Acceptance status for Purdue applicants to be released at later date

Rolling admission changes to Dec. 5 mailing for Class of ‘09 and subsequent classes

By Afra Hussain
<ahussain@hilite.org>

At the beginning of December, students who applied to Purdue will finally know where their admittance status stands. This procedure is different from previous years where students would find out earlier due to a change in admittance policy. However, Purdue is not changing much about its application policies.

According to Vicki Nunery, who is a college career resource center counselor, this year Purdue will give admittance statuses, accept, reject or waitlisted, after 5 p.m. on Dec. 5.

In the past Purdue used a rolling admittance system where students heard about their status shortly after applying. According to the Purdue University Web site, the new release date will be in December.

Purdue is the only in-state school to change its policy about admittance dates. Schools such as Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) and Indiana University continue to accept students on a rolling basis with acceptance letters coming in soon after applications are submitted.

Senior Andrew Billig said he does not mind the later acceptance date. “It’s fair,” Billig said. “It judges everyone by their grades rather than how early they signed up.”

While filling out the application, Billig said he noticed that Purdue’s aplication had an essay question and Indiana State University’s and Ball State University’s did not. According to Billig, it was not a big deal.

He said he wished to get into Purdue. “I want to do construction management and their program is really well known,” Billig said. He said he completed his application and already turned it in.

Many of the college application due dates differ, and Purdue’s applications for scholarships, such as the Trustee Scholarship and the Presidential Scholarship, are due Nov. 15. The applications for programs such as health sciences, nursing, pharmacy, professional flight and veterinary technology are also due on Nov. 15.

However, other undergraduate programs do not have deadlines until March 1, 2009 although seniors are urged to apply in the fall, according to the Purdue University Web site. Purdue will use the rolling admissions system to admit applications for programs other than the onese listed above because of their later due date.

For now, students applying to Purdue can expect the new procedure and students applying to other in-state schools can expect normal acceptance

“(Purdue applicants) just won’t know for a while,” Nunery said.