GPA & Future Prospects...

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>I've been a follower of this forum for years but never made an account or posted anything.</p>

<p>But here it goes:</p>

<p>I'm currently a senior. Peers in the same major already know what they want to do from now on out (Grad school, industry, researcher etc) and most of them have already taken GRE or at least looked at and know what majors they are applying for Grad School.</p>

<p>Me, I am at a total loss. With my GPA, I don't know if I'll even get accepted to any Grad sch programs. 2nd and 3rd year classes were just hard and with many students dropping out of the major because they can't take it (you can probably guess which major this is, it's sort of well-known for its high drop out), I guess I fell to the bottom of the batch. I could've done better for those classes if I didn't take them altogether but it's just not going to work by taking them separately.</p>

<p>Because of my 2nd and 3rd year grades, GPA (science GPA is even worse) was really bad (Breadth classes pulled up a little but it's still major classes people are looking at) and my initial plan of getting a research job on campus during 3rd year didn't work at all (i didn't even bother trying because i know i can't compete with others with the GPA of mine).</p>

<p>So while my peers already have a campus research job on their resume and a decent looking GPA, I have like nothing. </p>

<p>Or should I just way lower my standards and apply to State U grad schs? Getting a job doesn't seem optimistic either since I don't have this detailed "undergrad experience- what I've done" to talk about.</p>

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<p>Go to Grad School, if that’s what you want to do. Later in life, nobody is going to ask or care what your grades were as an undergraduate. </p>

<p>The great news for you is if you were at CAL you’ll have plenty of opportunities for grad school even if they are not the most prestigious options.</p>

<p>We know a girl who went to Harvard. She obviously was a good enough student to do the work there but did relatively poorly and ended up with a 2.8 GPA.</p>

<p>She wanted to go to become a lawyer and even with her 2.8 GPA was able to get a scholarship of free tuition at a decent enough law school.</p>

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<p>^ howd she find the scholarship?</p>

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<p>Don’t know the actual process of how she found it but if I had to guess she emailed the admissions office. </p>

<p>Put yourself in the shoes of a less than first tier law or grad school. They can benefit from telling prospective applicants (full paying ones!) that someone from Harvard or Berkeley is enrolled.</p>

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<p>May I ask :“What major is it?”</p>

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<p>May I ask what your GPA is? You ARE anonymous</p>

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<p>I think going to Harvard is a lot more prestigious than going to Berkeley. Just super saiyan’</p>

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<p>I thought the major is pretty obvious. Hint: My major’s average GPA is 3.2 but that’s not to say that come graduation, there are people who graduate with Honors in 3.9s and the Honor cut off is ~3.7s. Graduation may be the biggest humiliation. Sigh.</p>

<p>Harvard is so prestigious that I think any universities will be willing to accept even Harvard dropouts (and again Harvard dropouts aren’t even failures to start with). </p>

<p>During high school, it was applying to first-tiered schools and not even looking at anything below ranking 25. Now, I guess I need to start looking at schools from the bottom…</p>

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<p>[Top</a> 400 - The Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2011-2012](<a href=“http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2011-2012/top-400.html]Top”>World University Rankings 2011-12 | Times Higher Education (THE))</p>

<h1>10 top University is the World is indicative of how Cal is viewed. Yeah, it’s not Harvard. I’ve gone to college both in the U.S. and in Europe, and Berkeley is as well known as Harvard.</h1>

<p>Be proud of your 3.2 GPA from Berkeley.</p>

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<p>Just tell me what your major is mannnnnnnnnn. The suspense is killing me.</p>

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<p>how is a 3.2 in a cut throat major like that bad? you do realize there are several majors with a median gpa of somewhere in the 2s…</p>

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<p>^^ I don’t think any are that low. Which ones are you thinking of?</p>

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<p>can’t remember but what i do recall is that math is 3.0 i think. i think a few of the sciences were in the 2s…</p>

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<p>I vaguely remember there’s a site that posts the statistics of average graduating gpa by major. But can’t seem to find it now? MCB was like 3.6 or something. And BioE was like 3.3 (I believe freshmen year some BioE student was stressing out cos COE kick them out if their gpa falls under 3.2 or something)? Those were the only ones I remember.</p>

<p>You know you are in a bad situation when your GPA is lower than the major’s average. Yes, lower than 3.0 at this point (close, but still start with the number 2) but I’m trying to get it back to at least 3.0. I only have these many classes to take before graduating so I’m not sure how useful 8 classes (entire senior year) will be in pulling it back up to a 3.0.</p>

