The invitation letters for students accepted into the Liberal Arts Honors Program (LAH) were released about a week after decision letters, and I thought I would spend a little time talking about the selection process and the credentials for the students who were chosen to be part of the Honors Program (and receive a merit scholarship, as all merit scholarships are exclusively tied to the Honors Program).

(If you aren't familiar with PC's Honors Program, go here to find out more!)

In each year's freshman class of around 1,000 students, we have about 120 spaces in the Honors Program for the top academic performers in the class. There is no separate application to be considered for LAH - the committee on admission considers all accepted students for the Honors Program, and we focus on the following criteria:
-High school curriculum
-Context of high school environment
-Overall high school academic performance (GPA)
-High school English performance
-Class rank (if available)
-SAT/ACT scores (if submitted)

As I've mentioned in previous blog posts, the average GPA for students accepted Early Action to PC's Class of 2013 was an "A-minus" in a very rigorous (Honors/AP) 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 available at their high school. These students have exhausted or nearly exhausted their high school curriculum, taking full advantage of Honors, AP, IB, and college-level courses that are offered in all academic subject areas. Let's talk about "exhausting" the high school curriculum for a minute...

Generally speaking, most of the students we accept to the college (not to the Honors Program) have taken four years of the five core subjects (English, Math, Natural Science, Social Science, Foreign Language) and have taken a predominantly Honors-level curriculum throughout high school. But we are only selecting a very small number of these students into the Honors Program. And they are the students who have taken on the highest academic challenge in all subject areas. Remember, there is a huge difference between a strong curriculum and THE STRONGEST curriculum available at a high school.

2. A cumulative, unweighted "A" average 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. To put it simply, they have taken the most challenging classes offered at their high schools and earned "A's" in practically all of them.

3. An "A" average in their (Honors/AP/IB level) English courses throughout high school. As a liberal arts institution with a challenging core curriculum, English performance is very important to us as part of both the admission review and the Honors Program review.

4. These students are at the very top of their classes - if the high school provides rank, students selected for the Honors Program are, on average, in the Top 3-4% of their class.

5. If a student chose to submit SAT/ACT scores, they were also considered in the Honors Program review process. As a test-optional institution, SATs/ACTs are not required for admission nor are they required to be considered for the Honors Program. If a student did submit his or her test scores, we considered them in the Honors Program review after looking at the high school academic performance, and the average test scores this year for students invited into LAH landed around a 700 on all three sections of the SATs or about a 31 on the ACT. But remember, one strong SAT/ACT score will never outweigh high school academic performance - so a student with strong (700) SAT scores but a "B-plus/A-minus" high school GPA will NOT be invited into the Honors Program simply based on the test scores.

We feel very fortunate to have such an incredibly strong group of applicants to PC, but obviously it makes the admission review - and even more so the Liberal Arts Honors review - extremely competitive. In fact, there are a handful of students with perfect "A" averages (unweighted 4.0 GPA on our 4.0 scale) who were not invited into the Honors Program - and the reason for that is their course selection, while solid in the admission review, simply did not measure up to those students who truly exhausted the curriculum at their high schools (and also achieved at an "A" level!).

I hope that this information helps to clarify the selection process for our Liberal Arts Honors Program. If you have any questions about the Honors Program that I have not yet answered, please feel free to send them along.