<p>Every college website I've visited has some variation of "There is no minimum GPA" on the admissions page. In reality what is the lowest GPA or range of GPA's someone could have and expect to get into a Ivy League or top tier school.</p>
<p>smithy: since those schools can cherry pick among thousands and thousands, they honestly keep open the option to pick someone with a lower GPA if he/she possesses some other wanted attribute. For the avg. person w/o any great “hook”, he/she will be swamped out by people of higher academic achievement. </p>
<p>The answer to your question is “there is no basement GPA” but logic dictates that 99% of the people in the lower tiers are dead on arrival given the intensely high caliber of the applicant pool.</p>
<p>A range? Go to the Common Data Sets of your colleges and look at section C. This will tell you the % of people in the top 10% of the graduating class. Since actual GPA differs from school to school, this is a more meaningful metric.</p>
<p>When I recruit for my Ivy alma mater, I tell students that barring any enormous “hook”, viable applicants should to be among the handful of top academic scholars of their graduating year – known by the faculty and principal for achievement and influence. This might make them viable. By implication, my experience tells me that if they aren’t in this group, they aren’t viable whatsoever.</p>
<p>Thanks. My school doesn’t rank so I can’t glean much off of those metrics but I’ll keep that in mind when I apply.</p>