Congrats! My son is still deciding; Purdue is one of 3 finalists.
Gotta give up a spot in engineering and honors program. No money given. Canāt do it. Waitlisted at Columbia University and Case Western crossing my fingers my son gets off the waitlist. Waitlisted at WashU also but they do not appear to be as generous with financial aid. If not our Midwest Stem University is very good and practically free. We did love Purdue and their honors program wish we were in state.
@ambkeegan, as you keep an eye on waitlists, keep in mind that colleges donāt tend to give any merit aid to students picked up from the waitlist.
@ambkeegan we are right there with you. OOS is just looking to be too expensive. Itās sad. Purdue is my DDās #1.
Does anyone know if the lack of grade inflation at Purdue affects securing internship / applying to grad school or getting into med school. DS is all set to join biological sciences in Fall, but would appreciate any feedback.
So I promised a review. We went to Purdueās for Me today. There was 5 inches of snow this morningā¦haha, I guess it was an April Fools day gift.
Anyway, we made it to the pizza party last night. It was nice of them to put that on. They separated the kids from the parents and paired kids together by major. That would have been fine, except the tables were long and DS landed on the end where he couldnāt really hear. So he was fairly left out of the conversation. It was kind of a wasted hour and a half for him. He couldnāt hear and it wasnāt a āfreeā socializing event where he could go talk with other students. I did get to chat with a couple parents and staff came around to answer questions. I guess his major was too big for the configuration they had. It would have been better 4 to a table with one existing student. Oh well.
Today we went to the actual event. Again, they separated kids from parents for registration. Then there were several sessions and a fair. There was time for 3 sessions on general college stuff. We chose the learning communities one, which we were late for, and it was very short. Not real useful, the part we saw. It started at 8, and we were there at 8, but by the time we registered, the first time slot was already in session. Then we did the gold rush and star programs. This talked about the summer orientation, registration dates and activities. It was a good session. The last we did was the University residences, which also covered meal plans. All of the info provided at the sessions was also online.
We didnāt get to go to the fair, because it was running at the same time as the sessions. It was just to much to do all at the same time. There were a bunch of sessions we didnāt get to go to. The college breakouts started at 930 and ran to 11. Ours was college of Science. They talked about the programming, had several students there talking about their experiences at Purdue. There was discussion about majors, minors, study abroad, research and employment - both internships and permanent jobs. Then they walked us to lunch, which the school provided. It was pretty good food.
From there the computer science presentation and tour was at 130. It lasted a bit beyond an hour. They talked about some similar things to the science session, but more specific to CS. They said CS was full and that they had accepted 1200 students to fill about 350 spots. They also said study abroad could be cheaper for OOS students due to scholarship availability for the program. It seems some cross school majoring can be done and some canāt. They also talked about corporate relationships the school has. This is kind of where Purdue CS shined. They actually have a CS only job fair as well as some university wide ones. It seems they have nearly 10p% placement and relationships with not only the big tech companies, but with many others. The CS opportunities are vast.
So the only problem with the day was sort of the scheduling. I guess they figure that admitted students have already visited, which we hadnāt. So we couldnāt get a general tour, not even tomorrow. We ended up doing a self tour. We went to some of the highlights of the campus as well, the innovation center and the aquatic center. The innovation center has a machine shop, 3D printers, electrical shop and lots of cool computers. It had anything the kids might need. The athletic facility had all the usual studs, weights, an indoor running track, climbing wall, basketball courts, smoothies, an indoor pool with a hot tub. It wasnāt as over the top as Iāve seen at some schools.
We did get to squeeze in a residence hall tour. Standard 2 beds, two desks. They offer the option to rent lofted beds, frig and microwaves as well as getting small futons. That arrangement seemed best. They were not to crunched in size. Typical standard dorms.
Feel free to ask questions. There was just too much to see and do in one day.
^^^that was āstuffā not āstudsā. However, I could see how both words might fit in that sentenceā¦ :)) ā¦long day!
