRS REGULATIONS, UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE A 1098-T IN THE FOLLOWING INSTANCES:
- You enrolled for courses for which no academic credit is offered, even if the student is otherwise enrolled in a degree program
- Students whose qualified tuition and fees are entirely waived or paid entirely with scholarships (Tuition Remission, VA/Yellow Ribbon)
- If the student withdrew and earned no academic credit, they are not eligible to claim the education tax credit even if they paid tuition for that semester
- Students who are not U.S. citizens, unless requested by the student
This tax credit form is created after the end of the calendar year. All students are given an electronic form accessible on my.whitman.edu, as well as the option of a paper form mailed to their home address. They may change their selection of electronic-only or a paper form during each registration period. This is one of the items on their registration checklist.
Students will be notified by email before the end of January each year once the current year's form is available, and given instructions to access it. All students will have continued access to this form and prior year’s forms on myWhitman, while they remain enrolled.
If you have questions regarding the amounts shown on Form 1098-T, please contact us at 509-527-5144 or email stuacct@whitman.edu. Questions pertaining to the actual preparation and filing of your personal taxes should be directed to your personal tax adviser or the Internal Revenue Service. Whitman College does not provide tax or legal advice.
If we do not have your Social Security number on file, we may not be able to generate this form for you. Please contact us to make sure we have your SSN on file. If we don't, please complete the W-9S form and return it to our office to ensure you receive this form.