Hi, I’m a junior and was wondering what are my chances of getting into engineering purdue. I have a 3.73 gpa and a have decent extra curricular activities. I am going to France to intern for a logistics company over the summer. I also work at subway, many clubs, and have many volunteering hours. I was wondering what are they looking for in students and how can I improve. I have taken a lot of math and business classes as well. My sat score is only a 1310 though. How can I improve my chances? I’m oos as well
Get your standardized test score(s) up: you might consider some test preparation courses to try and improve your standardized test scores; also, consider taking the ACT, as student usually do better in one or the other of the major standardized tests. If your GPA is weighted, you need to improve that also, especially in your math and science classes. Focus your ECs on things that you are passionate about; don’t bother with “drive-by” ECs. Leadership roles in your ECs would also be a plus.
Here is a link to the Purdue Data Digest, here, https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/, under the link for “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations”. It is interactive, so you can input the parameters that most apply to you (for example, you would be “Non-Resident” under the “Residency” tab). Based on your input, the Data Digest will generate information and create some graphs/charts from which you may be able to make an estimate of your chances. Also, there should be a table at the bottom which gives the admission rates (and yield) for students matriculating in the Fall semesters of the past 10 years; you will see that the acceptance rates have been broadly trending down for undergraduate engineering applicants since 2009.
You can also look at Purdue’s Common Data Set, here, https://www.purdue.edu/oirae/resources.html. Part C7 tells you what admissions factors Purdue considers to be “very important,” “important,” “considered,” and “not considered”; Part C9 of the CDS gives the median 50% for both SAT and ACT scores, as well as the percentage of the entering first-year class falling within certain ranges of SAT and ACT scores.
I don’t know whether your high school has Naviance or any similar program that gives information about how students at your high school have done in applying to colleges and universities; if so, you might peruse that data for applicants to Purdue from your school. I would also try to meet with a guidance counselor at your school later this semester, or early in the Fall semester, to discuss application strategies for Purdue; if any former students from your school have been admitted to Purdue recently, the guidance counselor may be able to give some insight into how and why such student(s) were successful.
All good info above. The only thing to add is when looking at Purdue data and stats for a fit be sure to remember that Purdue admits according to college/major. If you are looking at engineering (FYE) look at college of engineering stats not general Purdue stats.