<p>Hello. I want to go to MIT or Stanford for graduate school, but it happens that my gpa during the freshman year has been below 3.3 (out of 4.3)(a decent university). I was thinking that since some of the schools (including MIT) does pass/fail during their freshman year, that freshman years gpa is not important. Am I dumb? Do I still have a chance at these schools? What are the average undergraduate gpa at these top schools? Thank you.</p>
<p>What field? The field will make a difference -- although I don't think any department at MIT is heavily dependent on GPA, it matters a little more in some departments than others.</p>
<p>Except for management and perhaps a few others, I would bet that an average undergraduate GPA at MIT is somewhere around a 3.3 or 3.4. It actually might even be lower than that -- grade inflation is an unheard of luxury around these parts.</p>
<p>I think helpneeded was asking about the average undergrad GPA for the grad students at those schools, which tends to be very high (in the range of 3.8 to 3.9).</p>
<p>Oh dear, sorry. And I spent all that time looking...</p>
<p>The average isn't necessarily that high, though -- biology graduate admits have an average of 3.62, management 3.5, EECS 3.5, aero/astro 3.0. Those are all I could find with a quick search, but as you can see they're not astronomical.</p>
<p>but how about mathematics? thank you.</p>
<p>I'm not sure about an average GPA for incoming math grad students. Still, I would wager that a great letter of recommendation, solid GRE performance, and research experience are far more important than GPA.</p>
<p>how about FRESHMAN gpa. do they consider it or do they consider only sophomere and junior grades? (because some schools do pass/fail in freshman year). Thanks again.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Your upper division grades matter much, much more than your lower division (freshman, sophomore) grades</p></li>
<li><p>I am guessing that in a theoretical field like math, your grades are somewhat more important than they would be in biology. Again, though, the upper division grades will count much more.</p></li>
<li><p>Research experience and rec letters would probably outweigh a subpar freshman year.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Like calkidd said, upper division grades almost always count more than freshman grades.</p>
<p>I could see an MIT department ignoring/paying less attention to grades from first term freshman year, since MIT applicants would only have P grades for those classes. MIT does have grades second term freshman year, though, so even if your assumption is correct that they won't look at terms for which MIT undergrads have pass grades only, that only eliminates first term freshman year.</p>
<p>
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I would bet that an average undergraduate GPA at MIT is somewhere around a 3.3 or 3.4
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</p>
<p>Are you calculating that out of a 4.0 scale or out of the MIT 5.0 grading scale?</p>
<p>4.0. I was translating. :)</p>
<p>I sort of wonder what other people think about the validity of that number. I thought about it for a long time, but it's hard to ballpark the average GPA of 4000 undergraduates in 20 majors. (It's also not what the OP wanted... oops.)</p>
<p>So then if you're talking about the average gpa at MIT being a 3.3 or a 3.4 out of a 4.0 grading scale, I find that to be most dubious indeed. I would strongly suspect it would be MUCH MUCH lower than that. After all, the average gpa at Harvard is a 3.39, and the average gpa at Stanford is a 3.45, and I think we can all agree that MIT grades far harder than Harvard or Stanford do. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/stanford.html</a>
<a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.gradeinflation.com/harvard.html</a></p>
<p>Here was my line of reasoning:
1. I've read that most grades at MIT are above a C, but know from experience that A's are difficult to come by.
2. Most people take 1 humantities class per term (out of 4 classes) and the average person probably gets an A.
3. I have a 3.4, and freshman year I was often the very picture of class average.</p>
<p>Still, factors I found difficult to figure in:
1. I'm a double-major in biology and neuroscience, which are considered "easy" -- but are generally graded on a curve, as opposed to many engineering classes, which are straight-scaled (ie, everyone could get an A in 6.004, but 70% of the class will not get an A in 7.06).
2. I don't know very many people whose GPAs are very low. I believe this is a sampling effect, but of course it's hard to estimate prevalence if my sample is skewed.</p>
<p>I guess maybe A's given cancel out C's given, so I would accept an average MIT GPA of 3.0/4.0.</p>
<p>(That's funny about Harvard... MIT students usually mythologize Harvard as the magical land where A's drop like manna from the skies. Based on my egregious stereotyping, I would have expected average Harvard GPA to be closer to a 3.8 or something. :))</p>
<p>It is true that Harvard is grade-inflated, but it isn't THAT inflated. The Harvard science classes, for example, are not particularly inflated, and may well be on par with the grading of science classes at MIT. Also, keep in mind that perfect gpa's at Harvard are extremely rare. You can check my other posts about this subject, but there have been only about 5 documented cases of people graduating with Harvard College with a perfect gpa. Not even Henry Kissinger graduated with a perfect GPA, although it is often (wrongly) reported that he did.</p>
<p>Haha, I'm just saying that's the mythology. I don't think anyone actually believes that... it's just what we tell ourselves.</p>