@momofsenior1 I’d also like to add that the Honors College at Purdue is not like Honors at many other universities. It is not just academic bling. At places like UIUC, the process (James Scholar) is largely automatic and based on incoming stats. The Purdue Honors College is more similar to the Barrett Honors College at ASU. I’ve read that a lot of FYE students don’t stay in the program because of the additional academic burden. If you are moving into an apartment or Greek housing anyway, then the residential perk goes away.
Residential perk for honors is only for year one no matter what. So many more significant opportunities that make honors a great experience.
@RoboticsDad. You mentioned “additional academic burden” … could you please give more information? Thanks.
@momofsenior1 That is not what we were told. While the Honors College buildings themselves tend to fill up with the lower classes (only 800 beds total), the upper classes still have priority at the “better” residential buildings, such as Third Street Suites. Is this not true? Anyway, I agree that it is more about the experience. Are there any published retention stats for the Honors College?
@ATTX See below. You have to take honors courses, electives, thesis/project, etc. Engineering is hard enough already, so I could see why a lot of FYE students would leave after the first year.
https://honors.purdue.edu/future-students/curriculum-requirements/index.php
My son got accepted for engineering and Purdue is his #1 choice. Unfortunately, we are OOS (Ohio), got zip for merit and won’t be able to afford to send him. Hope someone out there gets his “slot”!
Last year the rooms for second years in the suites went super fast and were mostly held for an honors living learning community. Most of the women went to Windsor though, right behind honors college. Not sure about the guys.
As far as the first year honors FYE class it combines design with physics so the first stand alone physics class will be optics and electricity second year. My D adored that Honors design/physics class. Lots of work but great profs.
We were told the average honors engineering GPA was a 3.6. All of my D’s friends are still in honors.
@momofsenior1 That’s encouraging to hear! FYE, Design Honors, and the Honors College are the big differentiators for us in favoring Purdue over in-state (California).
@RoboticsDad perhaps things have changed, but this is what I heard was the case a while back. They even actively tried recruiting Asian students in my area but not Caucasian students
Hello, wanted to add a few thoughts.
You can definitely stay in Honors housing past freshman year. You have to select housing quickly when your time slot to pick opens up though. Also can get into 3rd street suites.
Stamps and Beering invites came out by email today. Good luck to all!
We have found Purdue to be an incredibly well run school, and the Honors program of benefit.
Last year everyone on most of the honors floors were told they were going to be displaced for freshmen. The only option was the top floor and that was taken in seconds.
Same thing this year. The displaced category then gets you high priority to select dorm rooms. Our son was displaced and then he and his roommate selected Honors for next year (6th floor). There were a number of openings when he signed up, another student from our town also was able to stay in Honors (5th floor). There were also a good number of openings in 3rd street when son’s turn to pick came up. Note he did get on system when his time slot opened up, did not wait to sign up. Definitely not guaranteed but Honors or 3rd street seemed attainable for 2nd year Honors students.
Who else got the application to the Beering and Stamps Scholarships? Any advice on those? How many people get them?
I was curious as well, but couldn’t find that information readily.
Son received no scholarship offers from Purdue, but was nominated as Stamps semifinalist at GT, and they provide a lot more specifics about their selection process.
Are any of you active on the Purdue Admitted Families Facebook Group? I just joined, but may need to stay in low-key mode because this child might hurt me if I discuss her openly. 
Son accepted into requested major of CS.
CORRECTION (mistyped UW GPA-now correct below):
UW GPA: 3.79 W: 4.3 (ish? need to look this up as his HS doesn’t weight)
SAT: 1510
OOS Washington
10 APs/college in the high school classes with local Univ of WA
Good to great ECs
National Merit Commended
I guess no merit award as it didn’t say anything about it in his letter. @WhyNotinPA, I agree – it’s a bit confusing about who got an award and who didn’t, eh? Does the univ have to give every dept a certain % of the merit money, so it’s harder to get it in CS and engineering?
Applied to LOTS of schools because CS is so competitive and the schools’ admit rates are usually much higher than the CS admit rates (which are also not usually even published). Still waiting for a few.
@yrmomkb There are very few college-specific awards for OOS students, and these have highly specialized requirements. The only university-wide merit awards for OOS are the Trustee and Presidential Scholarships AFAIK (other than moonshot Stamps, etc.), and these are most certainly distributed across the colleges. If you earned a Trustee or Presidential award, it would definitely be in your admissions letter. There are only 100ish Trustee and 800ish Presidential awards for all applicants, in-state and OOS. I assume Purdue favors in-state (many schools set aside half of awards for in-state), so odds for OOS are not good. One of my very few criticisms of Purdue is that they don’t provide data on how they distribute these awards in-state vs OOS, especially since they state that 15% of applicants typically get some kind of merit award.
It also appears that financial aid for OOS students is only available to the winners of these scholarships, at least for an average range of EFC values. Purdue is still a relative bargain though, when compared to OOS tuition at other peer engineering schools…
If going by sticker price only, this is absolutely true. But some schools are more generous to OOS students than others.
The tuition freeze at Purdue, though, makes it very compelling if your choices are limited to comparable schools that provide no merit $.
@snakster I think it depends on how you define peer schools and if you draw the line at USNWR10 for the major of interest. It does seem that Ohio State and Michigan State are significantly more generous, but I can also tell you that schools like Georgia Tech, UIUC and UMichigan are very stingy for OOS. There is also the question of pure merit vs finaid. The Ivies/MIT/Stanford, etc., give generous financial aid but zero merit.
are a majority of spots in engineering filled under ea?