Admissions at Purdue is more nuanced than ever. We shed some light on the process.

Across the country, college applications are up and acceptance rates are down. To compete in the high-stakes world of college admissions, students are applying to more colleges than ever before, packing their schedules with challenging courses, and filling up their after-school hours with clubs, jobs, and volunteer work.

Purdue is seeing the same trends as many other schools — particularly in increasingly competitive programs such as nursing, engineering, and computer science. Thanks to other bold initiatives, like a four-year freeze on tuition costs, Purdue is attracting significantly more attention from prospective students. “We’ve had great things happening at the institution for a long time,” explains Director of Admissions Mitch Warren, whose office read close to 45,000 applications for admission this past year alone. “We’re attracting more students, and better students than ever before.”

Yet, if program capacity is not an issue, Purdue is as committed as ever to making sure that every student who has the ability to succeed at the university gets in. To find out more about the sea changes in admissions, and the changing ways that Purdue attracts, admits, and supports its students, we pored through the data. We talked to dozens of faculty, staff, and students about their work and experiences. Here, we share the most fascinating trends, the best advice, and the most closely held secrets. Read on to find out more.

Does Purdue ever turn an admission denial into an acceptance?

Some of the most stressful times of year for admissions counselors are the weeks just after admissions decisions are released. “People don’t call us to thank us for admitting them,” says Megan Dorton, senior assistant director of admissions. “They call to ask why they were denied, whether we’ll reconsider, and what their other options are.”

It’s a tough conversation — and Dorton offers a few of her best tips to understand what to expect.

Mistakes are rare. Application decisions are a human process, but admissions counselors are exceptionally skilled at their jobs. Unless there is a data entry error or additional details about an applicant who has been denied, he or she will rarely be reconsidered for admission to the same program.

Your best shot for reconsideration? More information. For example, says Dorton, Purdue requires four years of mathematics for every student. If a student forgets to mention a senior math class in the course listing section of the application, it can lead to a denial. “In that case, we’ll happily re-evaluate an application with an updated transcript that has a more complete picture,” she says.

Civility matters.“We find no pleasure in denying students,” says Dorton, and even though you’re frustrated, try to maintain your composure. It’s much easier for admissions counselors to try to help those who treat counselors respectfully.

Be open to advice. Admissions counselors aren’t just gatekeepers; they really take the “counselor” part of their title to heart. “Even if a student isn’t competitive for Purdue, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other options for them,” Dorton says. “We’ll help them understand what paths are still available. Maybe it’s a year at Ivy Tech. Maybe it’s a regional campus. We want to find a way to help students get to Purdue eventually, and we’ll talk about what that process looks like.”

Tour guides reveal their secrets

Purdue Ambassadors hear it all when they show families around campus.

It’s not easy being a Purdue Ambassador. Not only are these student tour guides expected to have all the details of the 2,468-acre campus at their fingertips, but they have to entertain crowds of students and their parents — all while walking backwards. (That skill is tougher than it looks during the icy winter months, says Ambassador Shelby Wilkinson.) We asked a few to share their favorite stories — and the craziest questions they’ve ever received on tour.

The craziest questions they’ve fielded:

You’d be surprised at how many parents want to know where the best parties are.

—Shelby Wilkinson

We have over 900 student organizations ranging from academic organizations to those that are just for fun. We have Coffee Lovers Anonymous, the Disney fan club, and hundreds more. After sharing this, one parent asked me if we had a nudist club.

—Aaron Addis

Give it to us straight: What’s the toughest part of Purdue?

No amount of sugarcoating can make our winters seem fun.

—Samantha Dawson

The high standard of work expected for every class. We simply don’t have grade inflation here. The flip side is that means the A or B you get in a course shows your ability to rise to the occasion.

—Andrew O’Connor

Living away from home, it can be tough when nobody is there to make sure you eat well, make sure you get enough sleep, or fight your battles. All these responsibilities are now on you. Looking at it from another perspective, this is also the best part about coming to Purdue. You get to be your own advocate. You learn so much about who you are, not only as a student but a human being. Purdue gives you freedom to explore and grow into the person you will be.

