Recommended for admission by department, but graduate college say my GPA is low?

Graduate School
1

The school I applied to have a very strong department in my field.

I got off to a bad start in freshmen year due to personal issues. After taking a break and taking courses at a community college, I came back strong and have been a straight A student for the last 3 years (including 40 hours at my alma mater in high level courses). Add in my almost perfect GRE scores (in both verbal and quant), strong letter of recommendations, and unique experience.achievement outside of the classroom, I was recommended for admission by the department. (This is actually the toughest part).

The department sent me an automated “admission decision” email and congratulated me, and said the official notification from the graduate college will come in a couple of weeks. I was given the link to either accept or reject the offer. I accepted it and got a welcome message. A subsequent email told me about this orientation and how to register for classes after I get my network ID．

I called the graduate college about the network ID and was told “the department referred me for admission, but my GPA is low.” They need/or are waiting for a letter from the department “justifying” me for admission, and told me to contact the department the status of this letter. I was shocked and since this is Thanksgiving, I won’t be contacting the department until next week. I also have no idea why they think my GPA is low.

I have no idea why the graduate division thinks my GPA is low, especially when they only “look at the last 2 years.” I’m guessing they don’t count my cc transfer work. But even then it’s a 2.98. WIth the transfer work, it’s a 3.4.

A little paranoid now. What do you think my department will do? Write a letter and fight for me or give up on me and reject me after making me go through all that? How does this work? The emails the department sent me said the offer is contingent only on me completing my degree this semester and maintaining my GPA.

Thanks

2

I’m going to preface this by saying that there’s no point in worrying about this. You can’t predict the future - but you’re going to call the department next week and get it straightened out either way. So people trying to make predictions is relatively useless, because we don’t know AND in short order you’re going to have an answer.

But that said, I predict that this will be much simpler than you’re anticipating. Departments have to justify admissions to graduate colleges all the time; sometimes the graduate college has minimum standards that are quite rigid. They will probably write a short letter to the graduate college detailing why they want you and that will be the end of it.

3

I have the same situation. I really would like to know how did your story end. In my letter it was mentioned to login to my account in 48 hours for the official letter, but it’s still missing. I think we applied to the same school, as the wording and process are really similar:) Please, share your experience.