What You'll Actually Pay
Price after grants
$5,098 to $22,742 a year for in-state students, depending on income.
College Scorecard 2024 estimate · in-state rates
See the price at your income ↑Sticker price
Full cost before aid: $24,591 a year in-state. Average need-based aid package: $15,103.Aid and debt
23%
receive need-based grants
$31,369
average debt at graduation
8,612
students got merit aid
about 20% of undergraduates
$5,446
average merit award
Getting In
Key dates
Test scores
SAT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 1220–1470 · 84% of the class submitted
ACT, middle 50% of those who submitted: 28–34 · 23% of the class submitted
52% were in the top 10% of their high school class.
What they value
- Very important
- Course rigor (AP/IB)
- GPA
- Personal essay
- Important
- SAT/ACT scores
- Recommendations
- Extracurriculars
- Character
- First-gen status
- Considered
- Class rank
- Special talent
- Where you're from
- In-state residency
- Volunteer work
- Work experience
- Demonstrated interest
- Not considered
- Legacy status
What this means for you
Purdue rates course rigor and your essay as Very Important, and your recommendations and your activities as Important.
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Rigor means AP, IB, and dual enrollment carry real weight — make sure your mix of AP or IB courses is strong. The essay is weighted like your GPA. Recommendations matter here too — a recommender who knows you well helps. And depth and leadership in a few activities matter more than a long list.
Purdue rates demonstrated interest 'Considered' — it can tip a close decision, without being decisive.
Source: Common Data Set 2025–26, Section C7 (admissions factors)
Purdue just showed you what it values in an application. Use that to write a Why-Purdue essay that's actually about you — not a template.
Get sourced starting points for your essayStudent Life
39.7% of Purdue classes have fewer than 20 students.
39.7%
under 20 students
39.8%
20 to 49
20.5%
50 or more
Every class section counts, labs and seminars included; first-year courses tend to be larger. Purdue CDS 2025–26, I-3.
14:1
student:faculty ratio
Campus life
50%
first-years from out of state
40.2%
live on campus
15%
of men in fraternities
17.2%
of women in sororities
Who attends
- White51.2%
- Asian17.4%
- Hispanic7.8%
- Unknown / other6.3%
- Multiracial5.1%
- Black2.7%
Enrolled undergraduates; international students are counted separately and not included. Purdue CDS 2025–26, B2.
Popular majors
Will They Graduate?
65.9% of Purdue students graduate in 4 years.
65.9%
finish in 4 years
Entered fall 2019
83.9%
finish in 6 years
Entered fall 2019
92.4%
return after first year
Finishing late means paying for extra semesters, so the 4-year rate is the one that shows the cost.
Students with Pell Grants
74.7% finish in 6 years, against 83.9% of all students.
A 9.2-point gap: Pell Grant students finish less often than students overall.
City & Culture
Beyond the data — what it's actually like to spend four years in West Lafayette.
West Lafayette exists because of the university, and the campus and the town are effectively one place: State Street runs through both, and the Chauncey Hill blocks at the campus edge supply most of the food and bars a student needs on foot.
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The Wabash River separates West Lafayette from Lafayette, the older and larger working city across the water, where the off-campus jobs and the cheaper rent are. Indianapolis is an hour south and Chicago a little over two hours northwest, which is the honest answer to what a big-city weekend requires here. What you get is a compact, walkable, engineering-shaped college town. What you do not get is a city, and the winters are long and grey.
The City
College town
West Lafayette, IN
Best For
Notable alumni
Notable Alumni
Neil Armstrong
The first person to walk on the moon, and the best known of the 30 astronauts Purdue has produced — the reason it is called the Cradle of Astronauts.
Class of 1955
Virgil "Gus" Grissom
One of the original Mercury Seven and the second American in space, who became Purdue's first astronaut in 1959 and died in the Apollo 1 fire.
Class of 1950
Eugene Cernan
Commander of Apollo 17 and the most recent human to walk on the moon.
Class of 1956
Drew Brees
Quarterbacked Purdue to the Rose Bowl before a Super Bowl title and MVP with the New Orleans Saints, retiring as the NFL's all-time leader in completions.
