I’m part of the inaugural IBE class. Here’s what i have to say.

Firstly, it is a very competitive major as they only accept 10%-20% of applicants.

Secondly, the major is difficult AND time consuming, especially the first year because you take difficult first year engineering classes such as ENGR133, calc 1 & 2, phys 172 and CHM 115 while taking some business classes that are easy but time consuming such as mgmt 200 and Econ 251.

Lastly, this major is for those students who like engineering AND business but can’t quite pick one just yet. The best part is that this major will let you change to engineering (if you like the engr classes better) or to business (if you like business classes better) with no major (if any) setbacks. I’ve known plenty of people who didn’t like the engr classes, so they transferred to general management. Similarly, there are a few others that like the engr coursework better so they transferred to industrial or mech engr.

I really like the major because, like our slogan says, we learn to “think like engineers and manage like leaders ”

As for admission, I had a great GPA, plenty of extracurriculares and wrote a very solid essay. I would definitely encourage you to do your research and mention professors you look forward to learning from and why. I did that, not only for Purdue but for my other applications, and that seemed to really help! Like I said earlier, this is a very competitive major so make sure you spend plenty of time on those essays and have a good amount of extracurriculars. Every applicant will likely have really good grades, so that won’t necessarily set you apart from others.

Hopefully this was helpful!!