<p>Applicants from top undergrad schools get accepted with a lower gpa while applicants from lower ranked engineering schools get accepted with a higher gpa. It's kind of hard to word it, but my question basically is would a gpa in the 3.7-3.9 range from a lower ranked school be comparable to a gpa 3.4-3.6 from a higher ranked school?</p>
<p>I’m all for making sweeping generalizations, however here it’s tough.</p>
<p>IMO, lower ranked does not necessarily mean a worse education as far as engineering is concerned. Also, the quality of engineer isn’t always directly related to their gpa. </p>
<p>I see two philosophies taught by engineering schools; one teaches theory and the other application. Theory v. Practicallity. Theory type schools I think tend to rank higher, but they also tend to suffer from grade inflation. Maybe this is because the metrics for the rankings are based on job placement and student satisfaction, both which will be affected by what type of grades the student gets.</p>
<p>Thus, I guess I would say one leads the other into a self-fullfilling prophecy, and never really gets to the point of quality. If I’m hiring I generally base my preconceived opinions based on the particular school in mind as well as gpa. If I’m admitting to grad school I don’t think I would necessarily consider the school as much as the student, gpa, and gre scores.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is generally higher at schools with higher initial selectivity, though there are exceptions.</p>
<p>As far as theory versus application goes, a good engineering school will teach enough of both so that at student can learn what is needed to become effective at engineering, though there may be some variation from school to school, of course.</p>
<p>If you want to try to compare GPAs between schools the best you’re going to do is comparing ACT scores to GPAs at each. So if school A has the mid 50% ACT at 29-33 and mid 50% GPA at 2.8-3.4 and school B has mid 50% ACT at 27-31 and mid 50% GPA at 2.5-3.1, then I’d say the GPA at school A and school B are about equivalent.</p>
<p>Japher, which is better–theory or application? Are any schools considered to be a blend of both?</p>
<p>Of the top engineering schools, which are more theory and which are application?</p>
<p>What do you mean by “get accepted”? Masters? PhD?</p>
<p>One professor at CMU said about GPAs in CS:</p>
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<p>the answers in this thread have really confused me. I’m comparing undergraduate gpas not high school gpas. I mean a 3.5 from caltech would be worth more than a 3.5 from a state university. So what state university could generally be equivalent to that 3.5 caltech gpa? There’s an example</p>
<p>I’m not sure if your confusion was from my post or not but if you were then I’ll try to clarify what I was saying.</p>
<p>The ACT range is the ACT range of incoming freshmen. This is the best way to quantify the selectivity of a school in a single number. </p>
<p>The GPA range can be of any group. Likely what you’ll find are GPA range of all current students, but you might find the GPA range of all graduating students. As long as you’re comparing the same thing between two schools, it should work.</p>
<p>Apparently a 3.5 at Caltech is 65th percentile, which as best I can tell corresponds to an SAT of about 2300. If you were to compare to Michigan (Engineering) for instance, a 2300 SAT would be about 85th percentile, which is about a 3.6. So I would say a 3.5 at Caltech is equivalent to a 3.6 at Michigan (Engineering only).</p>
<p>This has an obvious flaw, in that most Michigan students don’t take the SAT. I choose SAT over ACT in this case because the mid 50% range for ACT at Caltech is 34-35, which is hard to work with. </p>
<p>Either way, that’s the type of analysis I’d try to do if you are trying to compare GPAs between schools.</p>
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<p>You’re not getting clear answers because you haven’t asked your question clearly enough. When you say ‘worth more than,’ who are you considering? Employers? Grad schools? If grad schools, do you mean master’s programs or PhD programs? Or do you mean professional schools like law, business, med?</p>
<p>its for applying for top engineering phd programs</p>
<p>It’s particularly helpful to go to a highly ranked undergrad university for admission to PhD programs in engineering, because your research is likely to be more cutting edge and your professors’ letters of recommendations are more impressive/meaningful. </p>
<p>Also, PhD programs are extremely theoretical, and therefore I would say that theory is more important than application in this case.</p>
<p>If you’re trying to get a job outside of academia, though, applications are probably more useful.</p>
<p>I heard multiple views on that singh. Many have said that students in phd programs come from all across the the institutions in the US&other countries, not only from prestigious undergrad institutions. THey said if you’re at a lower ranked institution and if you excel with good gpa 3.7+, good gres, good LORS, and research experience you have many chances of getting into top 10 schools.</p>
<p>^ of course that’s true. But that doesn’t disprove that students at higher-ranked schools are more likely to get in. PhD admissions committees are not shy about saying that undergrad reputation, especially departmental prestige, has a role. For example, Harvard says in its grad engineering FAQ:</p>
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<p>Or Johns Hopkins CS:</p>
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<p>This sort of frank statement is common among grad schools.</p>