Purdue and lack of publicity

Ah, now we're down to the root of it all: Purdue has a lot to offer as a flight program. That's very true, it certinally had it's merits, but it's a far cry from "We all know Purdue is probably the best aviation university in the country."

About the numbers game. Western Michigan gets rid of people REALLY fast. My freshman intro to aviation class had 300 people in it. Next semester we had aerodynamics, and we were down to 200. By the time we got to systems the class was under 100. By the time it was all said and done only 50 of those people that started would actually graduate with a degree in aviation from Western Michigan University. Western also has the same bridge programs that Purdue does, which haven't gotten many Western grads very far as of late. You have guys that are going to get hired with less than 500 hours like FlyChicaga, and then you have the rest of us. THe majority of us out there are going to have to put our time in instructing until we get 1,500 total time, and 200 multi. Just a fact of life, and I'd rather spend my time trying to get those hours than trying to find a way around putting them in.

Cheers


John Herreshoff

John,
I stand by everything I've said thus far. As far as your insinuation that advancing due to a bridge program is not as honorable as instructing for 1500 hrs, well it all depends on the persons career goals. I may have to instruct for 1500hrs or more; however, if I can land an airline job at 500 and 25 I will darn well take it. In an industry where you have to retire at age 60, a few years can make the difference.

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John,
I stand by everything I've said thus far. As far as your insinuation that advancing due to a bridge program is not as honorable as instructing for 1500 hrs, well it all depends on the persons career goals. I may have to instruct for 1500hrs or more; however, if I can land an airline job at 500 and 25 I will darn well take it. In an industry where you have to retire at age 60, a few years can make the difference.

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What are the costs at Purdue? Include the flight and tuition together if you could give me a ball park figure.

Thanks

I made no such insinuation, not did I intend to. If you can get a job at 500 hours then more power to you dude. I just wouldn't count on bridge programs, espically in this economic climate.

The program offers lots of hours in the nifty toys. What happens if you get a bunch of extra applicants? Either the acceptance percentage goes down, because there are too many, or you get accepted and just can't get into a flight period. The other thing is that I don;t know that getting all your instruction from a 18-20 year old is ideal. I'm not saying/implying that they shouldn't be instructing, I know some great young instructors. I do think that getting some instruction from someone that has been in situations that a 20 year old has only read about. Why do you think that your program is so great? It just sounds a bit arrogant to come on the site and profess about how awesome purdue is vs the rest of the programs in the country.

I believe the acceptance rate is capped. Which would be one of the reasons the program is so selective about the applicant that they take.

I've resisted replying to this thread because this thread - like many others - has spiraled downward into the classic "My pee pee is bigger than your pee pee, my school is better than your school" childish argument that I would expect from a group of 14 year olds - not professionals......but I'm bored so here it goes............


As a Purdue Alumnus I won't go so far as to say that it's THE best aviation program in the country - I certainly feel that it's truly one of the best and I feel that it was the best choice for me at the time. It's not for everybody but then then again Riddle isn't for eveybody either - just depends on the individual. Every group of people - wether it be student pilots, lawyers, doctors, taxi cab drivers, whatever - is going to have those overly arrogant people. Not everybody at (insert various school name here) is like that.


The other thing is that I don;t know that getting all your instruction from a 18-20 year old is ideal.

This I will argue with you about. Before you make statements like this you really should research Purdue's Flight program. Student's don't get all of their training from 18 to 20 year olds!! As a matter of fact, the only flight courses that student instructors teach is the Private(sometimes), basic instrument procedures in the Frasca trainers, and the basic commercial manuevers course. The Instrument, multi, the final portion of the Commercial, and the CFI courses are all taught by full time staff instructors - most of whom have 'been in the business' for many, many years and are there because they want to be - not because they're building time for an airline job.

Is it ideal to get instruction from a young brand new instructor? Probably not. This industry at times seems a little backwards to me - you start out teaching other people how to fly when you really don't know anything yourself(and for you guys/gals with a CFI and a whopping 300 hours trust me, you really don't know all that much yet - I've been there too and remember how much I thought I knew) and you end your career pushing buttons on an Auto Flight Control System panel(FYI - what happened to a plain ole' autopilot??). Back to the point, in regards to young instructors, take a look around at the other flight programs, UND, Riddle, MTSU, ATP, and FBO's and all of the other fine programs out there - they're all staffed with young instructors as well. As a matter of fact, without knowing all of the details of all of the other programs I would venture to say that a student at Purdue has more contact with 'experienced' instructors than a student at most of the other programs.

Jason

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John,
No, none of my training has been done by a master CFI. All of my instructors have been very young and I will be one of them in two months (18 yr old CFI).

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I did not mean to say that all instructors at Purdue are young. I was replying to the above statement. I had not looked at this thread prior to today, so my reply was to the entire thing, not simply the things that were right above.

To follow up on Neil's statement about being capped...Purdue only accepts 60 freshman flight students a year. This number is to ensure that everyone has a flight slot and instructor. That 60 does not include transfers or CODO's. Last I heard we had 634 students in our entire aviation program. This includes flight, management, and maintenance.

