IhateCR

Do they look heavily at leadership experience such as student government, peer advising, etc? If so, how much is enough? I mean, if one is holding three positions (2-3 hours/week/position), s/he probably won't be able to pull a 3.7 with rigorous course work.

Can you guys rank the following in terms of importance?
GPA, course load / rigor, Internship, work experience, and leadership experience.

I heard that as long as your GPA is higher than the cut-off (3.5 to 3.7) your GPA is not important anymore. Is this true?

thanks!

tetrishead

"GPA, course load / rigor, Internship, work experience, and leadership experience."

(1) Work experience
(2) Work experience
(3) Work experience
(4) Work experience
(5) GPA
(6) Course load / rigor
(7) Work experience
(8) Internship
(9) Leadership experience
(10) Work experience

It's always beneficial to have as high a GPA as possible, but people going for the elusive 3.9-4.0 often overwork themselves to a point of being unable to do anything else, or they stock up on easy classes. I'd say 3.25+ is probably a more accurate cut-off point for things in general, but 3.5+ is probably best for the most selective fields. It also has to be taken into account that if you're going into niche fields (a specific engineering subspeciality, for example), companies will understand what your GPA does and does not mean at certain schools, and a low-ish GPA is all but expected.