The invitation letters for students accepted into the Liberal Arts Honors Program have been released, and I thought I would spend a little time talking about the selection process and the credentials for the students who were selected to be part of the Honors Program (and therefore receive a merit scholarship, as all merit scholarships are exclusively tied to the Honors Program). As I wrote about at Early Action (click here and scroll down to December 19), the selection process for the Honors Program was incredibly competitive at EA, and it remained just as competitive during Regular Decision.

First of all, for those of you who missed it at EA, while we are looking for 960 students in next year's entire freshman class, there are only about 135 spaces available in the Honors Program. As this was the most competitive year in PC's history with regard to admission (an overall acceptance rate of about 40%), you would be correct to infer that the students invited into the Honors Program are truly outstanding, and have achieved at the highest possible level academically in the most demanding curriculum available at their high schools.

I do want to mention here that our Liberal Arts Honors Program provides very high achieving students with a more in-depth and rigorous version of PC's core curriculum, and is open to students of all majors. Each year, students who are majoring in the areas of business, the humanities, the sciences, and many who are undeclared enroll in the Honors Program and are successful.

As I've mentioned, the overall GPA for students admitted to PC's Class of 2011 was just below an "A-minus" in a very rigorous high school curriculum... again, that is an admission invite, not an Honors Program invite. So, for the students who were selected for the Honors Program, we are talking about students who have achieved at the highest possible level throughout all four years of high school. Generally speaking, they have the following credentials:

(1) The absolute most demanding curriculum offered at their high school. In other words, these students have exhausted or nearly exhausted their high school curriculum, taking full advantage of the Honors level, AP, IB, and college-level courses that are offered at their high school.

(2) An overall GPA of an "A" over their four years in that most demanding curriculum. Again, as the average invite GPA (to the college, not the Honors Program) was an "A-minus," we are not talking about an "A-minus" average in the most demanding curriculum; rather, these are students who have basically had flawless high school careers performance-wise and have achieved at the "A" level throughout all four years in the aforementioned most challenging curriculum offered at their high school.

(3) If their high school provides class rank, these students are at the very top of their classes... on average, within the Top 3%.

(4) An "A" average in their (Honors/AP level) English classes throughout high school; as a liberal arts institution, English performance is extremely important to us both in the admission and the Honors Program review.

(5) If a student chose to submit SAT/ACT scores, they were also considered in the Honors Program review process, but they never outweighed the academic achievement in the high school classroom. Standardized test scores 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 rather than on standardized test scores.

Having said all of that, here are the in-depth numbers: we extended Liberal Arts Honors Program invitations to about 14% of the students who were accepted to PC this year (or about 6% of the overall applicant pool). Although there are only 135 spaces in the Honors Program, we know that these top students in our applicant pool will have many outstanding college choices and will not all choose PC, so we made about 550 overall Honors Program offers looking to enroll the 135 when we are all said and done.

A few more numbers that might interest you: There are a handful of students who have perfect "A" averages (4.0 on a 4.0 scale) who were not invited into the Honors Program. There are over 500 students who have a 3.80 GPA or better (on our unweighted 4.0 scale) that were not invited into the Honors Program. There are over 1,000 students who have an "A-minus" (3.67 on our 4.0 scale) or better overall GPA that were not invited into the Honors Program. [And that last number does not include the hundreds of students with an "A-minus" overall GPA that are on the waiting list.]

I hope that I have been able to convey to you the amazing academic depth of our applicant pool this year at PC, which made selections for the Liberal Arts Honors Program ridiculously competitive (and obviously very difficult for the admission committee to make!). I also hope that this answers many of the questions all of you have about the selection of students for the Honors Program, but if not, feel free to send additional questions along!!