<p>This comes up so many times that there should be a FAQ on this.</p>
<p>You need to distinguish between professional school – med school and law school – and graduate school – PhD programs.</p>
<p>The former (especially Med school) are very wedded to minimum GPAs. If you get past the initial screens, your GPA may be taken more seriously over other schools. But if you have say, a 3.0, you’re likely to get rejected by most med schools even with perfect MCATs. Law school is a little less so, but still a problem. </p>
<p>The greatest discounting of GPAs is seen in applications to PhD programs. For these, letters of recommendation from good people, plus work on research as an undergrad really matter. It is here that Caltech profs really make a difference. They can get people into grad schools with GPAs that would be unacceptable from most other schools. When I was in charge of our PhD admissions we looked harder at Tech applicants even with weak GPAs. The deciding factor is what professors said about the students and why they did poorly. Med schools won’t give you this chance.</p>
<p>In general a high GPA from Tech will impress people even in comparison to most schools. But a low GPA will be a disadvantage but not always crippling.</p>