@ChattaChia Thanks for the great review! I am a CS student as well and I am almost confident Iām going to Purdue. I wanted to visit and go to the Purdueās for me tour but Iām international and canāt attend. Reading your review has increased my confidence hahaha; I want a university with opportunities such as internships and employment and apparently Purdue offers that and more for CS students. What did your son think about Purdue? Is he going to attend for CS?
@ChattaChia Thank you as well for the review. Seems like an awful lot to pack in a day. I, too, would be curious to know your sonās assessment of Purdue. Thanks again.
@ballet4me: You might still be able to do a daily visit for an admitted student, here: https://apply.purdue.edu/portal/admissions-admit-dailyvisit, with some customizing for the specific college your child is interested in.
@ChattaChia Thank you so much! That was such a helpful review! We will be there Friday for a tour and engineering session, which is all we could squeeze in given the number of schools were are visiting this week.
@gandalf78 Thank you. Weāve been thinking about doing that.
So I will try to give you the introverts view of Purdueā¦I like it.
Haha. But seriouslyā¦he said it feels like an urban campus, but mentally he knows itās in a relatively small town. I think what makes it feel that way is that the campus is split with roads running through it. Campuses where the buses run around, rather than through, seem more campus like and āhomeyā if that makes any sense.
What he did speak about is the threads in CS. So there are about 7 or 8 and you have to do at least 1, but many do 2 or 3 and at least one did 5. He felt the rigor of the program would be challenging, which is something he is looking for. He liked that they were connected to big tech companies, as that is what he thinks he wants. What they described for their job placement process/availability/access was probably the best Iāve seen, and weāve toured about 15 schools.
Donāt know if it helps, but right now, his favorite two are Purdue and RIT. Both have a strong tech culture. RIT is actually a little more expensive, even though they gave a bigger scholarship than he got from Purdue. He said his ideal would be the Purdue name and program on the RIT campus. Interestingly, as I tried to describe above, the urban-ness of the surrounding area sometimes has little impact on the feel of the school. RIT is in Rochester and feels small and homey and Purdue is in West Lafayette and feels city-like. Student wise, RIT is indeed smaller than Purdue.
Iāll try to get more out of him, but itās like pulling teeth!
So he just corrected my info, there are 9 threads.
Ok, so I got some input about things Iād forgotten. One of the things that was really cool was that the CS students have access to the labs 24/7 via a fob that they get issued. He said the labs were nice. A cool thing was that they have a fob locker that houses all sorts of cool tech - that the CS students can check out. Things like drones, VR, and a hololens can all be used to do work. Also, if there is a piece of tech they donāt have, you can request it and they are quite responsive according to the student tour guide.
Also something I remember from the College of Science morning event was that all students are required to have a cultural component to their program. That can be two semesters of foreign language and a culture class, or you can meet the requirement in full with a semester long study abroad. Even in an English speaking country! Also if a student is bilingual with English as their second language, they donāt have to do the cultural program. At least one student whoād done he study abroad said she was able to work it out so that it was cheaper than OOS for that semester which helped her convince her parents.
Iāll pop on periodically as things come to Meā¦
@ChattaChia Feeling kind of like an idiot right now but uhm what do you mean by threads haha? Is that something Iām supposed to know for CS or Purdue?
@FutureCSstudent sorry, that is the term used for the various specialties in CS. Actually I think Georgia Tech uses threads and Purdue uses tracks. So for Purdue:
Computational Science & Engineering*
Computer Graphics & Visualization*
Database & Information Systems*
Foundations of Computer Science*
Machine Intelligence*
Programming Languages*
Security*
Software Engineering*
Systems Programming*
What weāve found at some schools is that CS can be more traditional general education, without the sub-specialties. He tends to like schools that have more options and vastness to their offerings.
Oh I didnāt know about that before, thatās amazing. Thank you so much @ChattaChia
@ChattaChia This āIāll try to get more out of him, but itās like pulling teeth!ā made me laugh out loud. So relatable.
Finally decided! Paid the deposit today. Iām attending Purdue for CS! Super excited to go and canāt wait for August
Anyone admitted into the Pharmaceutical Sciences program that will be attending in the Fall of 2018? Just accepted my admission yesterday evening and couldnāt be more excited!