Merit scholarships

Colleges and Universities A-Z Purdue University
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<p>Based on what I read on the website, Beering and Stamp awards do not have a financial-need component, but it is not entirely clear. In the press release, all ten recipients are attending Purdue, so it looks like the student must be committed to Purdue, but this is just speculation on my part. Or, as RedYellowBlue posts, there may be some kind of waiting list if a first-choice student declines an award</p>

<p>Also, there is a thread on page 2 which asks if anyone had received a Beering award yet. No one responded “yes.”</p>

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<p>^ Considering the small number of awards per year, it is not very likely to be reported in this forum. There is only a small fraction of students on this site. Same for other top scholarships at other schools. I did search in cc forum and there are not many of those threads in the past either.</p>

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<p>Just an fyi, a lot of college students can apply for more merit scholarships through their college or other competitions. I’m a Presidential scholarship recipient (5k a semester), and last semester I got 9k of scholarship money. Some colleges have more resources than others, of course, but it’s something to keep in mind. I get emails all the time about internships and scholarship applications/ meetings.</p>

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<p>The Beering and Stamps rejection letters have been sent out (I know b/c I got one). I’m not sure though about the rest of the competition. My assumption is that the interview invitees also just received letters informing them of their statuses. </p>

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<p>Can confirm, I received a call last Friday about the Stamps interview. So if you received a Beering or Stamps interview, you should know by now I would say.</p>

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<p>Collegedadx4:</p>

<p>Good comments - when I heard that 15% of incoming Purdue students received scholarships, I thought that my son would surely receive something. More I’ve looked into it, the more I wonder if the 15% is not divided evenly, and they may award more to departments that they want to improve enrollment in, so engineering (where my son is accepted) might not have 15%. So, competitive is definitely true!</p>

<p>I will say I’m very disappointed - my son had equivalent or better qualifications to several recipients listed here, but is IS (many seem to be OOS). The punch in the gut was an acquaintance of ours with lesser GPA/class rank/SAT that received a hefty IS scholarship to Purdue, and I’m still puzzled as to why.</p>

<p>I honestly feel like calling them up and asking them to give me a reason why I would pay $4K more a year to send my son to Purdue in Engineering (IS) compared to the offer for Ohio State in Engineering (OOS)…but I think it would be futile…guess I’ll be driving my old car for a few more years now to pay the difference since my son prefers Purdue.</p>

<p>To your other comment…“So what’s better, being a top student at a top 20 school or be an average student at a top 5 program?”…I’m an engineer by day, but also do engineering recruiting at another Big Ten school. I think the latter is slightly preferable, and here is why.</p>

<p>Many companies, including the one I work for cannot recruit at every engineering school. It is just too much money to send recruiting teams to lots of campuses to attend job fairs and conduct interviews. So, specific schools are selected for on-campus recruiting. Names like Purdue, Rose, Ohio State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Dayton, Mich Tech, etc. Now, students from other schools do get hired in, but they come in through conferences, cold resume drops, or student/employee referrals. Easier to get overlooked that way vs. the on-campus interview.</p>

<p>I will say that the GPA must be above 3.0…just have to keep it above that to be given serious consideration for internships or full-time positions at most companies. Even at that, if the GPA is less that perhaps 3.2 to 3.3, the student needs to have a good story as to why (working lots of hours to pay for school, very active in extracurriculars, etc). Being active in something like Formula SAE or the like is good also…</p>

<p>Good luck to your son where ever he attends…as a Mechanical Engineer myself, tell him he’s chosen an excellent career - engineers are respected and admired in industry, and can be counted on to be part of the solution to problems…you won’t become super-rich, but if money is the focus, a person won’t be happy in any profession…</p>

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<p>@DieselEngineer. Excellent post, particularly from an industry insider. Even with my son’s $10K per year award from Purdue, it will still cost $22K more per year for him to study aerospace engineering at Purdue than at our in-state school, Arizona State (Barrett Honors College), or at Texas A&M, which has a very generous package for National Merit finalists. Purdue and Texas A&M are #6 and #11 in AE, and my son really liked both schools (over Michigan, Texas, and Georgia Tech, his other acceptances). I’m a Big 10 graduate and was very impressed with what Purdue has to offer, but I can’t justify $22K/year more for Purdue, particularly with two more sons heading for college in 2015 and 2016. </p>

<p>Now my question - if my son turns down Purdue, does his scholarship go to another student? I sure hope so.</p>

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<p>Beaudreau, I’ve “heard” that Purdue does not re-distribute unawarded scholarships, but I’m not sure if that is correct, or if that is what is said publicly and some re-awarding is done…anyone know of someone who got a “second chance” merit scholarship (ie. post-February)?</p>

<p>Happy to answer any questions about being on “my side” of the interviewing table…Good luck to all your sons - I don’t envy you having 3 in college at the same time!</p>

