Is Purdue or Brown harder to get into for undergraduate admissions?

The biggest practical tradeoff is that Purdue is a large public university with a broader undergraduate intake, while Brown is a small Ivy League university that admits far fewer students relative to the number who apply. In overall undergraduate admissions, Brown is much harder to get into. That is true even before you get into specific majors, because Brown is more selective across the board and has a much more limited class size.

Brown’s applicant pool is self-selecting in a way that pushes selectivity higher: many applicants have very strong grades, rigorous coursework, and high-level extracurriculars. Brown also builds a relatively small incoming class and uses a highly holistic process shaped by fit with its open curriculum and academic culture.

Purdue is certainly selective, especially in some programs, but overall it is not in the same admissions category as Brown. As a public research university, Purdue enrolls a much larger undergraduate population and evaluates applicants in a different institutional context. For an overall college-list comparison, most students should think of Purdue as significantly more accessible than Brown, even though Purdue can be quite competitive in areas like engineering or computer science.

So if your question is simply which school is harder to get into overall, the answer is Brown by a clear margin. When building your list, Brown should be treated as a very high-reach school for almost everyone, while Purdue belongs in a different selectivity tier overall.