Purdue University: Class of 2024 Discussion/Decision Thread

Colleges & Universities Purdue University
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@TheVulcan I have to point out that, if your child would not have attended Purdue either way, as you stated in post #755, then your outcome actually makes perfect sense. Universities pay for systems and admissions consultants to analyze metrics that predict matriculation outcomes. In other words, they knew you were less likely to attend, so the scholarships went to those with higher chances of committing based on those metrics. No mysteries here.

I point this out only for future reference, as there seems to be a lot of confusion this year. However, your post struck me as perfectly obvious.

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@Momofmanytoo, on the other hand, wouldn’t it make sense to offer merit scholarships to those already admitted students who are less likely to attend?

In other words, wouldn’t the admissions process be a better time weed out “the undesirables”? I would assume an honors admission to be an indicator of a student the university would be interested in recruiting, and that is precisely what merit funds are there for.

It costs them nothing if the student doesn’t bait, but if they would attend if only you recruited them better, then that affects both the yield and the academic stats of the class.

Similar thing happened at Pitt - honors admission and no merit.

This whole admissions process was very unpredictable. Things we thought were likely to happen did not happen (no merit at Pitt or Purdue), and things we thought were not at all likely did (MIT, Caltech, and Georgia Tech admissions, and GT Stamps invitation that didn’t ultimately pan out, to our relief, as we were not looking forward to making the difficult choice between GT Stamps and MIT).

The only institution besides our state flagship (that gives automatic full tuition sholarships to NMFs) that performed exactly as expected was OSU - quick admission, honors, and merit.

The common denominator I am seeing at Pitt and Purdue is that they do not offer much merit for CS. They probably feel their CS recruits are strong enough already and they spend most of their merit money on other majors. Not sure what triggered some of the rare exceptions here and at Pitt.

My outtake from DS20’s application season is that DS24 will probably not bother applying to any OOS public schools. He already won full tuition scholarship at our state flagship as a middle schooler (second time just a few hours ago, actually), and since public schools that are significantly better do not appear very likely to offer him merit, may as well just focus on elite full-need privates that come out at about the same price to us as GT or Purdue.

None of this is to put down Purdue. Purdue has a great CS school, and one we though son was most likely to end up at based on our assessment of all the probabilities. But what can I say. I can’t complain we were wrong…

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@TheVulcan I find the situation interesting as well, and am following along bc my D21 is possibly interested in Purdue for CS for next year. Purdue says it uses a holistic review and awards merit based on “Exceptional academic achievement; leadership and service in school/community.” No doubt your S had exceptional academic achievement. Did he fit the remaining two criteria?

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@amsunshine, his service pedigree is not as noteworthy as his academics. He is not an activist type. But still, apparently GT found his founding and serving for several years as President of his high school competitive programming club, along with some community service worthy enough to select him as Stamps semifinalist (about 325 OOS students, less than 2% of their EA applicants get selected; about half of them OOS).

Even though he didn’t progress to finals (only 50 OOS students do, of which only 20 get the Stamps), the fact they selected him as semifinalist shows that they saw him exemplifying their pillars of “scholarship, leadership, progress and service”.

His main “selling point” is his no doubt his extraordinary extracurricular achievements in mathematics, physics, and CS (detailed in post #322) which in combination put him, it is reasonable to assert, into top 100 STEM students in the nation (to which his Caltech admission attests).

If that is not what some schools want, that is not what they get ¯_(ツ)_/¯

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Of course, and please do not take it the wrong way, @amsunshine, girls in STEM, and especially in CS, face a very different admissions landscape as institutions are trying to ensure a palatable gender balance, so white male’s experience may not be directly translatable here.

I will tell you that if your daughter is able to, in addition to strong GPAs and test scores, demonstrate a level of interest in serious computer science through a combination of research and extracurricular learning, she will have many institutions interested in recruiting her.

Encourage her to look into USACO training resources. She still has time to try to progress to at least Silver division in USACO before this competition season is over. If she makes Gold, she can write her own ticket anywhere.

For a guy, it takes Platinum to really stand out, and the curve between Gold and Platinum is extraordinarily steep. My son got from Bronze to Silver to Gold in one sitting. Getting to Platinum took a year of very deep and dedicated learning and practice. Improving Platinum standings is a multi-year endeavor.

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@TheVulcan It’s a puzzling process. My guess is that some schools place more value in the “service” part of the equation than others.

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Son didn’t get in, but it was moot anyway. With lack of merit offer, Purdue was crossed off the list. Congratulations to all who were accepted. I never cease to be impressed by the quality of kids on this forum.

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@snakster Do you mind sharing some of your son’s stats?

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Check the first post. :slight_smile:

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Son officially declined Purdue today. Hope that opens up something for deferred or waitlisted. It was on honor to be accepted to a great university. Best wishes to all who will be attending.

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Same here.

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DS 17 has also officially declined his admission to Purdue Nursing. Extremely tough decision for him, (Purdue was second choice)but ultimately decided and accepted an offer to attend Emory University. Hard to pass up an opportunity like that… Hopefully his slot can be offered to somebody from waitlist/deferred!! Purdue is an awesome school with a ton of things going for it. Best of luck to everybody

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also received $16K trustees, denied at honors college

to be fair i dont care about purdue so i didn’t try to write good essays

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Where do you check for the Honors admission? we haven’t received any email saying we made it to the honors program nor a denial.

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@staycalm123 if you log on to mypurdue, you will see the student task list. There was a section to accept honors admission. If not there, probably not accepted for honors. They also waitlisted applicants, so it might be worthwhile emailing them.

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Purdue financial aid out. Loans and work study…woohoo!

777

what did you put for purdue career account login?

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Career Center activation seems to be down for us, so can’t see financial offer. Anyone else seeing the same?

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Mine is down as well.

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@geogod678 Used the login we created after acceptance.