<p>Also, will choosing P/NP pull up GPA? Like passing a P/NP class will be a 4.0 or?</p>

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<p>You’re a senior and you’re asking if P/NP will pull up your GPA?</p>

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<p>Yes. Believe it or not, this is probably my first time P/NP-ing a class. Previous years classes were almost all major required classes which I can’t P/NP. I only had to do minimal elective classes for my major (majority are the major required classes that killed me…) and those I took had no reason to P/NP them.</p>

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<p>My guess is EECS</p>

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<p>Maybe not…You don’t really need to be worrying about research experience or grad school as an EECS major… It sounds more like a science or liberal arts major.</p>

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<p>I don’t think a liberal arts major can ‘go into industry’</p>

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<p>I’m afraid that unless there are extensive extenuating circumstances - such as perhaps her striking a cracker-jack LSAT score or perhaps being a URM -, or an expansive definition of the term ‘decent enough law school’, I’m afraid I have to call BS on this claim. Law school adcoms are absolutely notorious for their GPA-centric nature with little regard for the brand of your degree. It is for this reason that prospective prelaws are advised against choosing prestigious but difficult schools such as MIT or Caltech. It’s difficult to imagine anybody with a 2.8 GPA being admitted to any law school that most of us would consider ‘decent’, let alone obtaining a full-tuition scholarship, even coming from Harvard.</p>

<p>As a case in point, I’m sure that we would agree that while Stanford may not be prestigious as Harvard, it’s not far off, and is certainly more prestigious than Berkeley (darn it). Yet the fact is of the 7 Stanford prelaws who applied to Chapman University School of Law - which is not even ranked in the top 100 of all law schools in the country - 3 applicants, or nearly half of all that applied, were rejected. Forget about obtaining a full-tuition scholarship from Chapman, they weren’t even admitted at all.</p>

<p>Or consider the Stanford prelaws who applied to the University of Pacific (McGeorge) School of Law, which is barely ranked in the top 100 (ranked exactly #100 according to USNews). Of the 8 who applied, 3 - or a full 37.5% - were rejected. Nor did the rejectees have terrible GPA’s. The average Stanford applicant to Pacific had a 3.14 GPA, and the average admittee had a 3.05 GPA, which means that the average rejectee must have had somewhere around a 3.2 GPA. {Yes, the average rejectee from Pacific actually had a higher GPA than did the average admittee, but that’s probably because the average rejectee also had a clearly lower LSAT than did the average admittee. For most other law schools, you observe the expected trend of admittees having higher GPA’s than rejectees.} </p>

<p>Let’s also consider the University of San Francisco School of Law - tied for #100 with Pacific according to USNews. Of the 23 Stanford prelaws who applied, 5 were actually rejected, and those 5 sported GPA’s around 3.2. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/group/SPLS/documents/AdmitRatesMay08.pdf[/url]”>http://www.stanford.edu/group/SPLS/documents/AdmitRatesMay08.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Instead of putting ourselves in their shoes, we can simply look at the data itself and find that whatever charms a Berkeley graduate may bring seem to be lost on most law school adcoms, even at lower-tier law schools. </p>

<p>I think we can all agree that Golden Gate Law School is a lower-tier law school. Yet from 2005-2010, 126 Berkeley prelaws were reported to have applied to Golden Gate, of which 61 - or almost half - were rejected. Even the ones who were admitted sported respectable GPA’s generally ranging from 3.3-3.55 on a year-averaged basis. </p>

<p>Or consider the aforementioned University of the Pacific (McGeorge) School of Law. Of the 127 Berkeley prelaws who reportedly applied there from 2005-2010, 54 of them, or about 43%, were rejected. And those who applied generally had year-averaged GPA’s ranging from 3.25 to 3.65. </p>

<p><a href=“https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm[/url]”>https://career.berkeley.edu/Law/LawStats.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>So if it is true that lower-tier law schools would benefit from having more full-paying Berkeley or even Stanford prelaws (and by extension, Harvard prelaws as well), then somebody apparently forgot to send a memo to the law school adcoms at Golden Gate, Pacific, Chapman and the University of San Francisco, because they keep rejecting a significant percentage of Stanford and Berkeley prelaws. </p>

<p>While I’m therefore highly skeptical of the claim that somebody with a 2.8 GPA from Harvard can land a full tuition scholarship at a decent law school without exceptional mitigating factors (i.e. crushing the LSAT) given the above discussion, I always welcome more evidence. So if you can present some data to support your claim about exactly which law school did she attend, what she did to win admission, then I’m all ears.</p>