Although decision letters have not been mailed out yet, I've seen a lot of questions about qualifications to be admitted into our Liberal Arts Honors Program and to receive a merit scholarship. First of all, PC's academic merit scholarships are tied exclusively to our Honors Program; in other words, a student who is invited into the Liberal Arts Honors Program will also receive a merit scholarship, and a student who is not invited into the Honors Program will (therefore) not receive a merit scholarship. Also, please keep in mind that the majority of financial aid resources go to need-based aid at PC (in keeping with our Catholic and Dominican mission) rather than merit-based scholarships.

As you've probably gathered from reading past entries, the admission review process this year was incredibly competitive. So, you won't be surprised to hear that selecting the students who will receive invitations into the Honors Program was, in turn, even MORE competitive. In our entire freshman class, we have about 960 spaces-- however, there are only 125 spots in the Honors Program, making these selections very challenging. Hopefully these next couple of paragraphs will give you an idea of the criteria we are looking at to make these Honors Program decisions.

First of all, the average GPA for an Early Action INVITE (not an Honors Program invitation-- an admission invite) was an "A-" in a very rigorous high school curriculum. So, if the admission invite GPA is an "A-," you would be correct to assume that the Honors Program GPAs are going to be higher-- very solid "A" averages from students who have had nearly a flawless high school career. But having the "A" average is not enough-- it must be achieved in the most demanding curriculum available at a student's high school, taking full advantage of advanced level, Honors, Advanced Placement, and/or International Baccalaureate courses (depending on what is offered at a specific high school) and achieving grades that place the student at the top of their class.

In order to show just how competitive the Liberal Arts Honors Program and merit scholarship process is, let me give you an example from last year: In our overall applicant pool for the Class of 2010 (both Early Action and Regular Decision), we had 131 valedictorians and salutatorians apply. However, we only have 30 St. Dominic (full tuition) Scholarships to award to each class, so as you can see, it was extremely competitive last year (and even more so this year). That last number is not to say that only valedictorians and salutatorians are considered for or receive scholarships-- certainly there are students who are not #1 or #2 and receive an invitation into the Honors Program-- but generally speaking, we are talking about students who are at the top of their class.

Back to this year's Early Action students... Students who will be receiving a Liberal Arts Honors Program invitation and merit scholarship will have (generally speaking) the following credentials: (1) The most demanding advanced-level courseload available-- meaning they have exhausted their high school curriculum... (2) An overall "A" average (GPA) in that demanding schedule... (3) A class rank within the top 3% of their high school graduating class (if the student's high school ranks)... (4) An "A" average in their English courses throughout high school (because we are a liberal arts school, English performance is a very important factor in the review process). The main criteria that we use to select students for the Honors Program is (as you can see from the above) academic performance in the high school classroom, but another popular question we've seen has been, "How do SAT/ACT scores factor into the Honors Program and merit scholarship review since PC is test-optional?"

Well, I can assure you that no student was penalized in this process for choosing not to submit their scores. There are plenty of (very strong) students without test scores on file who will be receiving an invitation into the Honors Program and a merit scholarship. For students who did choose to submit test scores, they have been looked at as part of the merit review-- however, please understand that they did not and will not outweigh the high school performance. They are an additional factor that we use if a student has made the scores available to us, but we want our Honors Program to consist of a group of students who earned their invitation into the program with four years of consistent classroom work rather than simply good standardized test-takers. The Honors Program review (like the admission review process) puts the majority of the weight on the high school academic performance (as explained above) rather than on standardized test scores.

I hope that this lengthy posting has given you some insight into how we make our selections for the Liberal Arts Honors Program (and not made the whole process more confusing! I hope I didn't scare anyone, but it's important for me to get across to you the amazing depth and strength of our applicant pool!). If you have any questions about the Honors Program that I didn't answer, please feel free to send them along!

As I mentioned on Monday, Honors Program invitation letters will be mailed on Friday, December 29, about a week after admission decision letters which will leave our office on Saturday, December 23. Later this week, I will talk a bit more about my final thoughts on the Early Action Committee on Admission meetings and the overall Early Action decision-making process. I'll talk to you again soon!

*Scott