Hello guys I recently got my admission decision from Purdue University and it said Denied/Offer Alternate Major. Does this mean I’m denied from that major because my stats weren’t good enough or they just didn’t have any spaces for more applicants?
Purdue has a different admission standard for each major, so it simply mean your stats weren’t high enough to be admitted to your chosen major, so you were offered an alternate major that had lower standards.
really? Because the official Purdue website says that Denied/Offer Alternate Major means “Typically, this is because demand for the requested major far exceeds its capacity and there is not enough space for all qualified students.”
Both the Purdue website and goldenbear are right. They can’t accept all qualified students due to overcapacity. However, since they can only accept some of the qualified students, they have to choose between those who are qualified, and will typically pick those with the highest scores (that relate to that major) or other reasons such as the mix of students etc. So it’s not that you weren’t good enough to get into that major but that other qualified students had higher scores or were accepted due to other reasons pertaining to what they’re looking for for that major.
“Qualified” means you’re eligible to be accepted to Purdue, but not to the specific major you requested (which is more selective than Purdue admissions overall), so you’ve been assigned another one.
Thank you guys for the answers! I really appreciate it!
My S applied to First Year Engineering and was denied but offered an alternate major and chose exploratory studies. He is still interested in engineering. Does anyone have information or a viewpoint on what is required to transfer into Engineering from another major once he’s there?
@bluejay89 Check out this link: https://engineering.purdue.edu/ENE/Academics/FirstYear/CODO
I was put in the same situation when I applied in 2014, and I went into exploratory studies. Just a fair warning, the program is quite frankly terrible and there is a reason it has the lowest retention rate in the entire school. The advisors are pushy and try to steer you away into things like CIT for people interested in engineering. I do not want to scare you, this was just my personally experience. But to ‘CODO’ into FYE you HAVE to get at least a 3.2 GPA in the classes I listed in that link.
Best of luck to you son.
Bluejay89, same thing happened to me 
My major was first year engineering (intended astronautical engineering) and I was denied/ offer waitlisted. I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I really thought that I would get in. I had a 33 act (30 math) and a 3.81 unw/ 3.97 weighted. On top of 11 AP’s and stellar extracurriculars. Kinda really sad now…Is there any way I could reach out to my counselor and maybe get reevaluated?