Class of 2001
Brian Lamb
Founded C-SPAN and ran it for decades, building the unedited public record of Congress that had not previously existed.
Class of 1963
Alumni selected for name recognition and range of fields. Not from the Common Data Set.
Traditions
Traditions
Purdue Grand Prix
A 50-lap go-kart race on a quarter-mile track, run by students since 1958 and billed as the greatest spectacle in college racing. Teams build and qualify their own karts, and the proceeds fund student scholarships.
The Boilermaker Special
A student-maintained locomotive that serves as the official mascot, first presented in 1940 and described by the university as the world's largest, fastest, heaviest and loudest collegiate mascot. It shows up at games, parades and campus events.
The World's Largest Drum
A bass drum standing ten feet tall on its carriage, still built on its original 1921 frame and moved by a crew of six band members. The All-American Marching Band takes it to home games and to the Indianapolis 500.
Breakfast Club
On football game days the bars at the campus edge open at dawn and students turn up in full costume — not team colours, but whatever the costume box produced. It is the loudest and least explicable Purdue tradition, and the most universally attended.
Not walking under the Bell Tower
The 1995 Bell Tower sits at the centre of campus and students route around it: the superstition holds that walking beneath it costs you a four-year graduation. With 65.1% of students finishing in four years, the joke has some teeth.
Weekend escapes from West Lafayette
Weekend Escapes
Within driving distance from West Lafayette
Indianapolis
1 hourThe nearest real city, and where the pro sports, the concerts and the airport are.
Chicago
2 hours 15 minutesThe big-weekend option, and the international airport for students flying home overseas.
Indiana Dunes National Park
2 hoursLake Michigan shoreline and dunes at the top of the state — the closest thing to a beach weekend.
Turkey Run State Park
1 hourSandstone gorges and ladder trails along Sugar Creek, and the standard escape when a weekend has to be cheap and close.
Getting there and game days
Getting There & Game Days
Nearest airport
Indianapolis International Airport (IND)
1 hour 10 minutes from campus
For international flights: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD) — about 2 hours 15 minutes by road.
Pro sports nearby
- Indianapolis Colts NFL
- Indiana Pacers NBA
- Indiana Fever WNBA
- Indy Eleven USL
Internships and jobs nearby
Career Proximity
Purdue's career pipeline is built into the degree rather than bolted onto it: co-op and internship sequences are a normal part of engineering here, which is why a meaningful share of students take longer than four years and why employers recruit on campus at scale. Indianapolis an hour south supplies pharmaceutical and life-sciences work through Eli Lilly and its suppliers, and the motorsports and advanced-manufacturing cluster around it is unusually deep for the Midwest. Aerospace is the distinctive one — the same reputation that produced 30 astronauts keeps NASA, the national labs and the aerospace primes in regular contact with the campus.
Top Industries Nearby
Major Employers
- Eli Lilly and Company
- Rolls-Royce North America
- Cummins
- Salesforce
- Subaru of Indiana Automotive
Indianapolis — about 1 hour south; Chicago is roughly 2 hours 15 minutes northwest
Who thrives here
Who Thrives Here
Purdue is an engineering-first campus of roughly 2,500 acres where the identity is unusually concrete: it rates standardized test scores 'Very Important' and requires them, it keeps 39.7% of its sections under 20 students at a scale of 43,633 undergraduates, and its signature tradition is a student-built go-kart race. Half the undergraduates come from outside Indiana — 50.0% — with another 5.4% from outside the country, so it feels less like a state school than its price suggests. That price is why many families look at all: $9,992 in state and $28,794 out of state are low for a flagship of this size. Residential life is moderate rather than all-consuming, with 40.2% in university housing and 15.0% of men and 17.2% of women in Greek life, and the Boilermaker Special locomotive and dawn Breakfast Club mornings supplying the rest. The trade-off shows up in time and money at the edges: 65.9% finish in four years against 83.9% in six, an eighteen-point gap that co-ops and engineering sequences explain but families still pay for, Purdue meets 71.4% of demonstrated need, and borrowers leave owing $31,369.