Hi, I’m currently a high school senior that has just committed to Purdue for CS and was wondering if Purdue’s reputation is improving at all overall. Has Purdue’s acceptance rate consistently been dropping each year? In other words, is it becoming more selective? More prestigious?
I hate to admit it, but the overall acceptance rate does bug me a bit, being around 57-60%. It would make me feel a lot better knowing that the university as a whole is getting harder to get into.
Purdue has a top rate CS program. The acceptance rate is certainly dropping while the average test scores and GPAs are going up.
That said, you should not be worrying about prestige and selectivity. You should be worrying about a school that prepares you for the work force. Purdue will do that!
Please don’t fall into the trap of thinking that schools that go out of their way to attract more applications are somehow better.
Purdue has been focusing on improving its educational processes while minimizing costs, and has been very successful at doing so.
If colleges that spam millions of students to attract applications from students that will never be admitted is the attribute you seek, just look for schools that accept the Common App and charge no fee. They get lots of students to check a box and lower their number.
In the real world, Purdue’s CS program is very attractive to employers for the education it provides - that’s what should matter.
" It would make me feel a lot better knowing that the university as a whole is getting harder to get into."
Why? I can think of any number of more selective universities whose CS programs would not be the equal of Purdue’s.
Just a data point I ran into today: THE World University Rankings
2011: 106
2012: 98
2013: 69
2014: 62
2015: 102
2016: 113
2017: 70
2018: 60
2019: 64
So mathematically, by one metric, yes, by 3.8+ positions/year over the last 8 year
But I find “overall” university rankings not very meaningful - program-specific data is much more useful.
(But they have Harvard as the 2nd best Engineering school in the US, so…)
It’s really top 10 for engineering according to US news and world report
Yes, USNWR has them top 10. That doesn’t “really” make it more than one other source’s ranking.
USN is not a Bible (though some people seem to think so).
http://csrankings.org/#/index?all
I like CS Rankings because you can choose which areas of CS to include. With all areas included Purdue is ranked #19 for CS (using publications from 2009-2019).
I have worked in software engineering or closely related fields since the mid 1970’s. No one cares about “prestige”. People care about what you can do. They also care about whether you are a responsible person who is reasonable to work with.
The one change that I have noticed over the years is that more and more of the top software engineers are coming from public universities. If I point to the very best software engineers that I know or have known who are now over the age of 60, quite a few of them graduated from top schools such as MIT or Stanford. If I look at the top software engineers that I know who are under 30, the very large majority of them graduated from public universities. I think that this difference is caused by the increasing prices of private universities, and by the realization of how strong an education you can get from public universities. Of course these observations are just based on who I have been working with over the years.
“Purdue has a top rate CS program.”
Exactly correct. I think that it is a great choice, and that you can do very well there.
Good luck and best wishes!