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<p>Nor have I, yet I gather that things may be different in some fields. Students aspiring to law, medical or graduate school often say here on CC that GPA is king. In the engineering forum, students say they face a GPA cutoff, sometimes as high as 3.5, to even be considered for some jobs. A real-life acquaintance told me he was rejected from multiple graduate programs in engineering because his undergraduate GPA was “only” 3.4. A family member, considering a midlife career change into nursing, discovered that his undergrad GPA from 20 years earlier would be a barrier.</p>
<p>These are the stories that make me wonder: Is a student really better off to attend a high-ranked college and end up with a GPA well below 3.5? below 3.0? If the school curves most grades to a B-, or even a generous B, the bottom half of the class and even some students in the top half will have grades too low to meet some of the cutoffs.</p>