<p>Yale Law School generally won't take a 3.6 even if it's in Quantum Physics at Caltech though. For most graduate schools, especially Ph.D programs, school quality and grade deflation (which isn't actually bad at Chicago, anyway - 3.26 average in 1999) will be accounted for. Law school, however, tends to be fairly literal about the numbers (perhaps due to the tyranny of US News). Fortunately, GPA usually won't make you or break you besides at 4 law schools (Yale, Stanford, Harvard and Berkeley). LSAT is far more important, and 3.6 won't hurt you at NYU, Columbia or Chicago. Even a 3.0 won't keep you out of good schools like Northwestern and Georgetown.</p>
<p>^ There are some things terribly wrong in the above post.</p>
<p>Yale Law School probably cares less about GPA than anybody. What they care about there is your Rhodes or Marshall, the grades you got at Oxford, and what your dissertation looks like. It does take some people straight out of college, but there it is looking for blinding, undeniable brilliance. My guess is that Yale takes about as many 3.6s as it takes 4.0s: not many.</p>
<p>None of the top law schools, none, gives even half a crap about U.S. News. Really. It wouldn't even occur to the people who make the decisions there to care. They care about what the following think: famous Federal judges, especially Supreme Court Justices; appointments committees at other law schools; the Department of Justice (although less so than in the past); the hiring committees at large law firms in New York, Washington, Chicago, Silicon Valley, and wherever they happen to be. The New York Times. Maybe The American Lawyer.</p>
<p><a href="http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/LSAC_LawSchoolDescription/LSAC3987.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://officialguide.lsac.org/SearchResults/SchoolPage_PDFs/LSAC_LawSchoolDescription/LSAC3987.pdf</a>
To summarize, with a 175-180 LSAT:
3.75+: 47% acceptance
3-5-3.75: 10% acceptance
3.5-: 0% acceptance
Those people getting accepted with 3.5-3.75 are a lot closer to 3.75 than 3.5, and they are likely also URMs/Yale UG. Look at Lawschoolnumbers for the range 3.5-3.7 - Yale</a> University | LawSchoolNumbers.com - 63 applied, 0 accepted.
Keep in mind those people are very self-selected. To bother applying with a lower GPA, you must think you have extremely good soft factors.</p>
<p>I had 178, 3.75 and knew I had little chance at Yale because I was below 3.8 (although I did get waitlisted, one of the lowest GPAs on it). On Lawschoolnumbers, for 175+, 3.7-3.8, 1 was accepted out of 25 apps. For 175+, 3.81-3.9, 8 out of 15 were accepted.</p>
<p>Yale comments are interesting. One of this years Rhodes winners was in her first year at Yale Law school, UofC undergrad.</p>
<p>I would have to disagree with phuriku's statement, completely. Getting into good grad. schools is not nearly as one-dimensional as he claims. Grades are important, but anything over 3.5 is decent, and anything over 3.7 should be fine, especially if you're taking solid classes.</p>
<p>Talk to your undergrad. department heads, and they can give you an idea of what to expect. For instance, Paul Sally says that math majors who get B's in Honors Analysis FREQUENTLY place into top 10 schools like Courant, Berkeley, and Stanford, and math, after all, is one of the most competitive fields. </p>
<p>At the very least, I don't think we should go into admissions with such pessimistic attitudes. Grades, after all, are not the best indicators of potential for success in grad. school and beyond, given how arbitrarily and inconsistently they're handed out, depending on your classmates and professors.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I would have to disagree with phuriku's statement, completely. Getting into good grad. schools is not nearly as one-dimensional as he claims. Grades are important, but anything over 3.5 is decent, and anything over 3.7 should be fine, especially if you're taking solid classes.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think this is said with a math major bias. Admittedly, a 3.7 in math is very acceptable, but when you consider other fields with grade inflation, a 3.7 is far from impressive to a top 5 graduate school. I know very many humanities majors with GPAs over 3.8 who really aren't the most intelligent or hard-working people. So although I think what you said would be correct in terms of a science major, I don't think it's necessarily correct for some other majors.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For instance, Paul Sally says that math majors who get B's in Honors Analysis FREQUENTLY place into top 10 schools like Courant, Berkeley, and Stanford, and math, after all, is one of the most competitive fields.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, but Chicago has a top-3 undergraduate theoretical math program in the nation, and compared with a lot of the other fields, Chicago math just has a ridiculous amount of opportunities. I don't think other fields give you as much of an opportunity to TA as a 2nd or 3rd year, and I certainly don't think they give you the research opportunities that the math department does. Most serious math majors come out of undergrad having at least 2 serious sessions of research, including REU (Chicago's and other schools') and DRP.</p>
