Hello from New Orleans! It is the final week of travel for the PC Admission Staff and one of the most popular questions I have seen this fall is regarding our new test-optional policy. If you haven't heard, students will not be required to submit their SAT/ACT scores to receive full consideration for admission this year (and the next three under PC's four-year test-optional pilot program). So what does the test-optional policy mean for the admission review process this year?

First of all, it's important to realize that standardized test scores have never driven the admission process here at Providence College. Even in past years, when SAT/ACT scores were required, they were always the last piece of the application considered and were never a "make or break factor" in admission decisions. In our admission review, we find that a student's high school academic performance (the combination of their curriculum plus the grades received) is a much better indicator of success at PC than a standardized test score. Therefore, after over a year of study, the test-optional policy was put into place this summer. For more specific information on the policy, please follow this link: www.providence.edu/testoptionalpolicy.

The most popular question we have received regarding the policy--and the toughest for us to answer--is the question: "At what number should I submit my SAT or ACT scores?" Ahhh the magic number... I'll cut right to the chase- I am not going to give you a number in this posting. We really do not have a cutoff line where we discern a "good" SAT score from a "bad" SAT score. The best answer I can offer is this: If a student feels their test scores are an accurate representation of their academic ability, they should feel free to submit the scores. If however, a student feels the score is not representative, the student will not be penalized in the review process if SAT/ACT scores are not submitted.

It is also important to remember that if a student does choose to submit test scores, they will be considered but will not outweigh the high school academic performance.

Hopefully this information helps answer some of your test-optional policy questions (without causing more questions to arise!). The most important thing to remember is that the admission review process at PC is holistic and really focuses on the high school performance-- we want to invite students to PC who have "earned" a space in our freshman class through four years of continued high school success rather than having students "win" a space with one high test score. Please feel free to keep the questions coming!

...puts some wear and tear on our cars in the Office of Admission! Like Senior Admission Counselor Danny Richer's 2001 Honda Civic, which didn't see much of 2007, making its last trip on New Year's Day. But don't worry, Long Islanders, Danny will still be in town for those spring college fairs... arriving in his brand new car!!!

I have been talking a lot about the admission review process and the release date of our decision letters, but as I have mentioned on numerous occasions, there are other things going on as well! Spring semester of junior year is when many high school students begin to get serious about the college search process, and we are hitting the road to answer your questions! In the near future, you’ll likely be seeing your region’s admission counselor at your neighborhood college fair!! Today, I attended a college fair at Our Lady of Good Counsel High School just outside of Washington, DC in Olney, MD. The pictures below show the “calm before the storm" – about 200 admission counselors setting up their tables prior to the students arriving for the day program:

I am headed back to Good Counsel tonight for the evening program (from 6:00 to 8:00 PM if you are in the Northern DC area and want to stop by!) and then back to Providence tomorrow as we prepare to release decision letters later on this week. I’ll talk to you all again soon!!

Greetings from San Francisco!

No, I didn't get drafted by the Giants, but I am out here in California for the next week or so attending college fairs and meeting juniors who are getting deeper into their college searches. While our office is very focused on the upcoming May 1 deposit deadline, life does go on outside of the current senior class!

I attended a very busy fair today at St. Mary's College of California east of Oakland. The staff there estimated that 5,000 people were in attendance, mostly juniors (and their parents) but also a handful of sophomores who were getting a very early jump on their college search process. Along with updates from California, I will also keep you up to date with any information I receive from back in Providence about any movement on the waiting list. I will post any information on that front as soon as I know! Have a great rest of your weekend!

Yes, travel season is officially upon us! It is the time of year when the admission staff "hits the road" to share the Providence College story with juniors and seniors across the country and throughout the world. My first day of high school visits is next Tuesday, September 18, when I will be visiting four Massachusetts schools as part of a "mini college fair" program. We are at an "in-between" point in our office where the summer has ended and we can't wait for travel to begin! For some reason, Tuesday feels a little late for me to be starting travel, as a couple of our staff members have already been out to visit some of you - one of our counselors spent the beginning of this week in Nebraska while another has recently returned from his trip to Texas. But next week marks the big travel kickoff for our office...

Where are we headed this travel season? Well, over the next two months, PC counselors will travel on four different levels: local, regional, national, and international. On the local level, two counselors share our home state of Rhode Island, while four counselors split up Connecticut and seven of us have pieces of Massachusetts. With so many interested students in our backyard, we need to have multiple counselors for each state to handle the volume of applications that pour into our office each year.

