The fall travel season for the PC Admission staff is complete (for most of us, at least!)... and we now have to quickly shift gears and move into "reading mode." That's right, our Early Action application postmark deadline is tomorrow (November 1), and there are definitely a lot of applications here in our office waiting to be read! While the admission counselors have been traveling throughout the country for the past two months, our operations staff has been very busy handling all of the applications that have come into our office and preparing them for the counseling staff to begin reading. How many do we have in the Early Action pool? We aren't quite sure yet, as hundreds of applications continue to arrive each day. I'll pass on more specific numbers as soon as we know...

If you have applied Early Action (or are planning to send in your EA application in the next 24 hours!), please be aware that we will be letting you know if your application is complete by the end of November. We are currently receiving thousands of applications, teacher recommendations, high school transcripts, etc. and when all of these pieces are matched up and entered into our computer system, it will be easy for us to let you know if you are missing anything from your application. So again, please don't worry if you don't hear anything from us about your application until the end of the month... we'll get there and will definitely let you know if anything is missing!

I'll write a lot more about the Early Action process over the next month or so but please feel free to post any questions you may have!

Posted by Scott Seseske at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hello from New Orleans! It is the final week of travel for the PC Admission Staff and one of the most popular questions I have seen this fall is regarding our new test-optional policy. If you haven't heard, students will not be required to submit their SAT/ACT scores to receive full consideration for admission this year (and the next three under PC's four-year test-optional pilot program). So what does the test-optional policy mean for the admission review process this year?

First of all, it's important to realize that standardized test scores have never driven the admission process here at Providence College. Even in past years, when SAT/ACT scores were required, they were always the last piece of the application considered and were never a "make or break factor" in admission decisions. In our admission review, we find that a student's high school academic performance (the combination of their curriculum plus the grades received) is a much better indicator of success at PC than a standardized test score. Therefore, after over a year of study, the test-optional policy was put into place this summer. For more specific information on the policy, please follow this link: www.providence.edu/testoptionalpolicy.

The most popular question we have received regarding the policy--and the toughest for us to answer--is the question: "At what number should I submit my SAT or ACT scores?" Ahhh the magic number... I'll cut right to the chase- I am not going to give you a number in this posting. We really do not have a cutoff line where we discern a "good" SAT score from a "bad" SAT score. The best answer I can offer is this: If a student feels their test scores are an accurate representation of their academic ability, they should feel free to submit the scores. If however, a student feels the score is not representative, the student will not be penalized in the review process if SAT/ACT scores are not submitted.

It is also important to remember that if a student does choose to submit test scores, they will be considered but will not outweigh the high school academic performance.

Hopefully this information helps answer some of your test-optional policy questions (without causing more questions to arise!). The most important thing to remember is that the admission review process at PC is holistic and really focuses on the high school performance-- we want to invite students to PC who have "earned" a space in our freshman class through four years of continued high school success rather than having students "win" a space with one high test score. Please feel free to keep the questions coming!

Posted by Scott Seseske at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi and welcome to the admission blog headquarters of the Providence College website! My name is Scott Seseske and I am one of fifteen counselors who work in the Office of Admission. My reason for writing this blog is to give you an inside look at the admission cycle at PC through the eyes of an admission counselor. If you have ever wondered to yourself, "How do admission counselors review applications and make admission decisions?" or "What is it like to be an admission counselor?" you've come to the right place. As we progress through the 2006-07 school year, I will share my side of the story with you, and I encourage you to continue to check this page for updated information. In addition, I hope that you'll share your stories with me; please contact me at any time with questions, concerns, or comments about Providence College or the admission process in general!

Before we get too far, I do want to give you a little background about me! I grew up in the beautiful Berkshire Hills in Pittsfield, MA, and graduated from Providence College with the Class of 2004. While a student on campus, I was an English major, a member of the Liberal Arts Honors Program, and very involved in the co-curricular life of campus as well. I was the General Manager of the student-run radio station (91.3 FM WDOM!) for two years, an Executive Board member of the Admission Ambassador organization, and also involved with Campus Ministry and The Cowl, PC's student newspaper. Clearly, I enjoyed my time at PC as I am still here! I jumped over here to the "other side of the desk" soon after graduation in May 2004 and started here in the Office of Admission that summer. That is the condensed version of my autobiography! But enough about me...

One of the most popular questions I get from friends is, "What does an admission counselor do?" Well, we certainly do have a cyclical profession, in the sense that we do different things at different times of the year. Right now, we are in the midst of our "travel season," where we spend mid-September through early November traveling across the country and throughout the world "telling the Providence College story,"-- visiting high schools, attending college fairs, and meeting with prospective students and their families. Each counselor in our office has a different geographic territory they travel to, and you can find your "personal counselor" by clicking on the "Contact Our Office" page of this website.

I have spent most of this week in the office here in Providence, after visiting parts of western Massachusetts, the south shore of Boston, the Mid-Atlantic (a lot of time in Baltimore and Washington, D.C.), and Nashville, Tennessee over the past month. I have met a lot of great people on the road and encountered some great admission questions as well, which I will share with you throughout the year. I have one major travel destination ahead of me: New Orleans, where I will be flying into on Saturday. Then, the admission staff has to shift gears quickly and begin reviewing the applications that are already piling up in our office (but we'll cross that bridge when we get there - still a little more travel!!).

With the length of this first entry, you probably can tell that I was an English major at PC! As our staff continues to visit you throughout the rest of October and early November, I hope that you will continue to visit this page as I will continue to post updates and answer as many questions as I can. In the meantime, please feel free to post any questions you may have-- or if you just want to say hello, I welcome that as well! I hope that your senior year is going well so far and I will talk to you again from Louisiana!

Posted by Scott Seseske at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)