Hi Maria,

Great question - In fact, Early Action and Regular Decision students have an equal chance of receiving an invitation to our Liberal Arts Honors (LAH)Program (and therefore a merit scholarship). Here's how it works:

This week, we have been reviewing the academic records of all of the students we accepted Early Action in order to select the strongest to be invited into the LAH Program. The strongest academic performers in the EA pool will receive the LAH invitation in early January.

There are 125 spaces in the LAH Program each year, and we want to reward the absolute strongest students with invitations to this program, regardless of when they apply for admission. Therefore, we are cautious in a sense with the Early Action LAH invitations/merit scholarships, but any EA student who does not receive an LAH invite in January will be reconsidered for the Honors Program with the Regular Decision applicants in late March/early April. That way, we are making sure that the strongest academic performers are rewarded with the LAH Program no matter when they applied.

To be honest, we are pretty good (patting ourselves on the back here) at selecting the top students EA for the Honors Program and therefore very few students are passed over EA and then invited into LAH in March/April. But it does happen - last year, there were 3 students who were accepted EA but didn't receive an LAH Program invitation... until they were reconsidered with the Regular Decision pool in late March. As we get closer to releasing the LAH/merit scholarship letters, I will talk more about the selection process and requirements to be considered for the Honors Program.

*Scott

Regarding the honors program and merit scholarshps.

If you have room for approximately 125, do you invite more anticipating that not everyone may end up at Providence ?

As a follow up question, if a student offered a merit scholarship doesn't attend does that scholarship get offered to another student ??

Thanks for all the info.

Hi Christopher,

To your first question, yes, we do invite more students than the 125 we have room for into the Liberal Arts Honors Program knowing that not every student we select will in turn select us. Last year, we made about 550 Liberal Arts Honors Program "offers" - and ended up with around 125 in the program.

So, to answer your second question, since we are not expecting every student offered an Honors Program spot to attend, we do NOT "re-award" those spaces when a student doesn't choose us... We have made enough offers up front so that we will make that number of 125.

Thanks for posting and Happy New Year!

*Scott