I think lack of transparency might be a source of problem here. Colleges need to use a much better metric for communicating the admission decision process outcome with students and families.
Students get evaluated and receive quantitative and qualitative feedback from their teachers/professors all the time. I am sure they can handle, and may even appreciate, a candid review of their application.
I understand the need that colleges may “feel” to share less, and be vague in their communication, but that is done for self interest, not in the interest of students. Making this entire process more student-centric would be a step in the right direction. After all, universities are there to serve students, not the other way around.
@Emotive I agree that many colleges could improve their communication and be more transparent during this stressful process. Purdue has done a very poor job in my opinion. They have local admission reps telling the students one thing and the outcomes being completely different.
Purdue was a safety for my daughter. Our local rep communicated with her often telling her she was within the top 3% of applicants because of her stats, leadership, awards, and extra curricular activities. Told her she was sure to receive a merit package. We don’t qualify for financial aid so she said why not give Purdue a try. She got nothing from Purdue. But she has already accumulated more the $600,000 in scholarships from her 6 acceptances so far. These schools ranked much, much higher than Purdue’s #60 ranking. Three of them are in the top 20, 2 are in top 30 and another in the top 50. Still waiting on two more acceptances and she is in the running for many more scholarships of the six she has already been accepted to.
Big problem I have with Purdue is their net cost calculator. When filling it out they ask what scholarships have you been awarded from Purdue. Huh??? If someone is using the net cost calculator odds our they are just looking to see if a school is a financial fit before applying. Talk about putting the cart before the horse. I entered “NONE” the first time and total gift/grant aid was $0. I entered “Presidential” the second time and the total gift /grant aid was $18,000. How is this helpful…especially when there are no clearly defined scholarship requirements.
@qzar18 I think this makes a good deal of sense. Based on anecdotal evidence and your experience with the NPC it seems to me that if you get a Purdue Trustees or Presidential scholarship then they will give grants/need based scholarships up to need or full tuition (which ever is fulfilled first). If you do not (especially OOS) no grants are forthcoming. Since the scholarships are selective and not guaranteed it is difficult for a family to assume anything about costs to Purdue until scholarship awards have been given. In the end it costs the amount of the application fee to find out. They may handle instate students differently than OOS and Internationals as they are a university created to serve the students of the state of Indiana.
My D13 was in this situation and it surprised us when Purdue became affordable. We didn’t know it would be until we received her financial aid package near the end of March.
I understand what you’re saying but my point is they shouldn’t even have a pull down menu of scholarship types. I’ve used the NPC with numerous schools and none of them make any reference to scholarships/grants in the input process. How could any parent or student even speculate what scholarship they may or may not quality for when the Purdue website offers no minimum or even ballpark requirements? That’s for the school to estimate based on information provided. My daughter received scholarships from Illinois State, Marquette and Ohio State and they were in the same ballpark as what the NPC’s at those schools estimated. It’s hard for me to understand how an OOS like Ohio State can give her $14K but a comparable OOS like Purdue has given her $0.
Maybe we’ll be surprised as you were when the award letter is received!!
It’s virtually impossible to compare schools re financial awards; each school has their own rationale driving the how’s and whys of merit scholarships. I don’t think you can look at two public schools and assume both use the same criteria in making their decisions.
Ain’t that the truth. If you go on the Ohio State forum you’ll read the same comments and complaints about them. It’s’s out of my hands at this point so no more worrying about it. My daughter has several options.
Visited Purdue recently. Solid engineering program, was very impressed with a few engineering students I interacted with, well-spoken and confident. I thought to myself, Admissions knows how to pick them and the program knows how to nurture them. Walked around the campus, and through a few engineering academic buildings for hours, good facilities, felt safe but culturally homogenous. This apparent lack of diversity appears to be a deal-breaker for my daughter. I am kind of glad she was not offered merit scholarship, makes it easier to move on and focus on other options.
The interesting thing is Purdue has one of the highest percentages of international students in the country. To a certain degree the perceived lack of diversity is due to the types of students who apply in large numbers to STEM majors which Purdue is heavily weighed with.
Purdue is not as strong as it once was. You can tell by the caliber of the students they are now accepting, the ACT averages are declining year after year. I"m not saying the students aren’t strong. There are some strong students but the majority are not exceptional as compared to many other strong engineering programs. They are failing to attract high caliber students by not offering them any incentive to attend Purdue. And that’s why Purdue has the highest number of freshman that leave FYE after the first year and many after the first semester. Purdue is the easiest engineering program to get into academic wise. They are not weeding out before admissions like other fine engineering programs do.
My best friend got into MIT last year among other good engineering schools. Applied to Purdue as a safety and got in of course, but no scholarship or honor college. SAT was 2370 and 4.0 gpa. Even national science award and research.
It seems like many students who are using Purdue as a safety are not getting scholarships or honors college the past few years. I guess my son was lucky to get his minimal presidential scholarship he got even with stats way above average for Purdue. My younger child was actually thinking of going to Purdue with even higher stats but without better merit aid there is no way. They must be targeting the better merit aid to students they think have higher odds of attending but they should figure out how to do this in a more effective way. Especially the honors college part it doesn’t cost them anything to offer that to all the highest stat acceptances.
I’ll never figure out how colleges determine who gets merit scholarships. Fortunately my daughter has other options although Purdue is a disappointment. Time to move on to Illinois St, Marquette or Ohio St.
@txmom16 : I dont know where you are getting your information, but Purdue is now actually on the rise, whereas other public schools are deteriorating. Purdue is expanding at an alarming rate, attracting more and more high caliber students, with increasing ACT/SAT and GPA scores, and their acceptance rates are decreasing each year. Within three to four years, Purdue will be at par, if nor surpass, other good engineering schools like UIUC, or even GATech. And in case you havent noticed, many good students with exceedingly high SATs and GPA’s are not getting scholarships, which shows its holistic process for selecting merit scholarship receivers. Just beacuse a student gets >2200 SAT Scores, doesn’t mean he/she is entitled to scholarships…high caliber is not and cannot be judged only by SAT Scores and GPA…
There are times when none of it makes sense…My S, a CS guy, got honors and the presidential at Purdue, honors at Maryland, but didn’t even get into the COE at Ohio State–with a 35 ACT (and 36 M score), 11 APs, and several college CS courses under his belt. I don’t think you can look at the results here with the small percentage of people who post and make such broad generalizations about the decline of a school. I do agree that it seems some of the kids have really strong stats and I would have thought a scholarship or honors would definitely have been offered, but I also thought OSU was practically a safety school for my S, so clearly there is a lot more here than meets the eye, and I think mistakes are made, in that strong students can get overlooked. It does tend to sour a person’s attitude towards a school.
At least at Purdue one of the several criteria they list on their website for awarding scholarships is “evidence of a commitment to the program applied to” (I paraphrase). Perhaps schools are looking for signs that their top applicants have a true desire to attend the school and don’t wish to take away an opportunity for someone who is more likely to attend to give one of their limited scholarships to someone who only is using the school as a “safety”. Speculation.
The “holistic” process is a bunch of BS. It’s simply a school’s way of not having to define their criteria. All potential students complete the same application and provide the same documentation. The variables are extracurricular activities/service work and essays. How holistic can the process be when the admissions office is looking at 7000+ applications. It’s arbitrary and subjective at best. Ohio St claims to use the holistic process as well but the scholarships my daughter rec’d were partly based on her meeting minimum academic criteria.