WEST LAFAYETTE— A new ranking out this week places Purdue University — again — among the nation’s best in establishing value for students and creating job-ready graduates for employers.
Forbes’ New Ivies 2025: 20 Great Colleges Employers Love ranking lists Purdue among 10 public and 10 private institutions that are “outpacing the Ivy League in the eyes of employers.” The Forbes ranking is based on a survey of more than 380 C-suite executives, vice presidents, and managerial professionals who reported being 37% less likely to hire an Ivy League graduate than they were five years ago. To compile the list, Forbes looked at highly selective schools that admit students with competitive standardized test scores and put the finalists in front of business leaders via survey.
Among the 20 New Ivies public and private universities, Purdue is the only public university in Indiana on the list and one of just four from the 18-member Big Ten. Based on spring 2025 undergraduate enrollment, Purdue is the largest university among the named “New Ivies.”
“Attaining excellence at scale with affordability, Purdue University continues to be the first vista of intellectual competitions and a long-lasting bastion of individual freedoms,” said Purdue President Mung Chiang. “As a public land-grant institution, Purdue is creating jobs, talent, and innovation faster than ever. Perhaps Boilermakers are creating a new kind of Ivies in America.”
The honor highlights Purdue’s foundational value of excellence at scale with affordability. Ranked as a top 10 public university by QS and Times Higher Ed, Purdue’s main campus educates over 58,000 students today. Thanks to Purdue’s 13 years of frozen tuition, at least 75,000 graduates and 10 graduating classes have never experienced a tuition increase, saving students and their families more than $1.7 billion on tuition alone since 2012-13. To fulfill critical workforce needs, 83% of Purdue’s 44,000-plus undergraduates are in a STEM discipline, up from 42% a decade ago. Purdue also graduates more engineers than any other top university in the country.
“The Forbes New Ivies list is a testament to the shifting higher education landscape as employers look to hire graduates of non-Ivy private colleges and public universities far more often than they did five years ago,” said Emma Whitford, staff reporter at Forbes. “If a rigorous education and plentiful job prospects are the goal, high school seniors would be wise to give these schools a serious look.”
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