Merit scholarships

Colleges and Universities A-Z Purdue University
101

<p>I believe that the merit scholarships listed are for Freshmen only too. </p>

<p>For last year’s class, Purdue had 30,955 applications. That’s a huge number. This year, with common app, I bet they have even more applications. Out of those 30,955 kids who applied, 6,283 chose to attend Purdue. That’s why I believe disbursed means paid out, and 939 are the number of Freshmen who received Presidential Scholarships last year which is approximately 15%. </p>

<p>If Purdue offers merit scholarships to 15% of their applicants, then for last year’s class 4,643 scholarships must have been offered, and 939 accepted and therefore disbursed. </p>

102

<p>I agree with billcsho that the numbers reflect first years. Remember that approx 15% of the first year class get merit scholarhip. So, to suggest that the 939 Presidential is distributed over the 4 undergraduate classes is completely incorrect! Do the math people! There are 29,000 undergraduates enrolled at Purdue!</p>

103

<p>The plot thickens for our son. Nothing posted for him and no letter so we are assuming he got no merit scholarships in the second round, which solidifies a total of zero in merit aid from Purdue.</p>

<p>On Saturday, he received a letter from UICU increasing his merit award to $15k/year and invite to Engineering Honors. Looking like Boilerland may not be in his future.</p>

104

<p>@collegedadX4. UICU is a super engineering school, number 5 in the US, ahead of Michigan and Purdue. Thousands of kids would love to be in your son’s shoes. Congratulations to him!</p>

<p>The whole merit-award process is really a crap shoot. Under the umbrella of holism, just about anything goes. Did you visit UICU? We were there in October on our Midwest tour. Also, for some reason (I think most of the original campus is in Urbana) they refer to it as UIUC. </p>

<p>“I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you.”</p>

105

<p>Very interesting. It seems Purdue and UIUC must be exchanging information with each other. How come so many students get merit aid from one but almost nothing from the other one. My D is just the opposite that received 20k+/yr from Purdue but less than 2k/yr from UIUC (both oos).
Any schools within a few rank away are essentially tied. Just a change of weight in different criteria will shuffle the order easily. After all, only the rank of the particular program you are studying is important, not the school as a whole.</p>

106

<p>@Beaudreau, we did visit about a month ago for an admitted student day on a Saturday. Had a great tour with a very enthusiastic young man. As with Purdue, engineering is king and I believe its over 25% of undergrads. Even though it was a Saturday we were able to get into most of the engineering buildings for a look (so much for iron clad security).</p>

<p>Overall we had a very good impression. No place is perfect. The housing situation seemed a little unique in that even for freshman, there are “dorms” that are run by private operators that seem to be part of the university in some ways and not so in other ways.</p>

<p>The biggest surprise was that the freshman dorms don’t have WiFi in the rooms…I couldn’t believe it! They have WiFi in the common areas and plugs in the rooms…wow. My son went all through HS with a school issued Ipad…I’m not sure he would know what to do with an Ethernet cord (just kidding of course). We have two other children at Ohio State and virtually every square inch of the campus - inside every single building and outside on the campus grounds - has access. Just found that humorous given your H.A.L. observation. They are “working on it.” Not to mention they are the home of the world renowned National Center for Supercomputing Applications.</p>

<p>With all the emotion aside, both are great schools. But, for future students and parents, as has been reported in many places in these forums, nothing is for certain, regardless of how things look on the surface, and regardless of what the web sites state and the schools tell you. Lesson learned for us is to keep your expectations in check and expand your options early on.</p>

107

<p>My son was also accepted into UIUC. We are in state, and got no scholarships but he was invited into honors. At Purdue, he got the Presidential scholarship, but was not invited into honors. Definitely some kind of a weird crapshoot.</p>

<p>My son spent a day following an Engineering student at UIUC, attending engineering classes, lunch, etc. He thought the classes were good and the campus was nice. The biggest difference was the way the students were acting. They seemed quite a bit more stressed at UIUC than Purdue and his guide (who was a sophomore EE student) kept saying there is counseling available if things get too tough. The kids also admitted that the program was very competitive among the students.</p>

