<p>i wouldn't say it is impossible to get 3.7+ at top engineering schools. My TA had a 4.0 / 4.0 undergrad at a top engineering school. You just have to work hard and take opportunities.</p>
<p>As long as graduate schools weigh your GPA in correlation to your degree I’ll be happy.</p>
<p>Doing well in engineering is a combination of high IQ (120+) and hardwork. Gotta have both… or be exceedingly high in 1 category :P</p>
<p>IQ is going to be a pretty terrible measurement of success in engineering. a hell of a lot of engineering is working your ass off and dedicating the needed time. there isn’t going to be some magic predictor, it is about really wanting to do the work. i know some very intelligent people who slacked off and got lower GPAs than they should have. if you don’t really want to do the work you aren’t going to do well, and if you really enjoy it you are way more likely to do well.</p>
<p>Are engineering cousin majors the same way?</p>
<p>For example Math or Computer Science? Are GPAs really low there too?</p>
<p>CS department average at UIUC is 2.8. But, CS is under College of Engineering at UIUC.</p>
<p>A medal at IPhO is much harder to achieve than a high IQ (or IQ equivalent) score. I was 50 points shy of acing the SAT (which supposedly correlated with IQ). I am not good enough at physics to even get to IPhO. Nor was I good enough to get to USAMO or IMO…</p>
<p>…yeah, IQ and stuff is sort of worthless.</p>
<p>3.75 is the 85th percentile at UIUC for EE across all 4 years. Probably lower for juniors and seniors (which is when GPA starts to matter).</p>