<p>tl;dr : If you’re planning on going to grad school from the start, you probably won’t have too much difficulty going where you want. </p>
<p>I didn’t apply to grad school and I have no official stats so, uhh … take this with a grain of salt. </p>
<p>That grad school document is written by the current department chair and he has access to actual statistics and knows basically everyone in the department, so I’d say it’s fairly accurate. You’ll need that 3.7 GPA unless you have fantastic research experience.</p>
<p>As for whether getting a 3.7 GPA is difficult … it all depends on how you look at it. I was your typical Mudd admit,academically - 3.98 GPA/top 1% of class, 9 AP classes + Multi-V calculus going in. At Mudd, both my overall and CS major GPA hover around 3.0. So from the perspective of random people who knew me from home, getting a 3.7 at Mudd looks pretty dang impossible. HOWEVER, there’s more to this story: My grades are really not that important to me, and I’ve never seriously considered going to grad school. I’m ridiculously distractable and am frequently up until 3am for no particularly good reason (“working on homework” but actually talking with friends, reading random articles and playing flash games). From this perspective, wellllll…it’s pretty clear why my GPA isn’t so great : it’s not a priority. Also, the required CS classes have the typical painful Mudd lack-of-grade-inflation thing going on, but in my experience this is not the case for the upper division CS electives. So if you know you’re going to be a CS major as a freshman, you’ll have more time to take electives which has a double benefit : (a) they look more interesting on a transcript/resume and (b) it’s actually easier to get an A.</p>
<p>To expand the scope a little bit beyond myself: I know 3 people who were admitted to CMU this year. Each of them had at least 2 summers of research experience (and some during the year too, I think) and I wouldn’t be surprised if they had 3.7+ GPAs because they’re all pretty bright and seem to usually pride themselves in taking the time to turn in quality assignments (I’ve graded for classes they were in). That said, it’s not like they don’t have lives. I don’t want to out them by listing specifics, but they all work and are each involved in at least one high-commitment club. </p>
<p>If those 3 were the only ones admitted to CMU-level programs, then that would be 3/~30 people in the class, so top 10% of the class. If you only include those who applied to grad school, then more like 3/15, so top 20%ish. That sounds pretty scary, considering that this is Mudd. However, you need to consider that a lot of the rest of the class just isn’t interested in going to grad school (like myself), or even producing work above the level needed to graduate (errr…like myself during this semester…so sad…). I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’re admitted to Mudd and you already have your heart set on grad school, then you probably won’t have much trouble getting into the grad school of your choice.</p>