<p>When we visited Purdue, it was just a different feel. Collaboration was being stressed for engineering students rather than competition, the facilities were nicer, you didn’t have to choose your major immediately. Everything just seemed right, and Purdue immediately became first choice. </p>

<p>I think both are great schools, and it just depends where one feels at home. For my son, it was Purdue, but many others in his school are going UIUC. </p>

<p>The cost of Purdue with the scholarship, turned out to be approximately equal (a few dollars cheaper) than going to our in state flagship. So Purdue here we come. </p>

108

<p>@collegedadx4
Absolutely agree. It is hard to say if one can get a merit aid from certain school even with all the stat and EC. For that reason, we picked multiple low match to match schools as we are also depending on merit aid. Although my D is likely going to the in state flagship at the end, we do get a couple reasonable and affordable options. I don’t think it is a waste of money to apply to additional oos schools. Indeed, one school is slightly cheaper than our in state flagship after merit aids. However, my D would have the option to be a commute student in state (in town) to make it even cheaper.
@ThisLoudMorning
Both are great engineering schools and we like different aspects of them too. We are glad that there are at least a handful of great engineering schools in the mid-west region that we can choose from. Oos UMich is most expensive, UIUC should be the next. However, UMich seems to slightly better merit aid. Purdue is great and is very generous to us too making it a feasible option.</p>

109

<p>A word of advice for those that received scholarship offers. </p>

<p>Make sure that you understand the terms of your scholarships. What it takes to maintain it, do you have a grace period to get your GPA up above the minimum? How many semesters you have?etc…</p>

<p>In the Purdue example, the PS and Trustees require to maintain a 3.0 GPA. At Purdue maintaining a 3,0 in engineering is like maintaining a 3.3 GPA not an easy task.</p>

110

<p>@collegedadx4, I was born in Champaign, and have two engineering degrees from UIUC…somewhere in there, they started calling it UIUC…prior to that, if you said U of I, everyone knew you were talking about the Urbana-Champaign campus (or the Shampoo-Banana campus as it was sometimes called). If you were going to school at Illinois, everyone knew you meant Urbana.</p>

<p>Then (I suspect), the Chicago branch, and possibly the Springfield branch got their feelings hurt, and so they added the “UC” part to UI. But for most of us, when you say you went to the University of Illinois, you graduated from UIUC.</p>

<p>Comparing Purdue and Illinois…very close. My personal feeling based on interviewing students is that Purdue has an advantage for undergraduate engineering - focused program on Freshman for example, but Illinois has an advantage on the graduate side - more diverse research and a lot of national grants. But in the end, I don’t think you can go wrong with either school. Purdue is not quite as spread out as Illinois, but otherwise the campuses seem very, very similar to me. By the way, Purdue does not have wifi in the dorms from what I know, but a simple router and you’re set.</p>

<p>On another note, still no $$ from Purdue, yet my son was accepted into Honors…I feel like pointing out to them that since he didn’t get any merit (which I feel he was very qualified for), he might need to get an on-campus job and wouldn’t have time for Honors. Of course, the colleges just assume your kid will just take out a college loan, something I am unwilling to do. I want my kids to graduate without debt, and will do whatever it takes to make that happen. I see too many kids at work who hire in with tens of thousands of student loans. Too much debt in society today…ok, I’ll stop ranting.</p>

<p>And as someone said…getting accepted into both schools make our kids the envy of many, many students, although it is easy to forget that when you start dealing with the seeming inconsistencies of merit based scholarship distribution…</p>

111

<p>@DieselEngineer, I guess you have done well for yourself with two Engg. degrees ( I just have one!). But what about your savings for your S’s college education? College costs should not have come as a surprise to you or anyone. My D1 is attending Med school, and my D2 is about to attend Engg. school this coming Fall. Both my kids will not be taking out any loans. In fact, my D2 has been offered fairly substantial scholarships from multiple univs. But I will fund her undergrad studies at UCB if she is accepted. Her current top choice is GTECH…no scholarship from here or Purdue and we are from PA. </p>