—Aaron Addis

An admissions counselor tells all

A longtime application reader shares the joys and challenges of the job.

Every year, Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Megan Dorton reviews more than 1,500 applications for admission. Most of the decisions are clear as crystal. Either the student has the good grades, test scores, and essay that make it easy to say yes — or the student just doesn’t have what it takes to make it: poor grades, low test scores, no extracurriculars. Those decisions are easy, Dorton says, and she can complete those applications in about eight minutes.

The tough applications — the ones that can occupy her for days — are the students on the bubble. Maybe their test scores are high, but their grades are much lower than readers like to see. Maybe they haven’t been in a single club or activity all four years of high school. “We’re always asking: has the student put in the effort necessary to attend Purdue?” says Dorton. “Is this someone who will work to their potential when they get on campus?”

These applications often require a second or even third set of eyes. Dorton may pull in another colleague from down the hall to get a second opinion. There have been times that she’s been in discussion with several colleagues about a single decision for weeks.

Spending hours on a single application might seem like an outsized commitment for an office that’s responsible for tens of thousands of them. But for Dorton, it’s the most welcome of debates. “Yes, it’s a lot of time for one student. But to that student, it’s everything. We never forget that.”

Five Purdue admissions myths

The reality isn’t what you might expect.

Myth: Prospective students who have family members who graduated from, work for, or donated to Purdue are more likely to get in than similarly qualified students without the link.

Reality: “We make admissions decisions based on what the student has done,” says Mitch Warren, a philosophy that reflects the school’s larger goals. “We’re a land-grant institution, and our mission, at a fundamental level, is to help individuals achieve what they have the potential
to achieve.”

Myth: There’s a “secret formula” that admissions counselors use to determine a student’s admission.

Reality: Purdue has plenty of high-tech processes to track admissions and communicate with students, but the school’s holistic admissions decisions means that there’s no computer algorithm that determines a student’s admission status, explains Warren. Each decision is based on a complicated set of variables that include — but aren’t limited to — grades, test scores, extracurriculars, and leadership.

Myth: If a prospective student has visited the website, Purdue “knows” about that student.

Reality: Students can gather plenty of information about the college on the Purdue website. But unless they have specifically provided their information to the university — or added Purdue as an interest when taking the SAT or ACT — those students are still “invisible” to the school and won’t receive additional, personalized information. “For example, a student from Chicago who is interested in liberal arts can get lots of information on the website, but they wouldn’t know about the specific Chicago events we host,” says Warren. “We have special messages that we send to those interested in liberal arts, too, so the student would miss out on those.” In other words: for the best, most customized information, students should share their information with the university.

Myth: Students can qualify for in-state tuition after their first full year at the school.

Reality: A student’s residency status is based where the family has its primary home. It’s not enough, for example, to own a rental home or a second home in Indiana.

Myth: An international or non-Indiana domestic student can “displace” an otherwise qualified Indiana student from admission.

Reality: Students who have the academic ability to succeed at Purdue will be accepted, regardless of their residence.

Kids these days

Would a Boilermaker today recognize a Boilermaker from a generation or two ago? We asked two longtime Purdue professors and administrators to weigh in on the ways they’ve seen students change over time — and where the Purdue DNA remains the same. 

Adapting to a new world 

Many of the students I work with today are extremely ambitious — many of them already have a year’s worth of college courses through AP classes that they’ve taken in high school. They’re also much more connected to everything in the world. With their smartphones and electronics, they’re exposed to so much.

That said, I don’t know if they’re as emotionally mature as students were years ago. I think some students today have lived their lives without having had to make a lot of decisions on their own. Parents are very actively involved in their student’s lives.

The world has changed around students, too. When I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1971, that alone made me different. It made me stand out. 

Today? A bachelor’s degree by itself doesn’t make a student stand out. I just talked with a recruiter who says he doesn’t even look at the student’s GPA. He wants to know what students were doing here besides academics. What activities, internships, community service? That’s something we try to emphasize at Krannert — the importance of getting involved — and it’s definitely more complex than it used to be.

Today, it’s not if you go to college that makes you stand out. It’s how you go to college. It’s how you use all the things that you did in college to actually solve problems in the world. 

