<p>Cue7, for the record, Chicago has “quarters”, not “trimesters”. An interesting quote from answers.com:
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<p>A 3.7 by the end of jr year would hardly remove you from Marshall or Rhodes competition. Cue7 just has no knowledge. The Rhodes folks especially love good stories. Just google Aaron Polhamous to see what I mean. He started with a community college degree. </p>
<p>The truth is though that top national fellowships (Rhodes, Marshall, Truman etc. ) depend on a lot more than just GPA. If you want to learn more, there’s lots of information online.</p>
<p>PBK decisions are made locally. Membership typically is limited to the top 10% of the class by GPA. In theory, they consider more than GPA. In practice, I don’t know. They have more than one selection period - the “stars” are selected the end of junior year, and being selected as a junior means the U considers you to be on track for top things when you graduate. There are other “markers” that let you know the U is “grooming” you for top competitive postgrad scholarships and fellowships, such as being selected Junior Marshall (there are others). </p>
<p>Indeed, the real success in the post graduate competitions, be it Rhodes, Fulbright, fellowship for grad school, jobs and just about everything else is to (1) do very well in your course work of course, but more importantly (2) get to know faculty, who write the recs, nominate and go to bat for you for great things like Student Marshall and serve as mentors and (3) get to know your advisor, who can also open doors you don’t know exist. </p>
<p>Ultimately, what separates the star grads from the high GPA grads are contacts and accomplishments. An accomplishment can be a paper so well written that the faculty reader suggest you publish it, a project so well done that the faculty member is wowed and so forth. That is where you get your bonus points, and that is where you make folks forget about a weak 1st quarter (which already seems so long ago, doesn’t it?)</p>