A little later than expected but, as promised, some questions I've received over the past week or two from all of you in the first edition of the blog mailbag. More questions are waiting in the wings, but I know all of you have been waiting since Monday (when this entry didn't appear!), so this is only Part 1. Keep checking back for more!

How and when will you be deciding who the recipients of the Honors Program spaces/merit scholarships will be once some of those who have been extended invites opt to decline?

This is a very good question and a popular one around this time of year! However, we do not offer additional merit/Liberal Arts Honors awards because we make considerably more offers than we actually have spaces for up front, expecting some of the students to decline the offer. There are about 125 spaces in the Liberal Arts Honors Program (and because merit is tied directly to LAH, about 125 merit scholarship awards) and this year we will make about 540 total offers (including both Early Action and Regular Decision), so there will not be any additional spaces available when students choose to decline the offer.

As I have mentioned before, any student who was accepted to PC Early Action but did not receive an invitation into the Honors Program will be reevaluated again during the Regular Decision scholarship/Honors Program review process.

How do you handle AP credit and college credit earned in HS?

You can find the full information regarding AP, IB, and college credit in the Providence College Undergraduate Catalog or by clicking here. Here's the short answer: Providence College does accept AP credit administered by the College Entrance Examination Board. Students who achieve a score of a 4 or a 5 on the AP exam will typically be awarded equivalent credit for coursework at PC.

For earned college credit, students who have successfully completed coursework at an accredited institution should submit an official college transcript to the Office of Admission by June 1st. Please note that credit for dual enrollment courses is ordinarily not awarded for courses required to meet high school graduation requirements. Also, courses must be taken on a college campus and taught by a full-time college instructor in order to be awarded credit here at PC. Final approval of dual enrollment courses will be made by the Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies.

I have applied to Providence College for fall 2007 entrance as a Regular Decision freshman. I know the notification date is April 1st, does this mean all letters go out then? Can an applicant be notified any earlier?

All students who have applied Regular Decision will receive their decision letters by April 1st , and right now we are aiming to mail the letters in mid-to-late March. All of our Regular Decision letters (no matter what the decision is and no matter when the application arrived in our office) will go out at the same time to be fair to all applicants.

Scott, how many applicants did you get for regular admission? Also, how many spots do you anticipate will be available?

More information on this front to come! We are continuing to enter all of the applications that arrived last week into our computer system and I will pass along more specific numbers as soon as we know more specific numbers!

First of all, thanks for writing this blog, it has really helped me throughout the admissions process. I've already been accepted to PC, but I was wondering if you could write a little about student life and why people decide to come to PC. Thanks for your insight!

A really open-ended question! I could write for a long time about this one, but I'll try not to go on forever! First of all, student life at PC is very, very, very active. We have an incredibly involved student body, there are always activities going on throughout the week and on the weekends, and the only way a student would ever be bored on campus is if they want to be bored!! I think that attracts a lot of students who were very involved with in clubs/events/sports/organizations in high school to PC. (Click here for the full list of clubs and organizations PC currently has to offer!)... Moving beyond just the vibrant and involved campus, we also have a very real sense of community here at PC, a lot of which comes from our Dominican heritage, I think-- having the presence of Dominican priests, brothers, and sisters on our campus really helps to shape the community. And it extends beyond just the Dominicans themselves to the faculty, staff, and alumni of Providence College!

One of the major parts of student life is living on campus (wherever a student decides to go to college) and I think residence life at PC is something that makes students really feel at home on campus. Freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus (unless they are commuting from home) and the majority of juniors and seniors (95%) also live either on campus or within a half-mile radius of campus, so there is truly a sense of community. We are certainly not a "suitcase school" where students are coming to campus only for class and then going home at nights or on the weekends. With the majority of our student body living either on-campus or in the neighborhood, it creates a family-type atmosphere that most students want to be a part of as much as they can (so they don't want to leave campus to go home on the weekends, or over summer break, or at graduation!).

Student life at PC is also enhanced by the city of Providence, which is extremely student-friendly and provides another whole world of opportunities to enhance a student's education outside of the classroom--and also have fun! Downtown Providence is less than a 10-minute drive from campus, and can easily be accessed by riding the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) buses. RIPTA buses stop right in the middle of our campus and PC students can ride to anywhere in the state of Rhode Island for free simply by showing their College ID Card. Once students arrive downtown, they will find numerous entertainment, shopping, cultural, performing arts, musical, and sporting event options at their fingertips. With five colleges and universities within the city of Providence itself and nine total in the state of Rhode Island, there are many college-age students to meet both on-and off-campus and many activities downtown geared toward college students.

So, why do people decide to attend PC? For a lot of different reasons, I'm sure! For me, personally, it was a combination of academics/Liberal Arts/the Honors Program; the Catholic community and opportunities to be involved; the location, with the city of Providence right in PC's backyard; the size- not too small (my high school graduating class had 49 students) but not too large (average class size of around 22, and less than that as students move into higher level courses within their majors); the Division I sports (even though I wasn't planning on playing, the atmosphere and school spirit that D-I Athletics create on a campus is really something special!); and finally, the sense of community that I experienced in person each time I visited the campus. As strange (or corny) as it sounds, there was something about PC (that "feeling," as they say) that I didn't feel on the other college campuses I visited. And it didn't even matter that the first three times I visited campus, it was pouring rain. Yes, all three times. But I still loved it (if you enjoy your time on any campus in the rain, imagine how great it will be when the sun is shining!!!). And I enrolled! And I still haven't left!

One last tip for those of you who have been accepted Early Action but haven't visited yet: come see campus! It really is the best way to know if a school is right for you and if you can see yourself at an institution for the next four years of your life! Thanks to all of you who did visit this past weekend for our Early Action Student Life Program-- hope that you enjoyed your time on campus and at the basketball game downtown!!

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, more questions and answers are still to come! Stay tuned!