To follow up on what I previously said, I've been reading some postings from other school categories. I think Purdue is doing the right thing by not advertising. We already get a massive number of applicants (about 2000 a year if I remember right) and only accept a small number. There is no argument that ERAU and UND are much larger aviation programs than Purdue. But large is not always good. A common saying in aviation is "It's not what you know, it's who you know". Networking. This is very vital for an aviation job despite what others might say. With only 600 students in the AT program at Purdue, you have a stronger chance of meeting and interacting with more people at a closer level. All this interaction is that key networking. Also by limiting the number of students accepted into the flight program, Purdue ensures we won't have students with 5:30 am flight slots and doing night cross countries at 2 a.m. Both of which occur at ERAU and UND. Hail to Old Purdue.

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Also by limiting the number of students accepted into the flight program, Purdue ensures we won't have students with 5:30 am flight slots and doing night cross countries at 2 a.m. Both of which occur at ERAU and UND.

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Really, whats wrong with this? I have a 6:00 am flight next semester. So what, it will work really well into my schedule. And the 2:00 am night XC at UND is due to the daylight conditions during the summer.

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>Sunrise and sunset for GFK
Times for 27-Jul-2004
Local (UTC-5) | Zulu (UTC)
Morning civil twilight 05:24 | 10:24
Sunrise 06:01 | 11:01
Sunset 21:09 | 02:09
Evening civil twilight 21:46 | 02:46
</pre><hr />

Not to change the subject of this thread, but there are issues with training flights at those times. Honestly how much are you learning at 6 am? And as many have said flying at night is done all the time in the working world. This is true but this flying is also done by professional crews. The keyword is crews, these aircraft are manned by two people. That is what makes these operations safe. If flying at night is so safe by low time pilots, why is it NASA has a dedicated research group on studying fatigue and its effects on flight crews? Fatigue Countermeasures Group

And now back to the original idea behind this thread

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Not to change the subject of this thread, but there are issues with training flights at those times. Honestly how much are you learning at 6 am?

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Not to get too far off topic, but I would like to hear your "issues with training flights at those times." Especially in regards to an early morning flight. Why would I learn any less at 6am than I would at 10am? Considering I am a morning person and chose that flight time, I see nothing wrong with training early in the morning. I'm not trying to be a smarta$$ here I would really like to see some evidence supporting this.

Not that my opinion is worth much but I don't really see the problem here. I personally think anything before noon sucks but that's just me. There's this little thing called F O I - I know people usually just gloss over this topic during CFI training because the FOI written is just about the easiest thing I've ever done in my life but there's some really interesting and useful stuff in there if you take the time to read it and one of the things that you should take away from it is that (as someone said earlier) everyone learns in different ways and that includes times - some people are sharper in the morning some are sharper in the evening - just depends on the individual. If you are a responsible person and get enough rest the night before I don't see anything wrong with a 6am flight slot. I had several students that early because that's simply the only time they had available in their day for regular flight training. Flying in the middle of the night - once again - if it's a one time deal(or a few times) to get enough night time in the logbook - what's the big deal???

Jason

PS - 3:30 to 5:00 am shows in the corporate/charter and even the airline world are COMMON and usually have a 14 hour day after them - get used to it.

I don't know of anything wrong with the time being 6 am, I am a morning person. I think the issue woudl be what type of training you are attempting to do. I know that in Illinois we tend to have lots of fog in the mornings that hasnt burned off til the sun is up for awhile. If you were working on instrument rules then I don't see the problem, though.

Well, I guess I should respond.... as a MI resident, I applied to both Purdue and WMU for aviation as a senior in high school, and was accepted to both. What was the major deciding factor? Tuition rates for resident vs. non-resident at the time (something like WMU w/ flight fees was less than Purdue out-of-state costs w/o flight fees). I chose WMU. I will graduate in 3.5 years as a CFI starting with 0 hours after my soph. year.

What does this mean??? I believe it means that it doesn't really matter where you get your training but more how you approach your own training.

...oh, and the earliest flight slot here is 7:20, and most people don't take advantage of the nice morning wx around here... but i digress...

Hi all...long time lurker, first time poster! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Before i respond to the original topic of this thread, let me comment on the past several posts. Having graduated from Purdue, I am a little biased on how I feel about the program here...with that said, I don't think that we should be comparing schools as to which is better. As with any program in this country, Purdue has things that make it better than others...but it also has things that make it worse than other programs. Having visited numerous of the flight schools around the country in the past several years, I have seen this first hand. Each program has its own unique features, but they all have the same goal: to produce quality and safe pilots. Purdue is an excellent university, with an equally excellent flight program. Well, I don't think that I need to hit on this any more, but if anyone wants to know more about what we do here please send me a private message and I'd be more than happy to talk to you!

Now back to the original point...Purdue doesn't need to advertise for their program. They have over twice the number of applicants per year than they can accept. They do however, need to get more information about what we do here out into the industry. From meetings with airline executives and industry experts, most are surprised about some things that we do. Again, I don't want to ramble on about what we have at Purdue (i'll spare you /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif), but somthing needs to be done to get that word out. Anyways, since the football game is on now...GO BOILERS!!

I have to add that during my short stint at AirTran, I think they had no clue that Purdue even existed. This came through very evidently when the recruiter asked me during the interview if Purdue was in New York.

She had asked me to help her with setting up a internship program, but I had to turn that down because I quit because I'm applying to a better position at a different airline.

"So what makes Purdue so great, other than it being...Purdue?"

Uh, it's got a drink named after it?

Purdue, '66...not in the school of aviation. Did go through ROTC FIP there though.

wow, you may be one of the most ignorant people i know. ill just leave it at that