I am an out-of-state student applying to Purdue with a 3.87UW GPA. I have an SAT score of 1400. AP Classes: World History, Statistics, U.S. History, Calculus AB, Physics C, American and Comparative Gov, and Physics 2. EC: Math Club for 2 years and school Robotics team for 4 years and 140 hours of community service. My essays are decent: not too good and not too bad. Should this be enough to get a directly into Purdue engineering? Where am I lacking?
Your stats are just a little bit lower than than the engineering averages for last cycle but I think you’ll still be competitive. I don’t see anything missing.
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 for admission. 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, although there was an upward spike for last year. As recently noted elsewhere on the Purdue forum, the university underestimated its yield last year, and had about 500 more admits than it planned for; so there is some speculation that there may be fewer admits for this coming admissions cycle to compensate for that.
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. As you can see from the CDS, Purdue views standardized test scores, GPA, and high school course rigor as “very important” admissions factors, and ECs, personal qualities, LORs, and application essay(s) as “important” admissions factors.
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.