<p>What do you mean when you say, "a quota will usually be about 80-90% right on for grades."?</p>
<p>Does anyone know if there is any info on the average GPA for pol sci majors?</p>
<p>Information about GPA is rarely as specific as that. Some study at Berkeley a year or a few years ago said that the average GPA of a humanities major was . . . a 3.25 or a 3.5 or something. I forget. A poli sci graduate student was on another thread talking about what he found grade breakdowns to be.</p>
<p>Do you have a guess as to what the average GPA for pol sci is? Is it close to the average humanities major's GPA, that you listed above?</p>
<p>Hmm. From stuff prior to January, 2005.</p>
<p>
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n the late 1950's, the average cumulative GPA for Berkeley undergraduates was 2.50 and has increased to approximately 3.25. A significant increase in the GPA occurred during the Vietnam War when students received a draft deferment if they remained in good academic standing.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It's possible that the average humanities grades are above this, or the average humanities and social science grades. I would guess it's somewhere a few points above 3.25, but the exact number would be a guess from almost anybody.</p>
<p>I was a poli. sci. major at Cal and I did not feel that the major was hard to declare. The department is super lax about admitting people in. But this is totally not contradictory to the notion that the poli. sci. department is one of the best in the nation. If you compare the breadth of Cal's p.s. courses to those of other universities, you quickly get a sense of why its so highly regarded. There are classes covering almost everything and anything you want to learn in poli.sci. If I remember correctly, the course offerings are so deep that the department has sub-specialties such as political theory. Class difficulty depends on which sub-speciality you want to focus on. Some of my easiest classes were p.s. classes. But some of the political theory classes were freakin insane. On top of that, I distinctly remember taking some p.s. courses taught by law professors (const. law and politics, I think..).</p>
<p>Graduated 31, What would you say is the easiest "sub-specialty" of poli sci?
Thanks</p>
<p>When I went to Cal (10yrs ago), the toughest subfields were international relations and political theory/philosophy. The IR subfield is filled with State Dept. wannabees and budding lawyers, so its pretty competitive. Political theory is filled with Locke and Hobbes wannabees who sit around and analyze a book to death, which also makes for a headache. Comparative politics is average, and Area Studies is somewhat easier depending on the region you focus on. The easiest was public organization and local politics. Pretty boring stuff, but if you're into the nuts and bolts of state and local politics, its a pretty easy subfield.</p>
<p>"The IR subfield is filled with State Dept. wannabees and budding lawyers,"</p>
<p>Haha, that's me. I was planning on spec. my graduate degrees in IR.</p>