<p>
One does not need a 4.0 GPA to go to grad school, and many persons who finish their undergrad with with a quality GPA do not choose to apply to grad school. At the vast majority of colleges, far more than 10% of graduating seniors are capable of getting accepted to a graduate program. At some LACs, such as Reed and Swarthmore, roughly half of students pursue advanced degrees after completing their undergrad.</p>
<p>Grad school, yes. Grad school in the subject, no. Most English - or, I would assume, history or philosophy - majors have no interest in getting PhDs in their field, including some who would be fully capably of getting into doctoral programs. Many of them will wind up in other graduate programs, especially law school. But if you are one of the relatively small number intending to go for a PhD in English, you had better be among the best in the department if you want to get into a funded program. </p>
<p>Not that this always correlates with the best average - someone could be a particularly inconsistent writer whose best work reflects greater scholarly potential than that of classmates with higher GPAs - but I’d be willing to bet that most PhD students in the humanities were pretty solid A students in their field by junior year of college.</p>
<p>Consider Reed as an example. Over the 2000-2010 period, 50-60% of graduating seniors pursued advanced degrees. ~20% of students pursued PhDs. Their ranking in PhD production for English seems similar to other departments, so I wouldn’t expect drastically different numbers for the English department. Were the 50-60% who pursued grad degrees all among the best in the department? Or the 20% who pursued PhDs? GradeInflation reports that the average GPA among all students was 3.14, implying that a lot of B students pursued graduated degrees. Sure, having a top GPA is helpful in getting accepted to the most selective graduate programs, but there are many grad programs besides the most selective ones.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That happened to a family member. She went to Toronto with an 85% average (A/A-) from high school. Then she decided to apply for a spot in the Rotman School by taking pre-requisite courses (weeders) required for continuation.</p>
<p>She made the cut, but the weeding did not stop until the number of students in those classes were reduced from a thousand to 2 hundred, the number of spots available in the program.</p>
<p>Since we are the first generation attending college, we did not even suspect a problem until she wrote the LSAT and scored a 42 (I believe the old LSAT was out of 48?) which seemed to be out of whack with her GPA of 2.9. It was not until we see successful applicants getting in with LSAT scores of 36 and GPA of 3.5 that we realized her mistake. She should never have gone to a hard school and never should have applied to a limited enrollment program.</p>