Honors College - Accepted Students' Stats

Colleges and Universities A-Z Purdue University
1

Hello all,

For anyone who got accepted into the Honors college (congrats!), could we get your stats and intended major? I’m curious as to what kind of stats made the cut, especially in Engineering.

I didn’t get in but here are my stats: (I am In-State)

Major: Engineering (Aerospace)
SAT: 1510 (790 on Math, missed one problem rip haha)
ACT: 34
5’s on AP Physics Mech, AP Calc AB, AP Lang, AP Stats
4’s on AP Comp Sci and AP Chem
AP Scholar with Distinction
“Student of the Year” in AP Physics, AP Calc, VU History, and AP Stats
GPA: 4.0/4.0 Unweighted and 5.2/4.0 Weighted
Ranked 5th in a class of 686
National Merit Finalist
President of Model UN and Science Olympiad
Team Captain of Academic Super Bowl Team
Recording Secretary of National Honor Society
Member of Spanish Honor Society
International Competitor in DECA Business Club
96.5 volunteer hours, with 48.5 of them in a local hospital’s ER desk
210 hours worked at Office Depot, 50 hours worked online as a web search evaluator
I participated in Moody’s Mega Math Challenge and we made it to the top 16% of teams

Personal stats: White Male
(This is unfortunately a big disadvantage in the era of Affirmative Action)

2

Major: Engineering
White male, OOS
ACT: 35
Took most AP’s offered that fit in schedule, other classes are college credit/honors
AP Eng Lang/Comp 5
AP in senior year AP Calc AB, AP Honors Physics, AP English Lit/Comp, AP World History, AP US Comp./Govt.
GPA: 4.0 unweighted
School does not rank
Awarded a private school scholarship senior year based on merit and overall school involvement
Many academic school awards
National Honor Society
Tutor
Leader and/or involved in a some EC’s
250 volunteer hours
Work full-time summers
An avid reader of literature, history, and philosophy (during the tour, they were impressed with the amount of reading in these areas) The honors essay included references to these areas also.

3

Anyone admitted to honors awarded scholarship money?

4

Decision: Admitted

Intended Major: Computer Science
State (if domestic applicant): North Carolina

SAT I (breakdown): 1440 (720 in Verbal, 720 in Math)
Unweighted GPA: 3.96
Weighted GPA: 5.0
Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 9/391
AP (place score in parenthesis): 10 APs
Senior Year Course Load: AP Compsci, AP Physics 2, AP Lit, AP Stats, H. Orch

Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis): 300+ volunteer hours, Model UN, Speech and Debate, Battle of the Books, member of orchestras (President of Math Club, Lead Programmer of FTC team, Founder of string quartet, Varsity Tennis Team Captain and Rank #1)
Job/Work Experience: Maker Mentor, Academic Tutor at Kumon, Chick Fil A
Summer Activities: 2 online classes, NC Governor’s School for Natsci
Essays: Great
Teacher Recommendation: Very good

Ethnicity: Asian
Gender: Female
Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): None

Where else were you accepted/deferred/rejected: Accepted Georgia Tech, NC State, UNC-CH, Rejected from MIT

Didn’t think my honors essay was that great but I mean it worked? And I got a presidential scholarship

5

@TheArchives, sorry you did not get in. You have nice stats. Did you at least get waitlisted?

6

@TheArchives, you are a good student and your stats are great, however Purdue has many high stat students and they can’t admit all. What concerns me about you though is that you think you are disadvantaged because you are a white male. How can someone as smart as you think that? You are not disadvantaged and you should be proud. If you wrote your essays and depicted that thinking , it may be the reason why you did not get honors. It’s not because of affirmative action that you did not get in. Sorry you feel that way.

7

@mardong Thanks, but no I didn’t, I totally understand that it’s a tough place to get into though.

