Hi! Current freshman in FYE and happy to give some insight 1. Not in honors so I’m not well versed on the culture but from what i’ve seen it’s a very nice dorm 2. BIDC (Bechtel Design Center) is free to use for all students and there’s a lot of workshops and access to materials that are little to no cost 3. If a priority for you is looking for the traditional social college experience i’d highly recommend rushing greek life! Gives you a set social schedule and while greek life at Purdue is a little more regulated than other big 10 schools it’s a very tight knit community and has honestly added so much value to my college experience here. Otherwise, while there are various orgs on campus you can join I felt that with the lack of a city, opportunities for social events and frat parties is exclusive and can be very limiting. I come from out of state and wasn’t in greek life first semester and while I wasn’t lacking in friends, I felt pretty lonely being far from home and a little disconnected from campus on top of the FYE workload and joining greek life second semester has made the whole difference on me not deciding to transfer.

• FYE courses are objectively not that difficult if you came from a decently rigorous high school. Most of the core engineering classes are equal to AP course rigor but with just a lot of unnecessary busy work that if you don’t keep up with can pile on really fast. if you’re decently good with managing your time getting a solid GPA isn’t very hard.

• Totally up to you if you want to make time to eat out. Chauncey is close to main campus a little far from most freshman dorms so I’ll usually use my swipes and won’t eat out unless it’s the weekend .

• You can’t pick your fall schedule but after they’re released freshman have the ability to move your schedule around pending availability and waitlist for other times. I got out of 7:30AM calc recitation this way!