<p>A follow up question: is the G.P.A. you receive in a terminal masters program in the humanities worth anything at all to an admission committee? I feel as though everyone has a 4.0 in graduate school. Actually, while we're at it. How important is a G.P.A. in the humanities to admissions for top programs? Do you have to have a 4.0 undergraduate? Will a 3.7 suffice? What's the deal?</p>
<p>Humanities GPAs tend to be so grade inflated that you need high GPAs for the top programs, as close to 4.0 as possible. Other factors are also important though, such as teacher recommendations and writing samples, so the GPA is not everything.</p>
<p>Sure, the higher the GPA the better, that makes sense. But my Rhetoric GSI, who also got into Yale English, said that if some student shows much promise, GPA is mitigated. He esentially said that is one major factor as to why he was accepted to top grad programs, and that for law, his grades would have resulted in few acceptances. He did come from a if not the top school, but apparently academic potential/promise matters a lot, too.</p>
<p>Very interesting story. Seriously. But do you have any idea what sort of G.P.A. needed mitigating? I know it's not the sort of question one asks when someone volunteers career advice but... maybe you got an idea. I mean did he have a 'bad' 3.8? Or the minimum required 3.5? Or an average 3.2?</p>
<p>Good question. He said he got his education from a specific teaching fellow with whom he went to bars and talked about philosophy. Also, he did a lot of acting. He loved the people which he met, but the classroom wasn't his thing. He liked postmodern stuff in the traditional Lit department and got little support, but he sure can write and speak. He cited a C in chemistry, but I would doubt that he had anything bellow a 3.5 or so. Of course, I have only one bad grade to work with, and his genius, but I have no idea, really. He did get into two amazing and difficult to get into programs, so that means something about something he did. What that is, I don't know.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks guys. I don't know why I'm so obsessed with this problem. I guess having been raised by hippies who really believed 'that grades don't matter,' the idea of being kept out of graduate school by an irresponsible 3.7 just kills me. Anyways, to close out the discussion, the law schools our test case THINKS he wouldn't have gotten into require the following G.P.A. ranges (see below). Now all you have to do if you have a record worse than these is 1) drink with your professors and 2) somehow prove that you are a genius... :)</p>
<p>Statistics: the 25-75th percentiles of the incoming class received: Yale: 3.75 to 3.97, Harvard 3.76 to 3.94, Berkeley: 3.65 to 3.90, and Columbia 3.51 - 3.85.</p>
<p>One final thing. In light of DRab's inspiring story I checked with some friends of mine in similar positions to his GSI and one who got it to really great programs in a humanities discipline said admission told him after the fact that they preferred students with solid As and some Bs. Straight A's in a non-science discipline suggest that you are a brown noser and can't think for yourself. Straight Bs suggest that you are lazy or intransigent or less bright. An A- often suggests that you are a tad lazy and therefore a straight of A-s is also a problem. Finally, this advice applies only to non-science disciplines for undergraduates coming from really good schools. I am not at all sure that the formula works if you are coming from an undergraduate department that is not in the top ten in your area.</p>
<p>Wow, that's an interesting story that I would not have initially thought of on my own.</p>
<p>I talked to profs who did admissions for poli sci at UCLA, and they all said that a GPA is only really a red light, green light sorta thing. Too low, you're out. High enough, it's on to the next, probably more important factor:</p>
<p>The GRE.</p>