Regionally, we have a counselor who will head to Northern New England, visiting high schools and attending college fairs in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Both New York and New Jersey are divided among five counselors, one of whom will spend a great deal of time on Long Island in September and October. As we spread out further from New England on the East Coast, counselors will spend time in Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic, including high school visits in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

On the national level, counselors will be attending college fairs and visiting high schools in more than 30 states this year. Our stops outside of the northeast include: Atlanta, Charlotte, Tampa, Orlando, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Omaha, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indianapolis, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego... (just to name a few) ...

On the international level, three our of counselors will be visiting more than 10 countries throughout Europe, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.

So, between today and November 10, the PC admission staff will be meeting a few prospective students (and racking up a bunch of frequent flier miles!). Each year, we meet with students, parents, and guidance counselors on the road to give them an accurate picture of who we are at PC, to explain the application and admission process, and to answer any questions they may have about Providence College. It's definitely an exciting time for us because we are traveling to so many places and meeting so many people, and I will keep you up to date on our travels over the next two months!

Have a great weekend -- we'll be packing!

*Scott
9/14/07
Providence, RI

Day 1 of travel season is in the books for me! As I mentioned last week, it consisted of visiting four high schools and attending "mini-college fairs" at each of them. LOTS of interest in PC today-- it's great to start off travel season here in New England... and I bet my table won't be quite as busy when I am down in Nashville, TN during the first week of October... We shall see...

It's an all-Massachusetts week for me, as I have four high schools to visit on both Wednesday and Thursday, and then another mini-fair program on Friday. Thanks to everybody who stopped by the PC table today in Hopkinton, Ashland, Holliston, and Milford-- it was great to meet all of you!

*Scott
9/18/07
Milford, MA!

Today marked the final day of the 63rd annual National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) Conference in Austin, TX. A handful of counselors from PC made the trek down to the Lone Star State to network with other admission and guidance counselors, to attend dozens of presentations on college admission issues, and to share ideas with other admission professionals from all over the country. Over 5,000 NACAC members made their way to Austin for the week in order to get together for this annual event, which provides us with the chance to catch up with colleagues who we may only see a couple of times per year while we are on the road.

Austin is the second National Conference that I have attended during my time at PC (the first was in Tampa, FL in 2005), and it is an amazing sight to see 5,000 admission professionals all gathered together to share their individual stories. The NACAC Conference featured a wide range of presentations, many of which focused on topics of college access and ways that postsecondary and secondary schools can work together to make the admission process less stressful for high school seniors. One of the panels I attended focused on the importance of honest communication between the college admission staff and their prospective students, and highlighted blogging as one of the ways to remove some of the mystery from the process. I hope that my blog has accomplished that to some extent for you, but if there are still some areas that you have questions about, I do encourage you to post them on this site and I will be happy to find the answer for you!

My favorite portion of the conference was a three-hour "college fair" for our colleagues on the secondary school side of the desk. The 500 or so colleges and universities represented at the conference set up booths as we would for a college fair for students, but we spent the three hours speaking with guidance counselors who visited our tables instead of students. This event provided a fantastic opportunity for guidance staff members to gain insight into how specific colleges handled their review processes, and also gave them the chance to learn more about colleges they might not have been familiar with. For me, it gave me the chance to speak with guidance counselors from high schools all across my different geographic territories, and gave me the chance to get to know their specific schools a little bit better. In addition, exchanging contact information with these counselors gives me a contact person to go if and when a student applies from their high school later on in the admission cycle. All in all, the fair is extremely helpful to college counselors on both sides of the desk.

So much takes place at this conference that it's hard to fit it all into one entry, so I will fill you in with more early next week. In the meantime, I continue to encourage you to check out the blogs that our students are writing and send along any student-related questions to them. Their blogs can be accessed from the menu on the left side of this page.

*Scott
9/29/07
Austin, TX!

