Average GPA by major at Penn?

feuxfollets
Sat, 19 May 2012 15:49:15 +0000

GPA is not overly important in graduate school admissions, not so much that you need to choose your major around it. The main factors for grad school admissions are good letters of recommendation from professors you’ve worked with (not just taken a class with) and good research experience in college. And to some extent how well you match with the graduate school you’re applying to, in terms of research interests. You should focus on taking classes that interest you (which will probably be in your intended major), getting to know those professors, and doing some independent study with them leading to original research.

Also your undergraduate major should be in the same field or at least a closely related field to what you want to do in grad school. This is because you need to know the material as an undergraduate before going off to grad school, so you’ll probably be taking most of the major classes anyway.

As for sectors you can take psychology courses for living world, and I think there’s a philosophy course that fulfills physical world (philosophy of space & time or something like that).