Hi! I have a 4.93/5 weighted GPA, a 1280 on the SAT, took the ACT got a 25 but not going to send the score. I am in Science Olympiad and participating on the varsity level for 3 events. I got into National Honors Society, as well as Science National Honors Society. I am active in Key Club (public service club at our school). I started my own landscaping business. I’ve been taking honors math classes since 8th grade, and am currently in AP calc BC. I am also in AP Physics 2, Honors English since 10th grade, and honors social studies. I meet all of the admission requirements, just wondering if there is anyone out there that can tell me if I stand a good chance at Purdue engineering despite my lower test scores compared to the average. I know that Purdue is a “numbers” school but I feel that my score is just below the 50th percentile for engineering and I definitely make up for it in other areas.
What year are you in high school? Will you be an instate or OOS applicant?
Here is a link to the Purdue Data Digest, here, 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. 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 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.
You can also look at Purdue’s Common Data Set, here, https://www.purdue.edu/oirae/resources.html. Part C7 tells you what admissions factors Purdue considers to be “very important,” “important,” “considered,” and “not considered”; Part C9 of the CDS gives the median 50% for both SAT and ACT scores, as well as the percentage of the entering first-year class falling within certain ranges of SAT and ACT scores. As you can see from the CDS, Purdue views standardized test scores, GPA, and high school course rigor as “very important” admissions factors, and ECs, personal qualities, LORs, and application essay(s) as “important” admissions factors.
I don’t know whether your high school has Naviance or any similar program that gives information about how students at your high school have done in applying to colleges and universities; if so, you might peruse that data for applicants to Purdue from your school. I would also try to meet with a guidance counselor at your school; if any former students from your school have been admitted to Purdue recently, the guidance counselor may be able to give some insight into how and why such student(s) were successful, and how you stack up against them.
Thanks for the response! I am an out of state senior this year, and I submitted my application for early action. I met with my counselor various times and a few of my friends got admitted last year. The only thing I’m concerned with is my SAT score and was wondering if you or anyone knew if it really had as much of an impact as I’m thinking it does.
According to Part C7 of Purdue’s Common Data Set, standardized test scores, academic GPA, and rigor of secondary school record are all “very important” admissions factors. You can draw your own conclusions from that.
My son has similar statistics. For his second choice he put down robotics in Polytechnic. Hopefully he will get in there if not into the school of engineering. Does anyone know how selective the robotics program is in Polytechnic?