Greetings from Nashville! Moving on from networking at NACAC to telling the PC story in Tennessee, the arrival of October marks month #2 on the road for the PC admission staff. Here’s my random collection of thoughts from this week:

How do you find the front door of a high school? They tell rookie admission counselors to “look for the flagpole." It’s a good suggestion—many times it works. Unless the main entrance to the school is around the back of the building… (Who would think to look there?)…

Speaking of high school visits, I want to take this opportunity to publicly thank all of the high schools that have clearly marked visitor parking spaces. It makes our day much more pleasant when we pull into the parking lot and see this sign:

Once inside the high school, one of the more popular topics of conversation with students is our test-optional policy (year #2 for us!). The most common question for me has been, “You say you are test-optional but if I don’t send my scores, aren’t you going to know that they are bad?��? Fair question. But please understand something: SAT/ACT scores have NEVER been a make or break factor in the admission review process at PC—even when test scores were required. When I open an application file, I am NOT searching through the folder looking to see if test scores are in there—that is just NOT how we conduct our review process. So, if you haven’t submitted test scores, will I immediately think they are “bad��? scores? No. I will think that you want to be considered for admission based on your four years of high school rather than four hours on a Saturday morning taking a standardized test. (And if that is how you want your application to be considered, you’ve applied to the right place!)

I’m 99.9% sure that the “DOOR OPEN" and “DOOR CLOSE" buttons inside of elevators are just there for show. Yep… You’re in the elevator and someone’s running to catch it, and you’re hitting “DOOR OPEN – DOOR OPEN" and… the doors close right in their face. And then they think you were frantically hitting the “DOOR CLOSE" button to keep them out. Which you weren’t… Because if you were hitting that button, the doors wouldn’t have closed. (Told you these were random thoughts…)

Ever been to an outdoor college fair? I hadn’t either until last fall here in Nashville (when I attended TWO!). I had the opportunity to attend one again this year – it’s a very nice atmosphere that works well in warm-weather areas:

One thing you do have to worry about at an outdoor fair is an invasion of insects. Bees, to be specific. Now, I am not allergic to bees, but I will admit to being a little scared of them… Anyway, the counselor at the table next to me wasn’t – she killed three yellow jackets in a one-hour span. Which was great, except at the end of the fair there were at least nine or ten bees swarming around her table – they knew that she had killed their friend bees and were back for revenge. You’ll be happy to know I didn’t get stung…

And finally, my favorite exchange of the week came at an evening college fair while I was speaking with the parent of a prospective student. It went something like this:
Parent: Providence… Providence… Where is that, anyway?
Me: We are up in the Northeast – in Rhode Island.
Parent: Oh, of course, on Rhode Island – part of New York State. You know, I just love New York and it’s just great that your school is in that great state.
Me: Ummmm…

And so it goes…

*Scott
10/2/07
Nashville, TN!

Yes indeed... It's been a busy couple of weeks for me, moving from Austin to Nashville to Springfield back to Providence and now to Baton Rouge, LA -- and on to New Orleans tomorrow.

What's the most popular question I've received so far here in the South? "What's the weather like in Rhode Island?" And the real question behind the question is "How much snow do you get?" Ahhh yes, New England winters... Indeed, we do get snow in the wintertime- which for a number of students I have talked to down here, is very exciting! They are excited to go college in the Northeast and experience all four seasons. My fellow blogger Billy mentioned in his blog that he has never seen snow, as he grew up in Texas and more recently California... Billy, you'll be seeing snow this winter! But back to the questions about weather I've received this week: While it does get cold and it does snow during the winter, it's not like it's so unbearable that no one ever goes outside. And having the cold weather during the winter makes the arrival of spring even sweeter.

My random thoughts from the road this week...

(1) Fast-food is not really that fast. (I am a little bitter today after one of the worst fast-food restaurant drive-thru experiences I have EVER had... Slow-food is more like it...)

(2) Thank you to the guidance and college counseling offices that have provided "goodie-bags" to the visiting admission counselors. I know I have said this before, but it is so nice to have a little snack to eat or bottle of water to drink while moving from one high school visit to the next. So thanks again!!

(3) From my own experiences and what I've heard from some of the other counselors in our office, a lot of students are talking about applying Early Action this year... Which is fine, as long as you are READY to do so... That November 1 deadline isn't so far in the distance anymore... and remember, there is NO competitive advantage to applying EA to PC. But it's up to you how you want to apply!

*Scott
10/9/07
Baton Rouge, LA!

