I applied January 1st to Purdue CS and was wondering why I got rejected. Not even offered an alternative like I see many og the other students getting.
"The Purdue University Admissions Committee has carefully reviewed your application. Unfortunately, we cannot offer you admission to the West Lafayette campus at this time due to the competitive nature of the applicant pool and the limited amount of space available in your selected major. We encourage you to explore options for transferring to Purdue in the future. To consider you for admission as a college transfer student, we need to see 24 credit hours of college-level coursework (not remedial or developmental) with the necessary GPA for the major in which you are interested. Many majors also have specific course requirements. For information about transferring to Purdue, visit admissions.purdue.edu/transfer.
I appreciate your interest in Purdue and regret we are unable to provide the admission decision you hoped for. If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Admissions.
Weighted GPA: 3.932
SAT Score: 1470 (790 M, 680 R)
Strong ECs and Essays
Edit: OOS and was basically wondering what it says about my chances at other colleges.
@TheWorriedSenior - CS at Purdue is a really competitive program for admission. Did you indicate a second or alternate major? Hard to know what this says about your chances at “other colleges” without knowing what they are. Hopefully you have a broad list - one rejection certainly doesn’t mean you’ll get nothing but rejections.
The priority deadline for Purdue CS is Nov. 1. After that, your chances diminish greatly and being OOS doesn’t help. CS is one of the most competitive programs at Purdue. Priority means Purdue will accept applications after this date only if space allows. Purdue says if applying for one of these priority programs (CS, nursing,and professional flight technology) after November 1, check the closed programs page first. You may have just applied too late. Checking application deadlines for scholarships, priority deadlines, etc., is a very important part of the college application process that is, sadly, often overlooked.
They are good scores. A lot of kids seem to get in EA and then RD seems to be much harder. If it makes you feel any better, my daughter was flat out rejected from one of her schools that was supposed to be a target and deferred from a school that was considered a safety. Then she has gotten into some really tough schools and even honors at two of them. It is just a really strange process. Don’t let this one decision define who you are. They see thousands of applicants. You will never know if one person was having a bad day, they skimmed the application, etc… You like to think it is holistic and perfectly accurate, but it would be impossible. They do their best. There might not have been many spaces left. You will get into other colleges with those grades for sure. Good Luck!
I honestly agree with @Isoinfo that applying EA is a huge advantage for those most competitive programs at Purdue. They may simply have not had many spots left by the time they got to the regular decision applications. I think at most schools you would be ok just doing the regular decision guidelines for timing. good luck!
If your UC GPA calculation of 3.85 is correct, you probably don’t have much of a chance for UCLA or UCB. UCSD or UCSB you might have a chance but it’s still a big reach. However you may have calculated the GPA wrong because you mentioned that most of your bad part of your GPA was because of your freshman year, and UCs ignore your freshman year grades (and your senior grades for the calculation). So assuming you’ve taken a few AP classes, your UC GPA should be higher than 3.85.
My understanding for Purdue is that you pretty much had to get you application in by Nov 1 for CS in order to be seriously considered. I know that the averages was around 3.8 unweighted and 1470 SAT IIRC for CS for last year.
CS happens to be one of the most competitive majors at the UC’s. Also the UC’s tend to be very GPA focused so your UC GPA below a 4.0+ will be a hinderance in your chances even with a competitive SAT.
Just to give you an idea of how competitive CS can be at UCLA, the admit rate for CS for the fall of 2018 was 8.2%. The average CS act score is a 35 and the SAT is a 1550 average.
UCSB would probably be your best chance but still I would say a 50/50 chance at best.
Some UC statistical data:
Freshman admit rates for UC GPA of 3.80-4.19 (capped weighted):
UCB: 12.6%
UCLA: 11.7%
UCSD: 38.7%
UCSB: 53.6%
25th - 75th percentiles for SAT:
UCB: 1360-1540
UCLA: 1340-1540
UCSD: 1300-1520
UCSB: 1270-1500
Since you have an acceptance into your Safety school, you are going to college so best of luck but I agree that other than your Safety school, the majority of your schools are very Reach heavy.
Do you like your safety school? Have you visited and spent time there? Can you see yourself attending?
If not it may worth it to investigate which universities still accept applications (rolling admissions? January start???) so you have a choice in March.
You may strike a lucky shot with the more holistic universities but the public universities you listed are all reaches and the private ones are ‘reaxh for everyone’ category.
We are OOS (NY) and my son applied EA (Comp Sci also) and was flat out rejected. Got the same letter as @TheWorriedSenior . ACT: 31, UW GPA 3.8 (school doesn’t weight,) Three APs including a full year, self-study APCS course which he passed! The kicker: it was a Purdue Univeristy APCS course! We thought he was a shoe-in for Purdue and was shocked and very disappointed at the rejection. Not even a deferral or waitlist. Makes no sense, but I’ve given up on trying to make sense of this process.
Hopefully you have a broad list - one rejection certainly doesn’t mean you’ll get nothing but rejections.