The more things change …

I think the typical student today and the typical student from years ago share many similarities: they’re coming to Purdue to be challenged, to be engaged, and to get a good education.

That said, there are differences. For example, the cost to educate a student is about the same as it was in 1998, if you adjust for inflation. However, since state budgets don’t support higher ed the way they did in the past — and this is true across the nation, not just here — families take on more of the financial burden as higher tuition. As a result, I think, there are a lot more conversations about costs and career expectations, rather than just an education. And students absolutely feel that pressure from their parents. That can be a positive thing, because it’s something that helps them make progress for their degree.

Now, some people think that students today have too many diversions — they’re looking at Facebook on their phone in class. But 17 years ago, they had the Exponent, and they were doing the crossword. Or they were playing pinball in the Union. There are always ways you can choose to be a part of the life you’re living, or find something that takes you away from it. The media have changed, but the students haven’t changed that much.

A question of cost

Financial aid plays a critical role in students’ decisions to attend.

For many students, the college decision begins not with admission, but with financial aid. Recent surveys indicated that one of the top reasons that admitted Purdue students cite for not enrolling is costs.

But the school is working to make college as affordable as possible: despite declining state funding, President Mitch Daniels has frozen tuition and fees since 2012. Purdue is one of a handful of schools in the nation where the cost of attendance has actually declined for the past two years, to just over $23,000 annually.

Still, says Ted Malone, executive director of the Division of Financial Aid, many families have unrealistic expectations about college costs. “We recently asked a group of students and parents how many of them thought their students would get large scholarships to cover most of their costs, and about 70 percent raised their hands,” he says. “But we give large scholarships to just 10 to 15 percent of our incoming class.” 

And for the most part, awards are final: unlike some schools that will match offers, Purdue puts its best foot forward from the outset. “We have limited resources, so we try to do what makes the most sense, fiscally,” says Malone.

To fill the rest of the gap, families fill out FAFSA forms and can seek out a range of state and federal grants and loans — and Malone says the office will always be open to making changes for families who see major changes in their circumstances. “If a parent loses a job or has a huge medical expense, for example, we’ll absolutely look at that,” he says.

Recruiting for excellence

Purdue has high expectations for its students across the board — but some programs are more competitive than others. We talked to two recruiters facing different challenges to find out how nationally  known programs are handling the crush of interest while newer programs establish their footing.

Engineering

If you’re interested in getting the kind of rock-solid education that helped propel Neil Armstrong to the moon, you’re not alone: last year, Purdue’s engineering program hosted 320 on-campus events, attracting 23,000 attendees. And that doesn’t include the countless high school visits, college fairs, and other events that the Office of Future Engineers participates in every single year.

Purdue’s engineering program has always had a strong reputation, and cultural shifts are helping, too, says David Bowker, director of the Office of Future Engineers. “STEM fields have more cachet now,” he says. “It’s almost a little sexy.”

The lucrative career path doesn’t hurt, either. “We have some of the highest starting salaries for any four-year degree,” he says. “You’re going to get a return on your investment.”

The result? The College of Engineering is one of the hottest schools on campus, with nearly 17,000 applicants for just 1,860 undergraduate spots this fall.

Health and Human Sciences

For a university with more than 140 years of history, five years can feel like a blip on the radar. When Purdue combined and launched new programs to start the College of Health and Human Sciences (HHS) in 2010, it faced unique challenges and opportunities.

For starters: it requires serious effort to get traction in a field with an already-dominant force, says HHS recruitment specialist John Gipson. “There’s an IU Health on every corner — there’s an assumption [among students] that you go to IU for healthcare,” he says.

Even alumni who graduated from fields now under the HHS umbrella aren’t all familiar with the new college, which means Gipson and his colleagues have had to work even harder to build a name for the college among prospective students.

The good news? The numbers are beginning to speak for themselves: 94 percent of students got a job right after graduation last year, and of those who applied to professional schools or graduate schools after graduation, 89 percent got a spot. 

How students discover Purdue

Today’s students have no shortage of ways to learn about Purdue: in addition to visiting the campus itself, they can visit the robust admissions website with video tours, student profiles, and professor interviews. They’ll find the school represented on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Periscope.