It's incredible how quickly the months of September and October go by when you are constantly on the road moving from high school to high school, hotel to hotel, and city to city. I spent today in... the office(!) for the first full day since September 25. Wow. So, as you would expect, I had a bit of catching up to do! Today was also incredibly busy with campus visitors-- when you walk into the office at 8:30 AM and the front office staff already has extra chairs stretching down the hallway, you know that it isn't going to be a quiet one...

Today also marked the first time I've been to an Admission Ambassador meeting since September 24 (the Ambassadors are our student volunteers who host prospective students on our day visit program, greet families in the Office of Admission, and speak at our Group Information Sessions on campus). We always tell prospective families that the best way to learn about any institution they are visiting is to speak to current students-- they are the ones currently going to classes, living in the residence halls, eating in the dining hall, working out in the fitness center... and so they are the best way for you to get a first-hand account of what campus life is like. I am obviously biased as the co-coordinator of PC's Ambassadors, but we have an incredible group of about 120 students who volunteer so much of their time and energy to help our office welcome prospective families to PC. If you have yet to meet any of our Ambassadors on a campus visit, I definitely suggest that you come visit and take the time to chat with our students-- they are very welcoming, friendly, and knowledgable, and are a great resource as you continue your college search.

As the title of this entry states, it is the "home stretch" of our fall travel season in the PC Admission office. The majority of the counseling staff will be back in the office for good by November 1 (except for one lucky counselor who is headed to the northwest-- Portland and Seattle to be specific... don't worry, we haven't forgotten about the west coast! We are still coming!!)... I am currently in Springfield, MA, and have two days of high school visits ahead of me here (that stay in the office didn't last too long...). Then, I have a brief trip to Houston, TX next week and am back home to get ready for the next step in the admission process... reading your applications! Much, much more to come on that topic in the next few weeks and months!

I hope that all of you seniors out there have had a successful (final) first quarter and are busy narrowing down that list of schools you will be applying to. Just as a reminder, our Early Action deadline is coming up (quickly) -- it is November 1. Our Regular Decision deadline is January 15. Again, a lot more on the application process still to come... Until next time, enjoy the week!

*Scott
10/22/07
Springfield, MA!

Greetings from Berkshire County and Pittsfield, MA! I am sitting at my parents' computer as I type this entry between high school visits today. There is nothing quite like doing visits in your hometown-- people recognize you, there is no need for directions, you get a home-cooked meal, and you can stop by home in between visits instead of spending half an hour sitting in a high school parking lot!

My final visit this afternoon is actually my last high school visit of this fall travel season (wow, that went by fast!). In fact, it is my own high school, St. Joe here in Pittsfield, that I saved for last... It's always one of my favorite visits because I get to see some of my old teachers, coaches, and counselors... and there is usually a strong turnout of students interested in PC at the visit. I will let you know how it goes!!

*Scott
10/25/07
Pittsfield, MA!

This posting is specifically for juniors/sophomores who met our admission counselor in Northern California earlier this month... Unfortunately, his car was broken into while he was in California and along with losing some viewbooks and his Providence College banner, all of the completed inquiry cards were also in the bag that was stolen. The cards were from students that attended one of the following fairs:

San Francisco NACAC National College Fair (Thursday 4/17)
East Bay WACAC College Fair/Cal State- Hayward (Monday 4/21)
North Bay WACAC College Fair/Sonoma State (Tuesday 4/22)
Marin County WACAC College Fair/Dominican (Wednesday 4/23)
Santa Clara WACAC College Fair/Mission College (Thursday 4/24)

If you attended one of these fairs, we'd ask that you fill out our online inquiry form to join our mail/e-mail list and receive information from us. Thanks for your interest in PC - and of course, feel free to come to these blog pages to have any of your questions answered!

The school year has begun, and with the arrival of September, the Office of Admission travel season has also arrived!

From this week through mid-November, all of us on the admission staff will be traveling throughout the country and around the world to "tell the Providence College story" to thousands of prospective students, families, and high school counselors.

As you know if you're a regular reader of my blog, each of us in the Admission Office has a specific territory that we travel to during the fall and review applications from during the winter. For me personally, I will be spending about a week this fall in Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona; a few days in Northern California (San Jose and San Francisco, mainly); and about two weeks in Southern California, from L.A. to San Diego. But those are only my national trips... I will also be spending a great deal of time in Middlesex County, Massachusetts and also in Western Mass., visiting high schools in the Berkshires.

