Hello, this has been a pressing question on my mind and would like some advice. I’m not sure how much GPA matters for getting into Harvard/Stanford in comparison to other things, such as research experience.
I’m also wondering if any of you could have some specific insight for someone like me, who has research experience but typically gets an equal amount of A’s and B’s.
A little about me:
-I’m a biochemistry major(junior) at UCSB’s college of creative studies, a “graduate school for undergraduates”. There’s no program in the world like it, as far as I’m aware.
-Transferred here from community college where my GPA was 3.5.
-Worked full time in a biochemistry lab over the summer, where I completed my own research project.
-I have presented my research poster many times and have given talks at small seminars. I even presented my poster that the SACNAS national conference.
-Currently working in a new biochemistry lab here at UCSB and may even get a publication before I leave.
-I have awesome and enthusiastic recommenders from people I’ve done research with.
-My statement of purpose is good, going off of what others have told me. I spoke to someone from the selection committee of the internship I did and he said my SOP was one of the strongest he’s seen.
-All of my experience is focused into my field as opposed to being ‘well-rounded’ among other fields.
-I’m the first of my family to go to college, and the first to graduate high school.
-Am currently struggling with the quarter system here, I’m not the most stellar test taker so I’m finding it difficult to show what I know. Which is why I’m concerned about GPA.
What’s ahead, before I apply:
-Will be taking graduate level classes in place of my electives. CCS students are the only students at UCSB that are allowed to do that.
-Am applying for summer internships, my #1 choice is an internship at Stanford and am hoping a letter of rec from someone at Stanford will give me an edge for getting in.
-I have a secured place in my lab for the rest of my time here at UCSB.
Your research will really help. But GPA is important – honestly, if you can’t “show what you know”, how do they know you know it? But I don’t know why you are set in an Ivy for grad school, either. You might look at the gradcafe website for more insight.
GPA matters a lot. It’s one of the more important parts of your application. Although the focus of graduate school is the research, you still have to get through 2-3 years of coursework, and if you can’t successfully handle the classes alongside the research and teaching - all at the same time - you won’t make it to exams and dissertation. Also, in order to conduct independent research you need a strong foundation in the principles of your field. So professors are understandably concerned with your academic performance.
What is your current GPA? You don’t say in the post, although you said your CC GPA was 3.5. That makes me think that your current one is less than that. If you have around a 3.2-3.4 but an otherwise really outstanding application, you can still be competitive, especially if you take a few years off after college and work as a research assistant or do a special bridge research program.
This is my first quarter here, so grades aren’t even out yet. I’ve made quite a few dings here and there trying to adjust to the quarter system. I’m not sure if grad schools will be understanding of that or if they expect us to be exceptional all the way through.
You mentioned Harvard/Stanford (BTW, Stanford does not belong to Ivy League). Schools like these have plenty of candidates who are “exceptional all the way through.” They don’t need to be “understanding.”
On a blog of an EE/CS professor at UC Berkeley, he wrote that it was rare that they admitted candidates with GPA lower than 3.5.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible. It’s possible, but rare. With low GPA, you have to make up for it somehow.
Note that many schools (I know UCB does) require PhD students to maintain a GPA of at least 3.5.
Also, the only reason to be focused on “Ivy Leagues” for grad school is b/c you want the name your friends and family know. For a PhD, an “Ivy League” may not be either the top-ranked program nor the program that aligns best with your actual research interest. The criteria for choosing a PhD program are different than for choosing an undergrad.
A GPA of less than 3.2 overall is likely to be an obstacle to getting into a funded PhD program (remember that it’s not just getting admitted- it’s getting admitted with funding). But: you are talking about 1 quarter.
One thing about the internship you are applying for at Stanford: a direct reference from somebody the person knows (or whose work they know) can obviously be very helpful, but how closely your skill set fits their lab requirements will matter more (eg, if you are doing laser spectroscopy now, and the Stanford group you are applying to is working on protein aggregation) simply b/c you are more likely to be immediately useful.
This only gets more true as time goes on, so apply for things where you really are interested in the work itself (or it fills an important gap in your overall portfolio, esp computational work).
3.5 is generally a good benchmark for most programs. Do consider that graduate and undergraduate rankings are different. Just because a school is good for one does not mean it is necessarily good for the other regardless of the name.
They don’t need to be, but they often are. I went to Columbia for my PhD with a 3.42 GPA from undergrad.
Graduate programs in general are interested in finding the best students for their particular field of study and pursuit, and that doesn’t always mean the student with the highest GPA. Obviously, high GPAs are very important - there is a sort of minimum threshold, although it varies a lot from program to program, and having a higher GPA helps you hedge your bets and raise your chances of getting in somewhere.
But depending on the program, other factors may be more important and more predictive of success than GPA, in which case the program may balance those against GPA. Like let’s say we’ve got a candidate who’s applying for a PhD program in biology; she had a 3.4 GPA from undergrad, but she’s done research since sophomore year, has two summer REUs under her belt, and she took a year between college and grad school to do an NIH IRTA fellowship in research. A program may take her anyway, because the most important thing in a PhD program is research, and a 3.4 is not so low as to raise doubts about her ability to handle graduate cousework. (All the better if her 3.4 could be explained by one low semester in which she was sick or had a death in the family. But that’s not strictly necessary.)
On the other hand, a person could have a perfect 4.0 GPA, but if they just started doing research in the first semester of their senior year they are unlikely to get admitted to that PhD program. They simply don’t have enough experience to be useful as a grad student OR to prove that they are passionate enough about research to persist in grad school.
So - the more exceptional you are, the better, but programs are not necessarily expecting perfection and they can and often are understanding of challenges IF you are an otherwise outstanding candidate that they don’t want to miss out on. So make yourself otherwise irresistible.
