How does admissions difficulty compare between Purdue and WashU for undergrad applicants?

WashU is meaningfully harder to get into overall than Purdue for most undergrad applicants. In practice, WashU belongs in the highly selective private-university category, while Purdue is selective but more accessible overall, especially outside its most in-demand majors. That means the same student could reasonably view WashU as a reach and Purdue as anything from a target to a reach depending on major.

WashU tends to fit the student whose list already includes very selective private schools and who understands that strong grades and scores alone do not make admission likely. Its applicant pool is packed with high-achieving students across the board, and the review is very holistic, so academic strength, course rigor, activities, and personal presentation all matter at a very high level. Even excellent applicants should usually treat WashU as a reach.

Purdue fits a different kind of planning. For a student applying to engineering, computer science, business, or other heavily subscribed programs, Purdue can still be quite tough and should not automatically be treated as safe. Purdue admits by major in many cases, and difficulty can vary a lot by program, so the school’s overall accessibility can be misleading if you are aiming at one of its most competitive areas.

For a student applying to a less oversubscribed Purdue major with strong grades in a solid course load, Purdue often sits in a more realistic range than WashU. That does not mean easy, just much less uniformly difficult than WashU. If you are building a balanced list, it usually makes sense to place WashU in the reach category, while Purdue needs to be categorized based on your intended major and how your academic profile lines up with that specific program.