8

@kisakyamaliya I apologize if this came off as narrow-minded, none of my essays or submissions prior to today have reflected any sort of bias relating to Affirmative Action, it is simply difficult to see kids from my school with lower stats but who are more diverse ethnically get spots in the same program I am looking into. I appreciate the comments and again apologize if my thinking rubbed you the wrong way.

9

I wonder if perhaps Honors college accepted only top x% from each major/college. Therefore, getting into Honors College for Engineering you may need much higher stats than you would from a less competitive college/major.

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@Clover2018 yes, that’s how they do it. We met with the honors college on a visit and each “college” gets a certain amount of spots.

11

Yes, my daughter got into Honors, and her stats weren’t as high as some I am seeing on here. Exploratory, 30 ACT, 1370 SAT, 4.35 Weighted. In-state.

12

To the OP - - you’d really have to worry if you were Asian…

http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-asian-race-tutoring-20150222-story.html

“Let’s talk about Asians,” she says

Lee’s next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark. It uses the term “bonus” to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant’s race is worth. She points to the first column.

African Americans received a “bonus” of 230 points, Lee says.

She points to the second column.

“Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points.”

The last column draws gasps.

Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.

“Do Asians need higher test scores? Is it harder for Asians to get into college? The answer is yes,” Lee says.

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@ambkeegan I just found this now, but I have been accepted to Purdue Honors college as an engineering major and received one of the signature merit scholarships. It is possible to get both, but very rare based on what I am hearing.

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@Chantal3 and how is that not racist? I don’t think race should even be on a application do we want the best students or are we just giving spots due to the color of peoples skin?

Elite colleges are becoming a joke with this! Med school is the same way!!

15

I doubt that race had much of an impact on my Honors College admission, and I will prove it to you. Here are some of the mediocre stats that got admitted me into a very competitive program, Honors College, and offered me a substantial amount of student aid. Oh yeah, and I am a white male.

GPA: 3.71
ACT: 30 (Math: 34 Science: 34 Reading: 26 Grammar: 27)
SAT: 1400 (Math: 750 Reading: 650)
Past AP: Gov and Politics (3), Micro (5), Macro (5), Physics 1 (5)
Senior AP: Chemistry, Calculus BC, Computer Science Principles, and Psychology
All other courses were honors or regular because AP classes were not available.

To be completely honest, I had always anticipated on working in a factory before taking my education seriously. My grades began as straight C’s and D’s my freshman year, but I had a progressive build these last few years, receiving straight A’s on my sophomore, junior, and senior transcripts (with a much more rigorous course load I might add). I’ve grown up in an environment that doesn’t prioritize education; my family’s income is extremely low, I have had to move around too often to count, and gang violence seems to be everywhere we go. I believe that articulating these situations to Purdue, or any college for that matter, can override mediocre stats, and compete against competitive students like yourself. This may seem frustrating to you because you seem like a much more qualified candidate on paper; you have some excellent achievements, and I commend you for those, but try and think back to the other portions of your application. Maybe you were not putting 100% of your effort into all of it because you felt like you had done enough with those high test scores and great achievements. Colleges enjoy seeing those, but they don’t really convey your personality or drive for education. Believe it or not, these play a much larger role than stats and race. (RANT I apologize, but I feel like this isn’t said often enough) Blaming your rejection on race is very counterproductive and insulting to the people of color who work hard for their positions at this university. They did not get a free ticket into their major, their financial assistance, or their Honors College admission. Even if their stats aren’t as impressive as yours, they have much more to say about themselves than the outlined boxes on an application. Saying that you didn’t get in because your are white is reverting back to the racist and segregated communities we had once had; all it does is force us to label individuals and cast our problems onto other groups of people. Obviously, I don’t believe that that was your intention when you made that comment. Just keep in mind that minorities work hard, much harder than we have to, and they have rightfully earned their positions.

With that being said, I want anyone applying to Purdue and looking at these stats to keep one thing in mind: this is just one part of the application process. What I didn’t have in GPA and test scores, I made up for in jobs, volunteering, extra curricular activities, and well thought-out essays.