<p>Everyone here pretty much knows how crazy it is to get into the best grad schools, espeically professional grad schools for business/medicine/law. But, how did some people manage to squeeze by without worrying and going crazy about grades like we do?</p>
<p>For example, Edward Kennedy, John Kerry and George W. Bush. Through their released undergraduate records we've learn that they all did horrible, relative to the average admitted student at the top grad schools (Kennedy was expelled from Harvard twice, and both Kerry and Bush had a C averages). However, they still got into University of Virginia School of Law, Boston College Law School and Harvard Business School, respectively.</p>
<p>So, my question is, how is that possible? Was it just straight influence? We panic when we get below a 3.5. How important is influence when it comes to grad schools? Apparently, a lot.</p>
<p>Oh, and don't write their acceptance off as money (i.e. people paid their way into grad school).</p>
<p>yeah...their parents influence probably helped them alot...but you must also remember that back then...the admissions process wasnt as crazy as it is now...so it may have been easier for students who werent as good to slip by...</p>
<p>There existed at the time of Bush and Kerry "gentlemen's Cs." A C certainly wasn't a phenomenal grade, but it wasn't career ending in the Ivy League in the way it is perceived now. Especially if you had connections. That's how you can have someone like Bush get into Yale with Cs and go on to a good graduate school with Cs.</p>
<p>kerry's last name didn't mean anything back then. his dad was a pretty obscure diplomat and his mother, while definetly the descendant of a very old boston family (the winthrops, as in the city on a hill winthrops) didn't have a name that could get him in to BC. With Bush/Kennedy, yeah, the name, with Kerry, probably something about a little speech he gave in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee agaisnt teh Vietnam War after having received three purple hearts? I imagine his essays were pretty... mind blowing/intelligent as well.</p>