<p>I'm planning to major in Biomedical Engineering in college. Once I graduate from college, I'll probably work in the field from between 3-5 years. However, I have heard that Engineering majors at some universities suffer from low GPAs (low 3s to high 2s). Will a low GPA impact one's chances at being accepted by a top 20 business school?</p>
<p>Any input is greatly appreciated. :)</p>
<p>From what I read on the rest of this forum, most definitely yes. I believe you need at least above a 3.5 to get into a top 20 B-school.</p>
<p>Nah, you don't need at least a 3.5. Just pick up your copy of USNews and you will see that even HBS's average gpa for the entering class was only a 3.6, and HBS had the highest average gpa of all the B-schools. Only a small handful of the top B-schools have average entering gpa's above 3.5. And remember, we're only talking about averages. Plenty of people got into HBS with GPA's substantially below a 3.5.</p>
<p>But just because B-schools bring in lots of students with not-so-impressive grades doesn't mean that they're easy to get in. In fact, the top 5-10 B-schools are extremely difficult to get into. Just look at the admissions percentages for those top schools and you will see for yourself what I mean. It just means that the admissions process is not heavily focused on undergraduate grades. Far and away the most important thing you need to get into B-school is strong real-world experience, usually (but not always) as it has to do with your job, as well as the accompanying other factors that strong experience should provide, like stellar rec's and strong essay answers. B-schools reject plenty of people with straight A's but that don't have strong experience. </p>
<p>And that is as it should be. The fact is, the great bulk of B-school classes are taught as open-discussion forums, where the prof may say very little at all and it's the students who do much of the talking about what they've seen in their experiences, how do they think they would handle certain business situations, etc. Basically, you are learning from the experiences of the other students. If you have no real-world experience, then you have very little to contribute.</p>