<p>No, the average GPA in engineering is not lower when you look at the better students. Those cutoffs for honors in the link I posted are based on the top 3%, 10% and 20% of students who have a major in that college. Many people come into Cal believing it is harder than other schools, and maybe it is harder to get a B, but if you’re looking at As I don’t think Cal is more difficult than other institutions of the same caliber. People just like to think that their GPA is better than it actually is.</p>
<p>On the topic of the Medal, they need to filter out candidates somehow. Again, the link I posted shows that for all colleges except Environmental Design, a 3.93 GPA is around the cutoff for the top 3%. I’m guessing that 3.96 brings that down to the top 1% or so. I imagine that the selection process is pretty rigorous and with over 5,000 students in the graduating class, even paring that number down to the top 50 students still requires a lot of work to go through carefully. Regardless, 3.96 still permits for mistakes – more often than not, the medalist was not a 4.0 student…</p>