<p>Certainly C’s at Dartmouth will sink you while A’s at a state school will help a great deal. The question is: what about those students who score in the 3.5 range?</p>
<p>Adding to the complexity is: how well would a student do at each school? Because it’s clearly false (most of the time) that a student’s GPA at Dartmouth will be the same as it would be at Nowhere State. Which would be higher? Lower? How much? These questions are not clear.</p>
<p>Again – failure will doom you no matter where you go, and excelling is your panacea, wherever you go.</p>
<p>The question is: what about the sizeable proportion in between? And I’m not sure there’s a robust answer to this question.</p>