Dear Parents,

Since its inception, Providence College has been known as a school of opportunity for first-generation and middle class students. Providing educational opportunities and financial support for these students continues to be a high priority in our admission and financial aid policies. Even as regional and national demographics, financial resources, and other cultural influences on our candidate pool have shifted dramatically in recent decades, we have remained committed to our founding mission.

Last fall, I was invited to author an essay for the Winter 2007 edition of the Harvard Educational Review, which featured a symposium on equity and access in higher education. This essay, "Test-Optional Admission at a Liberal Arts College: A Founding Mission Affirmed," appeared with articles authored by the president of Princeton University and academics affiliated the University of Southern California, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. I would like to share with you adapted excerpts of the essay, which was published earlier this month.

Providence College's founding mission as a Catholic and Dominican college was to provide a comprehensive liberal arts education to first-generation immigrant and multicultural students who might otherwise have been unable to obtain a college degree. In its clear intention to battle prejudice and promote human dignity, the College offered admission to students of any faith or ethnic background.

Over the last few years, we have grown increasingly concerned that prospective students from historically underrepresented populations are not gaining access to a private liberal arts education. To help students like these attend Providence College, we reallocated some resources from merit-based scholarships into need-based scholarships and developed a test-optional admission policy.

Our first initiative was to refocus scholarship monies where they were needed most. We found that offering merit-based scholarships - which often benefit students from wealthier communities with better school systems - resulted in fewer resources for the College to distribute to students with greater financial need. Due to this shift of resources, we now offer merit-based scholarships only to students invited into our highly selective Liberal Arts Honors Program.

When this policy is fully implemented, Providence College will be providing merit-based scholarships - which recognize academic achievement without regard for family finances - to approximately 525 of our undergraduate students (14 percent of our undergraduate enrollment). The minimum merit-based scholarship covers 50 percent of our tuition; the awards, though based on academic merit, also meet the financial need of many students. Those funds redirected by reducing the number of merit awards have benefitted not only first-generation and multicultural students, but all students admitted to Providence College who demonstrate need. While we still are not able to meet the full demonstrated need of every student offered admission, our awards for the Class of 2011 were the most generous in our history. Fundraising for need-based financial assistance remains a priority of my presidency.

Our second initiative, the test-optional policy, was preceded by two years of research. There was mounting evidence that students and their parents have become overly focused on improving standardized test scores, often using SAT test preparation courses to help achieve a high score. Economically disadvantaged students are less likely to have the resources necessary to participate in such test-preparation programs. This reality has created an inequity that reveals itself in the correlation between family income and standardized test scores. This is inconsistent with the values of an institution like Providence College.

The test-optional pilot program was implemented for two primary reasons. First, our own institutional research (2002-05) confirmed that high school grade point average was the strongest single predictor of academic success, retention from first to second year, and graduation after four years. Second, despite efforts to communicate the importance of high school performance over standardized test scores, students often believe a low test score rules out their chances for admission. As a result, they do not apply to Providence College.

While making standardized tests scores optional is a new policy, our holistic admission review process is not. Over the past decade, even while significantly improving the academic profile of its classes, Providence College has emphasized classroom performance over standardized test scores.

As part of our holistic review of students' credentials for admission, the College's Committee on Admission weighs each student's high school academic record (evidenced by the strength of their high school curriculum and the grades they received), an extracurricular profile, a required essay, two letters of recommendation, and any other information that a candidate chooses to share. Our review goes "beyond the numbers" to balance gender, create socio-economic and geographical diversity, and to find students who are compatible with Providence College's mission.

We still require students who have taken a standardized test and who choose to enroll at Providence College to submit their test scores upon enrollment. We included this requirement to help us evaluate the test-optional policy and for academic advisement purposes.

The success of the test-optional initiative will be measured from two perspectives. We will first ask: Has Providence College achieved increased enrollments from students with multicultural and/or socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds? And second:  Have non-test submitters performed at a level similar to test submitters? Do they have a similar retention rate, and are they on track to graduate at the same rate as the test submitters?

An initial assessment of the effects of the new policies on the Class of 2011 is encouraging. Providence College received just over 9,800 applications for 960 class spaces. The pool included a 20.8 percent increase in applications from students from African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian-American, or Native American (AHANA) backgrounds and a 21 percent increase in applications from candidates who are first-generation college bound. As the Fall 2007 semester began, the College had enrolled a class that included 31.1 percent more students from AHANA backgrounds and 18.8 percent more first-generation students. The percentage of the class that was Pell Grant eligible increased from 7.3 percent of the Class of 2010 to 11.8 percent of the Class of 2011.

For Providence College, this refinement in both admission policies and financial aid strategies demonstrates the College's concerted efforts to close the student accessibility gap. We have chosen to do so in a way that reflects our unique Catholic and Dominican heritage, fulfilling the Church's mission to care for the disadvantaged and to respect the dignity of every person.

There is obviously much at stake in this issue, since access to higher education changes the destinies of individuals and their families. I know this from personal experience. My father, the son of two Irish immigrants, used the GI Bill of Rights to earn a degree from Providence College in 1949. I probably would not occupy the office I am in were it not for the opportunity that he and many members of his generation received to access private higher education. We, their heirs, must never forget that.

Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P.

Excerpted from Brian J. Shanley, "Test-Optional Admission at a Liberal Arts College: A Founding Mission Affirmed," Harvard Educational Review, volume 77:4 (Winter 2007), pp. 429-435. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. For more information, visit www.harvardeducationalreview.org.

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