But most of today’s prospective students get their best information from the same sources as students a generation ago, says Mitch Warren. “Students rely on their friends, secondary school counselors, parents, and family members,” he says. 

Aaron Yoder, a business management and marketing major from Middlebury, Indiana, grew up knowing about Purdue, but tapped his Boilermaker relatives to find out more when he was seriously considering colleges. Laura Markley, a Fort Wayne native, says Purdue wasn’t on her radar for years. “I dreamed of going out of state, but I have a sister who graduated from Purdue. Once I visited, I fell in love with the campus,” she says.

That said, Purdue’s strong website has led to a phenomenon all but unheard of in the pre-Internet days. In the past, students got information by requesting an application. Students followed a predictable “funnel” of responding to an information request, applying, and enrolling. Today, says Pam Horne, vice provost for enrollment management, there is no easy funnel: “A third of our applicants are ‘stealth applicants’ — the student didn’t visit, register on our website, or send us a test score in advance,” she says. “We’ll always reach out to students who are interested — but it shows the value of putting a lot of attention and resources into a top-notch website.”

Building a class

All students benefit from being part of a class that includes people with diverse skills, experiences, and backgrounds.

Admissions counselors don’t just admit individuals; they build a class. “We’re building a community,” explains Mitch Warren, director of admissions. “Students who grow up in downtown Indianapolis and students who grow up on rural farms can learn from each other in the classroom and outside of it. All students benefit from different perspectives.”

The same is true for the rest of the world, which is why the school has focused on boosting its international student population. Currently, students from more than 120 countries attend Purdue, and it makes a real difference, says Dean for International Programs Mike Brzezinski. “The jobs that await Purdue graduates require Boilermakers to have the ability to successfully interact with individuals who hail from different national cultures,” he says. “The Purdue undergraduate experience is a training ground to learn from and with the rest of the world.”

From getting in to graduation

Purdue is committed to helping admitted students graduate.

For students, the real success doesn’t come the moment they receive an acceptance letter to Purdue. It arrives years later, when they toss their caps at commencement. In recent years, Purdue has made a much more concerted effort to ensure that every student who arrives on campus has the best possible chance to succeed. It all starts with robust orientation programs for first-year students. Dan Carpenter, director of student success at Purdue, explains:

New students (and their parents or guardians) launch their lives as Boilermakers with a required one-day, on-campus program early in the summer called STAR. What is that?

Students spend the day receiving academic advice, creating their course schedule, participating in orientation activities, and becoming acclimated to the university. And their guests, typically parents, participate in their own orientation. We added the parent program because we know how important parents are to helping a student succeed.

Later, just before classes start, new students attend a four-day Boiler Gold Rush. How is this different? 

Students participate in 10 lessons that are done in a classroom environment that focus on things like financial literacy, personal safety, and academic integrity. We also ask faculty members to serve as mentors to the orientation teams, introduce themselves and hang out with them — maybe have a meal with them. We want to help familiarize students and faculty. We want to make sure that the experiences are fun, but it’s important that they learn, too.

Orientation programs didn’t used to be nearly so robust. Why are they now?

If you were to line up students and ask them what they got out of these programs, you’re likely to hear, “I made my first friends. I found somebody who’s going to be in this class with me. I found a student organization that I’m really interested in.” That might not sound like much, but in some ways, it’s everything. Research suggests that students who connect with something — anything — in their first year, any student organization, any sort of volunteerism, a part-time job, whatever it is, tend to be more successful than those who don’t. 

Just the Stats, Ma’am

We’ve tallied up the numbers, and they’re impressive. Below, the details of the 2014 freshman class — an academically remarkable cohort — as well as the improving trends in graduation and retention rates over time.

• Size of class: 6,373
• Number of applications: 39,706
• Middle 50% high school GPA range: 3.5–4.0
• Middle 50% SAT range: 1630–1940
• Middle 50% ACT composite range: 25–30
• Students in top 25% of high school class: 78%
• 1-year retention rate: 92.6 % (2005: 84.3 percent)
• 4-year graduation rate: 49.2 % (2005: 39.2 percent)
• 6-year graduation rate: 73.8% (2005: 68.7 percent)