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</p>
<p>The question is how high that point is, and whether the high grades people seem to have are merely a function of drive, so that people with top publications are also often people with strong grades. For instance I would wager once one is above 3.5 the publications matter most. I think if the publications were great and the GPA were low, then an explanation would be required, because it really should not be that bad to get mostly A’s and high B’s if one is publishing such stuff. A possible explanation could be a narrow undergrad focus on certain topics, and weakness in
others. A PhD program would then decide how much it cares, depending
on whether it has evidence the candidate would pass basic reqs like
Prelims.</p>
<p>@Sakky, in some fields publications tend not to be meaningful,
particularly ones where enormous breadth of understanding is important
to success. A simple, quite good piece of writing demonstrates the ability to generate, but a PhD program is also about generating in the long
term, and producing something meshing together lots of intuition
depending on the field. I suspect perhaps a field like CS is less like this
in some ways, which is why publications are more common in the undergrad years. A very theoretical field with a ridiculously lengthy history tends to be different. I think there, professor recommendations tend to be most important, beyond having a strong profile in terms of
mastering the important courses, since the professors have enough
experience to comment intelligently on what traits the student has,
beyond being able to solve hard problems from class, relevant to
research success.</p>
<p>On the other hand, in other disciplines conceivably the scenario you posted is more likely.</p>