How often have you heard of someone being accepted w/3.8-3.9 GPA without being URM?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
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<p>I'm looking at all the Regular Decision threads and I'm seeing very very very few. It seems as though everyone has a 4.0 or a 3.99.
I have a 3.85 UW. :/ It's the only part of my application that isn't within the competitive range for Stanford.
Plus, I'm an ORM...so, that doesn't look very good either.</p>

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<p>I don’t know if asking for anecdotes will really help you. But your GPA doesn’t disqualify you at all.</p>

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<p>Are you certain? :confused: Would you say that the Regular Decisions thread is not an accurate sample of accepted students?
It seems as though most of them have nearly perfect stats.</p>

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<p>Yes – me.</p>

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<p>

I believe there was only 1 person who made a post in the RD thread with less than a 3.8 (excluding freshman year), either about being rejected or accepted. That’s not a large enough sample to draw any conclusions. Skimming through the posts, it appears that the average GPA of the rejected posters is higher than the average GPA of the accepted posters, with about half of the rejected posters being valedictorians with a 4.0. I think the only thing one can conclude is that Stanford looks at far more than just GPA. </p>

<p>The CDS mentions that only 8% of the freshman class students had less than a 3.75, so it’s obviously not common to be admitted with below a 3.8, but it’s possible. This lower end is not all URMs, legacies, recruited athletes, and others with hooks. I was admitted several years ago with a GPA of ~3.5, which was in the bottom ~3% at the time when I applied. My verbal SAT of 500 was even worse, in the bottom 1%. I also did not have any hooks, listed awards, or significant ECs. What I did have was a genuine application that showed I was passionate and truly interested in learning, an application that showed I was highly capable in my desired field of engineering (800 math & math II, 4.0 average in classes at SUNY and RPI), and a genuine essay that reflected my risk taking personality which was quoted in my acceptance letter.</p>

<p>In short I don’t think Stanford is looking for people with perfect stats. Instead I think they are looking for a group of great people who will make an impression in both college and life, all of whom who are capable of succeeding in Stanford classes as reflected by their stats. I certainly wouldn’t recommend giving up and and not applying because you only had 3.85.</p>