Hi!
As typical as this is… I need help. I applied to Purdue EA.
ACT: 28, super-scored
GPA: 3. 688, unweighted
10 activities, most of them I lead/organize, one is a varsity sport, this doesn’t include honors societies
I applied for engineering.
I was adopted at the age of 12 and missed most of my childhood education, so my adoptive parents think this will help a lot considering I’m seen as “advanced” by my school and overcame educational gaps
I was wondering what my chance of getting into Purdue is. It’s my first choice. My adoptive father went there so I am a legacy, but my ACT score and GPA is lower than the norm.
Thank you! I was very vague so if there are any questions let me know… just didn’t want to make people read too much.
If you are in state your odds are a bit better but as you noted, both your ACT and GPA are low for engineering. It’s going to be a reach. Apply to true match and safety schools. Good luck!
Don’t be fooled… the published acceptance rate for Purdue is overall (includes all majors). CS and engineering are much more selective and difficult to get a direct-admit into. You might have a shot at the general/undeclared majors, but research what you might be in for if you do that (check the school web site). You’ll have to meet certain GPA and other requirements as a freshman to get admitted into the engineering school later. If you don’t meet that, it is possible you’ll be shut out of your major.
Your ACTs are in the middle 50%, but to be a competitive applicant to the engineering programs, you’d want to be in the top 25%. Not sure if Purdue considers legacy status, but it’s a public school, and most public schools don’t give any boost to legacies.
According to the Purdue Common Data Set, see applicable link here, https://www.purdue.edu/oirae/resources.html in Part C7 it states that “alumni/ae relation” is “considered” as an admissions factor but is not a “very important” or “important” admissions factor. So I wouldn’t necessarily wager a lot of money on getting admitted due to legacy status.
Here is a link to the Purdue Data Digest, https://www.purdue.edu/datadigest/ ; once there, go to the link for “Applications, Admits, and Matriculations”. It is interactive, so you can input the parameters that most apply to you. Based on your input, the Data Digest will generate information and create some graphs/charts from which you may be able to make an estimate of your chances for admission to the College of Engineering. Also, there should be a table at the bottom which gives the admission rates (and yield) for students matriculating in the Fall semesters of the past 10 years; you will see that the acceptance rates have been broadly trending down for undergraduate engineering applicants since 2009, although there was an upward spike for last year. As recently noted elsewhere on the Purdue forum, the university underestimated its yield last year, and had about 500 more admits than it planned for; so there is some speculation that there may be fewer admits for this coming admissions cycle to compensate for that.