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<p>It is difficult to comment on proportion of merit scholarships going to IS and OOS here on this board since the posters are obviously not a true reflection of applicant demographics. My question to the posters is: with so many competitive engineering applicants to Purdue, does Purdue offer scholarships or favor the highly qualified applicants who truly expressed interest in Purdue? Many highly qualified applicants who did not get a merit scholarship at Purdue received merit scholarships elsewhere. As in my previous post, my son (OOS), whose scores are the same as the other posters, did show a lot of interest in Purdue and did a one week engineering summer session. Perhaps this is one of the reasons he received a Presidential scholarhip. I don’t know…</p>

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<p>Any experience with Texas A&M engineers? They have a great reputation in Texas and they are fiercely loyal to each other?</p>

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<p>billcsho wrote: “Also, I am not sure what would they do when a Trustees scholarship recipient declined the offer. Will they grant it to someone else?”
and
Beaudreau wrote: “if my son turns down Purdue, does his scholarship go to another student?”</p>

<p>I concur with DieselEngineer regarding the above questions. Purdue does <strong>not</strong> re-distribute or increase already-awarded Trustee or Presidential scholarships.</p>

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<p>@billcsho</p>

<p>I applied to the School of Science, which I know is much less competitive than the Engineering school, around early January. I heard back from Purdue about my acceptance on Feb 12. The scholarship i got is the Presidential Scholarship.</p>

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<p>@Beaudreau, I understand Texas A&M is a good school, and puts out some great engineers. I can’t say I’ve ever met or interviewed one, but they might not venture up here to Indiana.</p>

<p>One factor that companies do consider is retention - is a new employee likely to stay with the company long-term? People tend to want to stay relatively close to where they grew up - they like the climate, want to be closer to aging parents, etc, etc. So (for example), it’s more risky to invest 3-5 year of training in a student from Southern California school if your company is in Minnesota versus hriing an engineer from the U of Minn…</p>

<p>To that end, company recruiting strategies sometimes favor schools closer to the hiring locations, and will do on-campus recruiting at those schools, and recruit for other schools via conferences or online postings.</p>

<p>Also, some schools are known for specializing in certain fields, and companies will do focused interviewing at those schools to fill a specific skill set…</p>

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<p>As for the declined scholarships, I think there is some hint that they may not have a waiting list. It said up to 100 for Trustees and the number of awards for Presidential scholarships varies each year.</p>

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<p>@DieselEngineer. Another very helpful post. I may borrow it to use for Dad advice down the road.</p>

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<p>@Beaudreau - I am an engineer in the northwest. I only personally know one aggie engineer but I know there are others in the area. The one I know is good. I have never heard anything but good about A&M engineers in my travels around the country. The school doesn’t define the quality of the engineer but its general reputation can help create opportunities especially early in the career.</p>

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<p>@WAPacker. Thank you!</p>

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<p>My son got the Presidential Scholarship 10K for College of Engineering and we are very grateful, but from what I understand, the Honors College invites have been sent out and my son did not receive one.</p>

<p>He is a National Merit Finalist, 35 ACT, good EC’s, has received all 5s on multiple AP’s including Calculus BC, Physics B and Computer Science. He completed Calculus 3 in his junior year & ran out of math classes to take at the high school, so is taking AP Stats and Physics C this year.</p>

<p>I guess my question is - what does it take to get an Honors College invite? From what I understand, Honors College FYE students have a harder coursework and it’s academically based. So, in theory, my son should have been an obvious choice. It’s not a deal breaker for us, but it just seems odd. </p>

<p>If you or your child received an Honors College invite, what were your/their stats? </p>

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<p>@ ThisLoudMorning: Invitation to the Honors College of Engineering were just sent out. If you were invited, you should receive it by next week. I found out about my son being invited to Honors College via email yesterday inviting him to a Purdue Chat session for engineering students in the Honors College next Wednesday, March 12. When I emailed Purdue today about that we never received notification of my son being accepted to the honors college, they replied by email:</p>

<p>“Hello! Thank you for your email! Congratulations to ___ on being accepted to Purdue’s College of Engineering and being invited into the Honors College. It appears as though this email may have arrived to the students before the Honors College invitation that was mailed last week. He should be receiving more information soon; he can also check your dashboard in myPurdue and view the Honors College link.”</p>

<p>I hope that helps. My son’s scores are similar to those who have posted. He too received a Presidential scholarship ($10k/yr). We are from Ohio.</p>

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<p>@RedYellowBlue Thanks for the info, but my son didn’t get the email and there is no link in his MyPurdue. A Purdue rep posted on the Facebook site that all of the honors invitations went out last week. So, I guess we’ll see if anything shows up next week, but it doesn’t seem likely.</p>