As I've mentioned a few times in this space, our incredibly strong Early Action applicant pool consisted of nearly 3,500 applications this year, up about 300 from our Early Action pool last year.

It's a fine line we walk each year with Early Action, because we have (literally) thousands of qualified candidates who apply EA but also have...
(1) just over 1,000 spaces in our freshman class and
(2) (literally) thousands more who will be applying Regular Decision (last year, more than 5,600 students applied Regular Decision).

(I wrote a very similar paragraph to that one last year at Early Action.)

Therefore, we have to balance these two things:

First of all, we want to accept as many deserving students as we can Early Action, because they have earned that invitation to Providence College. Second, we have to protect the deserving students still to come in our Regular Decision pool, making sure that there is still room in the freshman class for these qualified students. So, we come to a number of EA invites that we feel is fair to both of these groups... and this year, that number was just over 1,900 acceptances. We feel this number represents a good balance that rewards the deserving students who applied EA while not penalizing the students who choose to apply at Regular (there will still be spaces available to those qualified applicants!). And remember, each year we accept more than the 1,000 or so that we have space for in the freshman class knowing that not every student will in turn "accept us" - they'll have a lot of great schools to choose from!

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But are there more than the 1,900 students we have accepted that we can see being great fits to PC (both in and out of the classroom)? Yes, there are - like I said, we had an incredibly strong applicant pool. There are many students who are just a notch below the top of our pool (the students we invited) who received defer letters in the mail... And it is important to note here that when we defer a student EA, it is because we do see that student being competitive in our Regular Decision review process - in other words, a defer should not be interpreted as a "soft deny." For students who are deferred, their applications will be considered again during the Regular Decision review process in the context of our entire applicant pool.

In addition to inviting and deferring students EA, we also denied a number of students at Early - this is a final decision and students who received an EA deny cannot apply again during Regular Decision. The reason we deny students at Early is because our review processes are very similar at Early and Regular... and therefore, if a student is clearly not competitive in our EA pool, we know that he/she will not be competitive in our Regular Decision pool either. So, instead of deferring that student knowing that we will eventually deny him or her in March, we feel it is better for the student to learn the decision in December so he/she can move on to other college options.

The EA "invited student profile" is as follows:
-Honors/AP level curriculum and an average GPA of an A-minus throughout high school (the average class rank - for students attending high schools that report rank - was 11%).
-Strong curriculum/performance in the Humanities (History and especially English) during high school, in preparation for our liberal arts core curriculum.
-Strong fit to major; for example, declared Biology majors had to show the most demanding math and science curriculum their high school offered, and achieve at a very high level in that curriculum. Many also added outside of the classroom preparation to their strong academic prep (volunteering at a hospital, an internship in a related area, a summer class/experience).
-Genuine commitment to extracurricular activities and/or part-time jobs; and true leadership roles in these activities.
-A well-written, appropriate essay (and Providence College supplemental statement).
-Strong recommendations from high school counselors and teachers.

About 34% of Early Action applicants applied without submitting standardized test scores. For those who did send us their SATs, the average scores for invited students are: 640 Critical Reading, 650 Math, 650 Writing.

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Many more thoughts on Early Action to come, from the committee on admission meetings to the profile of the students selected to join the Liberal Arts Honors Program. We're also 10 days away from January 15 - so we are currently making the transition to the Regular Decision review process here in the office. Updates on Regular Decision will be coming soon as well.

*Scott