<p>@ sakky: How many people do you know that got into top graduate programs with a GPA in the low 3’s? </p>
<p>For example, at Berkeley itself, a 3.5 is needed to even apply for the 5th year masters in EECS. </p>
<p>Point is, in research you can do what your adviser tells you to do and possibly get a paper out of it, or you can be a go-getter and make your own publication. I think if you have a suspect GPA they assume the former. </p>
<p>And lets face it, professors recommendations, while important, can be inaccurate because the professors are often preoccupied with other things. </p>
<p>So really the only “hard” thing in a graduate application is the GPA, everything else is “soft” stuff.</p>