Our counseling staff travels on four different levels during the fall - local, regional, national, and international. Locally, two of our counselors share our home state of Rhode Island, while three spend time in Connecticut and eight divide up Massachusetts! (With so much interest and so many applications from here in our backyard, it's impossible for just one counselor to handle the volume!).

Regionally, we have one counselor who spends a great deal of time in Northern New England -she's originally from New Hampshire so she loves heading up to her home state along with visiting Maine and Vermont in the fall. Five counselors share the state of New York - including a native Long Islander who spends much of the fall in Nassau and Suffolk Counties - and five staff members divide up New Jersey as well. Branching out a bit further, counselors will be conducting high school visits in many cities and towns in the mid-Atlantic, from Pennsylvania and Delaware to Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.

Nationally and internationally, our counselors will visit 35 states and more than 10 countries over the next two-and-a-half months. U.S. destinations (beyond my territories listed above) include the following (in no particular order): Atlanta, Charlotte, Orlando, Miami, Tampa, Nashville, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Kansas City, Saint Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Denver, Portland, and Seattle. For the complete list of college fairs we will be attending this fall, please click onto our College Fairs page.

I'll check in next week from Arizona with some travel updates, and also will introduce you to our new freshman student bloggers!

*Scott
Providence, RI

Travel season is underway, with this message coming to you from Phoenix, AZ (where it was 100 degrees this afternoon - a little different weather than today in Providence!). Thanks to everybody who stopped by the PC table yesterday at the NACAC Phoenix National College Fair... I look forward to seeing those of you who will be at the Xavier-Brophy Fair tonight!

Later on this week, I will introduce you to our three new freshman bloggers, each of whom will be writing about their first-year experiences in and out of the classroom at PC. Their stories will begin on my blog later this week!

Also, I want to say thank you to everybody who has posted comments and questions over the past few weeks... The traffic on our blogs has picked up quite a bit with school back in session, and I encourage you to keep your comments and questions coming!

More updates soon - from somewhere!

*Scott
Phoenix, AZ

It's only my first week on the road, but I'm already tired! I visited four high schools yesterday in Tucson, AZ, before flying to San Jose, CA. My flight landed after 10:00 PM, and wouldn't you know, my first high school visit today was my earliest of the fall - 7:15 AM! But I saw a number of students at the visit and had a nice conversation with the school's counselor, so it was definitely worth it! One more visit this afternoon in San Jose, and then I am headed up to San Francisco to visit five high schools tomorrow...

Speaking of tomorrow, you'll meet one of our three new freshman bloggers, Tom Nailor... followed by Hannah Moriggi on Saturday and Alex Harpin on Sunday. Each of them will have their own blog pages by the end of the month, so you can follow their travels through their first year at PC.

My travels will continue next week, when I head back out on the road, much closer to home in the state of Massachusetts. I'll talk to you again then!

*Scott
San Jose, CA

Greetings from Pittsfield, Massachusetts! Yes, back in the hometown for a couple of days of high school visits and college fairs. It's fun - I enjoyed asking the students at the Berkshire Community College NEACAC college fair what high school they went to... and then telling them that "St. Joe is a great school." They'd usually give me a strange look (I don't know why - it is a great high school!) until I told them I was from Pittsfield and graduated from St. Joe. So, yeah, there's nothing like visiting the hometown... we call it "Hometown Heroes Day" in our office, when our counselors are visiting their own high schools. That makes absolutely no sense, I know, but you come to this blog for the inside scoop, and there you have it...

Can you believe it's October already? That first semester of senior year flies by... Amazingly, we are less than a month away from our Early Action deadline of November 1. Yeah, that is coming up too quickly for me, too. It's funny because some days it seems like our admission travel season just started - and on other days, it feels like I've been on the road for 3 months, not 3 weeks. I still have a good deal of travel ahead of me, though - from Western Mass to Eastern Mass and from Northern California to Southern California - before I head back to the office to begin reviewing our Early Action applications.

If you are thinking about applying Early Action, I hope that you are moving along with the application at this point (or you are one of the dozens of students who already have submitted their applications to our office!). Completing the application is much easier when you have some time to think about your answers... and it's not as easy if you are just starting to fill out the application on October 31 and want to apply EA the next day...

More to come on the application process as we creep closer to November 1. Until then, I look forward to meeting more of you throughout the states of Massachusetts and California this month!

*Scott
Pittsfield, MA

*Scott
West Hills, CA