<p>Also, you can't seriously say that Sally doesn't sometimes exaggerate. I think that the average grade in Honors Analysis is about a B. And given any class, 30 people (10 as first-years, 20 as second-years) will take Honors Analysis. Assuming then, that 15 people will get a B or above, if what Sally says is true, then at least 10 people will be going to a top 10 grad school like Stanford, Berkeley, or Courant. I'm disregarding Michigan, because Michigan is ridiculously easy to get into. Looking at the stats for graduate school matriculation, which are on Peter May's VIGRE page, you'll see that this isn't nearly close to the truth. We usually have about 2 people going to MIT, Princeton, or Harvard, and about 2-3 people going off to Stanford, Berkeley, or Courant.</p>
<p>
[quote]
At the very least, I don't think we should go into admissions with such pessimistic attitudes. Grades, after all, are not the best indicators of potential for success in grad. school and beyond, given how arbitrarily and inconsistently they're handed out, depending on your classmates and professors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You're right. But although I think there may not be much of a difference between a 3.8 and a 4.0 (in all classes of your major), there's probably a significant difference between a 3.5 and a 4.0. The spirit of my statements was not to say that a good GPA will get you into a top grad school, but that a non-excellent GPA will often keep you out. It's the same with GRE scores in most situations. I also don't think that grades are handed out as arbitrarily as you say they are, especially in math and science courses.</p>
<p>I stick with my previous statements (which were only said with regard to top-5/10 grad schools) that it's extremely difficult to gain admission to such a school. The reason that top graduate schools only admit 10-15 students in each major per year is because they only want the best of the best (they are, after all, FUNDING your entire time there). This is also why they extend their admissions moreso to internationals than undergraduate admissions does, and is also the reason why affirmative action does not hold a significant position in grad admission.</p>
<p>My close friend has never failed to place a student he believes in into a top grad program in his area even if the GPA is somewhat low. Personal recommendations and research accomplishment trump almost anything else.</p>
<p>Many years ago I was admitted to what at the time was the #1 program in my area at a selective private graduate focused institution (any guesses?). I never really completed a full 4 years of undergraduate college, I was awarded a degree through an "alternative" degree program. My undergrad GPA from all sources was somewhere around 2.2. Students who could not get into the program often enrolled in a multidisciplinary MA program to "prove themselves" to the faculty of my program. Many were from top undergrad schools, including Ivy's, with stellar GPAs and high GRE scores, all had been turned down. It was then that I learned that GPA and even high test scores were not always needed if a key faculty member went to bat for you. I saw this over and over again, and found it to be the case throughout the years. While it certainly doesn't hurt to have a high GPA, if one sees that the GPA may not be there, then one needs to show the skill, passion, and dedication to the field in other ways that will attract attention and support.</p>
<p>"I'm disregarding Michigan, because Michigan is ridiculously easy to get into. Looking at the stats for graduate school matriculation, which are on Peter May's VIGRE page, you'll see that this isn't nearly close to the truth. We usually have about 2 people going to MIT, Princeton, or Harvard, and about 2-3 people going off to Stanford, Berkeley, or Courant"</p>
<p>But acceptance and matriculation are different. Top schools admit far more than are in their freshman classes, especially at public schools like Berkeley and Michigan. Of course, it will be almost impossible to get into Princeton with a 3.7, but I really don't think Courant, Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia are out of reach. This is especially true for math majors going into stats or economics. </p>
<p>I have no idea about how professional schools work.</p>