61 Boilermakers Honored as Big Ten Distinguished Scholars – Purdue Boilermakers

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – With 61 Boilermakers earning Big Ten Distinguished Scholar recognition for their academic excellence, Purdue Athletics had 60 honorees for the sixth consecutive school year.

Student-athletes across the conference were recognized as Big Ten Distinguished Scholars for achieving grade-point averages of 3.70 and better during the 2024-25 academic year. Nineteen of the Boilermakers’ 61 honorees (31%) compiled flawless 4.0 GPAs this past school year. That total is up from eight 4.0 student-athletes a year ago.

Ten of Purdue’s teams had at least one Big Ten Distinguished Scholar with a 4.0.

Nine Boilermakers were recognized as Big Ten Distinguished Scholars for at least the third time, a group headlined by graduate students and four-time honorees Logan Sandlin and Jenna Sonnenberg.

3-TIME BIG TEN DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS
Seniors/Grad Students to be recognized at least 3 times
• Grant Gogel – Men’s Track & Field
• Ali Hornung – Volleyball
• Caroline Jordan – Women’s Cross Country and Track & Field
• Kendall Klochack – Softball
• Juana Larranaga – Women’s Tennis
• Sophie McAfee – Women’s Swimming & Diving
• Logan Sandlin (4x) – Men’s Track & Field
• Jenna Sonnenberg (4x) – Women’s Swimming & Diving
• Momo Sugiyama – Women’s Golf

Twenty of the Boilermakers’ Big Ten Distinguished Scholars were also 2025 spring graduates.

Purdue Swimming & Diving and Track & Field/Cross Country both accounted for 15 Big Ten Distinguished Scholars, with those sports combined nearly accounting for half of the department’s honorees this year.

Big Ten Faculty Representatives established the Distinguished Scholar award in 2008 to supplement the Academic All-Big Ten program. Distinguished Scholar recipients must have earned Academic All-Big Ten recognition in the previous academic year, must have been enrolled full time at the institution for the entire previous academic year (two semesters or three quarters) and earned a minimum GPA of 3.70 during the previous academic year, excluding any summer grades. The Academic All-Big Ten threshold is a cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher for a student’s academic career.

Purdue also had 248 student-athletes earn Academic All-Big Ten honors during the 2024-25 school year, good for third most in department history. There were a department-record 107 Academic All-Big Ten honorees in the spring as well as 72 in the winter and 69 in the fall.

BIG TEN DISTINGUISHED SCHOLAR NOTABLES
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