Accepted To Honors College!

karp4170
Wed, 05 Mar 2008 17:09:01 +0000

I want to respond to this thread as a parent of a student who was not accepted to Schreyer two years ago.

My S was a recruited athlete (who had made a ten year, year round committment to his sport) at many schools, including the Ivies. He had good SATs (in the 1400s (CR and Math), taken only once) and a high, unweighted GPA (his school did not weight honors or AP courses) with 24 honors/AP courses on his transcript. He, in fact, had ‘likelies’ from more than one Ivy (including one of the HYPs). However, Schreyer was his first choice and we visited more than once. He was told that he was a strong candidate. His NLI (National Letter of Intent) had to be signed prior to Schreyer acceptances and he made the commitment to attend PSU. When February rolled around, he was rejected from Schreyers. (Another student from his school with similar test scores and GPA was accepted to Schreyer. That student had only used PSU and Schreyer as a safety and did not choose to attend.)

Well, you can imagine the initial disappointment.

FLASH FORWARD TWO YEARS

S is currently a sophomore at PSU and loves it. In fact, he has said that he is no longer disappointed that he did not get accepted to Schreyer. He has stated that he is not sure he would want to commit to the Senior Thesis, since he is more interested in pursuing a corporate career rather than research. (He is an engineering major.) He has pursued and obtained other opportunities to develop and excel in the areas that are important to him. He also has the option of enrolling in the honors classes he wants, with no pressure to have to take the minimum required by Schreyer. He has taken classes and participated in activities that have a large number of Schreyer scholars. Most of his classes have some Schreyer students in them and there seems to be no lack of academic rigor. He has also met many very highly academic students who did not even apply to Schreyer.

From our experience, for the very motivated student, there is a multitude of opportunities available at PSU beyond the Schreyer Honors College. Also, as previously mentioned, there is the junior gate for those who still desire the Schreyer experience.