112

<p>@i012575. First, college costs have risen far faster than inflation. This has made saving for college very difficult for parents. From Forbes in 2012: “College costs have been rising roughly at a rate of 7% per year for decades. Since 1985, the overall consumer price index has risen 115% while the college education inflation rate has risen nearly 500%.”</p>

<p>Second, not every one has had a smooth ride over the last 25 years. One or two significant layoffs can really set a family back and wipe out savings. Even engineers have not been immune to layoffs and it can take a while for a well compensated engineer, 20 years out of school, to find another well paying job.</p>

<p>Third, even if parents can afford to pay full rate, is that prudent if another similarly ranked college offers significant merit aid. I for one would like to retire some day.</p>

<p>Anyway, congratulations for having made it with money to spare for your two daughters. It sounds like they are doing great.</p>

113

<p>@dieselengineer, thanks for the perspective. Yes, he and we feel fortunate that he was accepted to both places and I would agree that he would get a great experience at either spot. Its easy to get caught up in all of this, and I have to remind myself of all of the successful people I know in all types of fields that didn’t attend a big name program. Heck, I started out for 2 years at a branch campus as I was paying my own freight, and things turned out pretty decent for me :-c </p>

<p>@i012575, I too am a little confused by your comments. This forum is about merit aid which is completely unrelated to whether somebody saved or didn’t save for their kids education. Not that it matters, but @DieselEngineer said he/she was going to pay for his kids education no matter what, so if that is what is important to him/her and their family, I respect that.</p>

<p>Fortunately, our family is in the same position and I feel blessed for that. But not everyone is. My sister is a social worker and God Bless those that carry on that task. A typical day for her makes a “bad” day for me at the office look like a picnic in the park. But she couldn’t pay $40k/ year for each of her kids if she had starting saving a fourth of her modest salary on the day they were born. Its not about a “surprise”, its the reality of the world. Good for you for having both the ability and discipline to do so, but not everybody is in that position. If I have misinterpreted your comments, I apologize in advance.</p>

<p>@DieselEngineer, not to beat it in the ground, but “U of I” said - no can do to bringing your own router - their system will not allow access. But I’m guessing some of the computer engineering students may have found a “work around.”</p>

114

<p>@DieselEngineer: If your kid does extra curriculars that get him/ her an internship every summer (or he/she does a co-op), that money should help, and most likely earn more than a on-campus job ever would. Also, becoming an RA gives you in-state tuition, and pays for housing and board, so that would be major dollars saved. Minimum wage for just a few hours every week doesn’t seem too worth it in my opinion, especially when that time could be spent studying or unstressing. </p>

115

<p>@collegedadx4, bet I got it mixed up…I believe Purdue is where they said you could bring a router for your dorm room…seems strange these colleges are so high tech in some areas, and so low tech in others - maybe its because of some IT security risk or something…</p>

<p>As far as the $$ discussion, I wasn’t trying to stir the pot - just pointing out that as far as Purdue knows, my financial situation might not be such that I can cover the tuition (they don’t know that I can). For some kids being in Honors yet not getting any merit scholarship might be incompatible. I’m still trying to reconcile these universities that have offered $$ but no Honors, or Honors but no $$…I guess it is time for me to let it go! (no, I won’t start signing the Disney song…)</p>

<p>And my point on having two degrees (BSME and MSME) was just to say that I spent 24 years in Urbana, and had some history as to where the “UC” of “UIUC” came from, and was not trying to sound uppity.</p>

<p>Perhaps one day I’ll have the pleasure of interviewing some of the sons/daughters of those posting here. I’m probably getting to 150+ engineering students I’ve interviewed over the years, so if your son/daughter ever needs some insight in the future, let me know. Congratulations to all…</p>

116

<p>@ThisLoudMorning, similar situation here…merit scholarship from Ohio State, no Honors. We’re from Indiana, and at Purdue…not merit scholarship, but Honors invite…I guess it all makes sense to somebody, somewhere, but somebody is not me!</p>