<p>I am a senior at UVA majoring in political science. I'm applying for a Masters in Public Administration. I have not taken the GRE yet, but plan to in the coming weeks. My GPA is a 2.5, but I have a solid recommendation letters, internship experience, and good essays. Here are the schools I'm applying to:</p>
<p>Virginia Tech
James Madison
George Mason
Virginia Commonwealth University</p>
<p>(They're all in state schools)</p>
<p>If you help me, I'll help you.</p>
<p>Help with what? I would look at the GPA requirements for all of these schools; most graduate programs have a minimum GPA requirement of 3.0 for admission to graduate school; they will often remark that this is a minimum and GPAs need to be much higher to be competitive. Just doing a quick Google shows VT’s minimum for CPAP to be 3.0. Is it impossible to get in - no. Probable - I doubt it. </p>
<p>Unless of course your GPA took an upward trend, and you’re well above the minimum in your final semesters of work (last 60 units attempted).</p>
<p>A story from a Ph.D student I talked to here:</p>
<p>2.5-2.6 GPA from Ohio Dominican University, applied to University of Georgia MPA program and was admitted on a provisional basis and she ended up graduating with a very high GPA and getting a fully funded doctoral program at UW.</p>
<p>So it is possible, just make sure you stress the reasons why your scholarship and focus is higher now.</p>
<p>@ XafiFM, that’s really encouraging to hear that person got accepted to UGA. I hope going to UVA, the admissions staff will look at the school’s credibility and that its a ranked institution. I’m worried because I’m only applying to 4 schools (I can only afford in state) for graduate study.</p>
<p>@ANds, I’ll help you if you have any posts on the forum that need answering. The schools I listed require a 3.0.</p>
<p>I would contact admissions staff immediately to see if provisional appointments are possible; there are a number of ways a person can offset a low GPA, but I would wager that a GPA that is half a point below the cut-off point might not even give you the chance to explain yourself, regardless of you possessing a compelling argument. I would guess that there are other circumstances regarding this UGA admission, especially if this is a highly regarded (re: competitive) program. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, these programs need to know that you can master the material at a minimum B level, if your academics - especially the academics in your last two years or coursework don’t show this, then its going to make them admitting you that much more difficult.</p>
<p>bump. chance me into getting in these programs.</p>
<p>With an MPA program, you often need some years of experience. If you had a 2.5 + 10 years of experience in public service, the 2.5 would be overlooked. But a 2.5 coming right out of high school? Most programs will tell you to go work for a while.</p>
<p>But as has been said here often - no one can “chance” you for graduate programs. Actually, no one can really “chance you” for undergrad programs, either, but the people over in the college forums are more inclined to participate in the wild guessing that goes on there, and there’s a little bit more of a formula involved for undergrad admissions. For graduate admissions, nobody knows - even people who are on the admissions committee couldn’t tell you unless they saw all the applicants laid out, because it’s a matter of you competing against this year’s applicants. So the best thing to do is just go ahead, apply, and see what happens.</p>