How Hard is it to receive all A’s at UPenn? If you put in the time and energy to thoroughly study, is it possible to receive all A’s? I need to maintain high marks and don’t know if it is generally feasible here.
While doable, very few students graduate with a 4.0 from Penn, so it’s very difficult to achieve. If you feel the need to receive all A’s, then I don’t think Penn (or any Ivy) would be the right school for you.
@EarlyAction2020 No matter what you are studying it is rather uncommon for people to graduate with an actual 4.0 . Now depending specifically on your major, it ranges fro practically impossible to kind of doable.
There are some ivies with big time grade inflation (Harvard, Brown, Yale a bit). Penn is not one of them.
Wharton makes it easier, Engineering makes it harder.
My spouse graduated cum laude from Engineering, which was no small feat, 3.4 GPA. Summa cum laude is 3.8 GPA.
If you truly want a 4.0, work really really hard (at least 12 hours per week outside of each class time), and retake anything that wasn’t an A.
But please, oh please, don’t harass your professors after you get your grade. It won’t help.
Phi Beta Kappa list, note how few compared to how many people go to Penn:
https://www.college.upenn.edu/honors-awards/academic-recognition/phi-beta-kappa/2015-phi-beta-kappa-recipients
LOL if you want a 4.0 then Penn isn’t the right place for you!
How feasible is a 3.8?
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Can’t you put the A game to rest and get a good education? I would think that would be a better use of tuition dollars.
@CardinalSin2020 I can’t speak for every academic program here, but if you work hard, 3.8 is definitely doable. I think somewhere between 10-20% of Wharton students have a 3.8+ (not 100% certain; basically I believe cutoff for Beta Gamma Sigma is around 3.85 most years and that goes to top 10% of class).
@rhandco I don’t think you can retake courses here that you’ve already passed (or maybe it’s can’t retake classes you’ve gotten a C- or higher in).
@CardinalSin2020 @EarlyAction2020
Why do you think you need to get such a high gpa? One of the biggest differentiators of a school like Penn is all of the opportunities they offer outside of class.
DD1 is an engineering student who is capable of maintaining a gpa that is very close to a 4.0 at Penn, if she made that her priority. When she left for Penn I told her that if maintained a 4.0 gpa that I would consider that an epic failure. She can stay at home and lock herself in a room with a pile of books. I told her that she needed to worry less about grades and get as involved: build friendships, be active in clubs, participate in research, do a semester abroad, do volunteer work, get an internship, join a sorority, go to hear great speakers, go to the opera, participate in a club sport, watch some Penn sporting events, spend some time in Philly, plan a spring break trip with your friends, etc. College is just as much about experiences and people, as it is about classes. Live a little.
She still has a respectable gpa but she has been doing a lot of things and enjoying herself. Unless you are premed or have a very specific reason, I would not focus so much on grades. Look at the linked in profiles of some Penn students and notice all of the outside the classroom activities they are involved with. They are good students but they are also well-rounded people. If a student ends up with a decent gpa and has done many other things, they are usually better off. You are not your grades.
I didn’t go to Penn, but personally I always took the attitude that if I was able to maintain a 4.0 GPA then I wasn’t pushing/challenging myself enough. An adequate GPA for your long-term goals is important; but obsessively targeting a perfect GPA can be counter-productive in many cases.
OK, a more practical question: what kind of GPA does one need (from Penn) to get into a top 7-10 PhD program in their field.
I realize that the answers be different for different fields and there is more to GPA for PhD program admission (though GPA is still very important), but any data points will be helpful.
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@osuprof I would say you would be good with a 3.5+ but for some very difficult majors it would be doable with a little bit lower too ( say 3.4 or even 3.3).
@osuprof “OK, a more practical question: what kind of GPA does one need (from Penn) to get into a top 7-10 PhD program in their field.”
@rebeccar Can you provide some color on this?
@earlyaction2020 " I need to maintain high marks and don’t know if it is generally feasible here."
Can you tell us why you need to maintain high marks? I think that if we understand what you are trying to achieve by maintaining high marks, we can do a better job responding.
I work at a crappy state school, and we have sent students to Stanford and Ivy League schools.
You should really really chill about grades if you are targeting highest level PhD programs, and instead pursue undergraduate research and publishing with top researchers.
3.7 vs. 3.8 vs. 4.0, or even a 3.5, will not matter if you show aptitude for research including publishing in high impact factor journals.
You need to find a very good advisor to help you out, because GPA is not as important as those other things.
I would say that 3.3 or less would be a problem, but major GPA will matter more than overall GPA.
I would be completely shocked if any student, Ivy League or not, had a 3.7+ GPA but no undergraduate research experience and no publishing, could get into a top research program. Even the students we see in our college come in with multiple journal articles published.
@Much2learn I want to increase my chances of getting into a highly respectable law school. Since GPA plays a large part in admission, I’d like to have at least a 3.7
@CardinalSin2020 That’s definitely doable. Just don’t shoot for a 4.0 because you’ll get yourself too stressed, won’t be able to enjoy other aspects of college enough, and probably won’t succeed in the effort anyway. Having a goal of a 3.7 will not be easy to achieve, but it is reasonable.
@whartonpenn2017 “Having a goal of a 3.7 will not be easy to achieve, but it is reasonable.”
I agree with this. A 3.7 gpa is doable for an above average Penn student. That is much more reasonable, and is a big difference from a 4.0 gpa. Is it possible to apply to sub matriculate to the law school? It could be worth checking.