Am I not qualified for grad school :(

Test Preparation
1

Hey everyone! I’m a senior at a fairly rigorous school (aka Penn/Berkeley/Columbia) and I’ve lost a lot of confidence in my ability since coming here. I’m an economics major and have a 3.6 GPA. I also picked up a few minors. I did extremely poorly in my first semester freshman year and was almost on academic probation because I thought I’d be capable of succeeding in engineering. I received a D in Differential Equations in my freshman year (median grade was a B-). Since then, I’ve gotten 3.7+ each semester.

I recently decided that maybe I should consider applying to Masters programs (or possibly PhD). Unfortunately, I have absolutely no confidence in my ability to get into any decent programs. I thought about enrolling in a Masters programs for accounting (I’ve taken about 6 accounting classes so far), but my grades are fairly abysmal in accounting as well (ex: B+ in Financial Accounting when the median was A-, B in Managerial Accounting when the median was B+, A+ in Intermediate I when the median was A-, A- in Intermediate II when the median was A).

I have yet to take the GRE, but I think I should do OK on it. Am I not qualified for schools with decent Masters programs?

2

Getting a 3.6 at a school like Berkeley is quite good. It’s hard to tell how competitive you are without knowing your extracurricular activities. I’d say you are qualified for okay graduate schools as long as you’re certain of the reason for applying. For accounting graduate schools, I’m not sure what they really want from applicants. If you want to be a CPA, I’d say screw the graduate school. If you want to go into management, I’d say grad school is a better option.