<p>phuriku,</p>
<p>I think you are wrong in your focus on grades, at least as far as you parse the numbers and the significance of a B. </p>
<p>Just as important as grades (in most cases, more important) are recommendations. As you yourself say, they “mainly care about research” and the quality of the research, as well as research potential, is largely shown through recommendations.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a department cannot be calling 10 students each as being “among the top three students” that year! The math just does not work, even for a non-math major! This alone can account for much of the discrepancy you see in grad school admissions results. </p>
<p>The truth is we really do NOT know what anyone else’s GPA is (has anyone else allowed you to peek at their online info?), even an individual applicant does not know how their recs are, and so forth. So too much of this gets obfuscated in a bit of BS.</p>
<p>If you want a real view of who the U considers the academic stars, look at who was elected PBK junior year. They were selected primarily on GPA and course load difficulty, with heavy weighting to GPA. These kids are the top 2-3% of the students academically. If they were also student marshalls, then you have a good indication of who the U thinks are the overall stars. This is much better than relying on word of mouth comments, given the opportunity for BS or worse.</p>
<p>BTW, it is sad that some posters knock academic stars by calling them “nerds”. But doesn’t that say more about the poster than about the students?</p>