<p>I know that engineers suffer from grade deflation, so what's considered a 'good' gpa to graduate with for engineers at berkeley?</p>
<p>Does the low gpa detrimentally affect graduate school admissions? Or do grad schools (top tier ones, that is) take into consideration the competitiveness of berkeley?</p>
<p>3.5+ can get you a job anywhere.</p>
<p>If you look at the percentiles for honors, high honors, etc. you’ll see that they’re not too different from L&Ss. I’m not sure what the averages are, though. (It’s very possible that the top 10% of engineering students will have GPAs similar to those of the top 10% of L&S students, but the average L&S GPA might be much higher than the average engineering GPA. Also consider that engineers can take humanities and those get added to their GPAs, which might “inflate” engineering GPAs… though I find that the subjective grading in many humanities makes it harder to get an A…)</p>
<p>And yep, 3.5 is good enough for almost all jobs. But it’s not just about the GPA. Someone who only does their coursework but has a good GPA is not going to get as many offers as someone who has a lower GPA but lots of out-of-class projects to show.</p>
<p>What about with 2.8 gpa?</p>
<p>I’ve heard a 3.0+ gpa should be enough for most jobs.</p>
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<p>Class of 2008 stats = Class of 2009 cutoffs for honors at graduation (these are for the entire College of Engineering, regardless of major)
97th percentile = 3.927 “Summa”
90th percentile = 3.811 “Magna”
80th percentile = 3.672</p>
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<p>People talk about this all the time. Based on what I’ve seen, there is no evidence that suggests the top 3 engineering grad schools (MIT, Stanford, Berk) give Berkeley undergrads (and those of other grade-deflation schools) any significant amount of additional leeway for lackluster grades. In fact, the same holds true for Cal’s pre-med and pre-law students, not just engineering students.</p>
<p>So far, all the folks I know who were admitted to Stanford EE or CS from Berkeley, even for the Master’s programs, had undergrad GPAs of 3.8 or higher. For MIT admits (which number at 1-3 per department per year, by the way) mid- to high-3.9s, if not 4.0. Of course, they also had stellar recommendations, extensive research experience, etc.</p>
<p>4.0 = your a God
3.5+ = your a pretty damn wanted engineer
3.0+= you are well qualified for any engineer job, just competition in your way
2.5+= decent engieneer you will get a job dont worry
2.0 = engineer</p>
<p>wow. is a 4.0 even heard of in EECS?</p>
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Certainly. Every year, there are a handful of GPAs in the high 3.9s. If you’ve ever looked through a TBP or HKN resume book, you’ll find that there are more high-achievers than you might have expected. And not every top student actually joins one of these organizations! Every year, the low-3.9x cutoff for summa stays relatively constant, although the lowest “cum laude” cutoff has been trending up; the 3.67 is the highest I’ve seen in the last five years.</p>
<p>Note that having a 4.0 in college doesn’t necessarily imply well-roundedness; I’ve seen plenty of engineers, born or raised in English-speaking nations, who can crunch numbers and design circuits like crazy but can’t write coherently at all. If you were to toss them into the English department, chances are they won’t have that 4.0, or anywhere close to it. Everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>So if I want to go to grad school (meaning Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton) then I shouldn’t come to Cal? I’m an EECS major and don’t want to die at Berkeley.</p>
<p>My friend got into Stanford grad school for civil engineering with a 3.5</p>
<p>I’d say you might want to consider it carefully strikemaster because while Cal has a high rep for engineering, it can get pretty damn hardcore.</p>
<p>If you are a A/ B student in high school (given you take APs/ honors classes) and get into Berkeley Engineering, do you think you will likely get a low GPA compared to the competition?</p>
<p>What does the average A/B high school students GPA at Berkeley turn out to be?
I’m not perfect, I think I may have a chance at getting into Berkeley, but I don’t want to die there since I’ll be in class with some crazy smart people.</p>
<p>Honestly, I’m pretty sure everyone at Berk was an A/B student.</p>
<p>^ I was referring to the abundance of straight A students at Berkeley… I hear there are a lot of pretty perfect people at Berkeley lol. Are you saying you think most of them got Bs as well?</p>
<p>So is a 3.5 somewhat manageable for, say, a ChemE major?</p>
<p>@Batman17…</p>
<p>hey dude,
while googling about grad school, i stopped by this thread. So i have been admitted to Berkeley L&S CS for fall 2013 but i have a feeling that a low gpa from Cal will ruin my chances at big name grad schools like Stanford, MIT,Cornell or even at berkeley. </p>
<p>Do you think it is worth attending cal if i want to go to those grad schools? btw, UCSD is my back up. i think i can manage my studies at UCSD than Berkeley (UCSD is also a difficult schools though). i don’t know what to do.It’s a very hard to reject a school like Berkeley.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot.</p>
<p>Grade inflation generally tracks with the selectivity of the school. See the list at the bottom of [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com%5DNational”>http://www.gradeinflation.com) .</p>
<p>Remember that PhD programs are not just looking for grades (in challenging courses in your major); they also want to see undergraduate research and good recommendations from faculty from your research and courses.</p>
<p>Professional schools (medical and law) are said to look at GPA with little or no regard for rigorous course selection.</p>
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<p>Depends on what you mean by “low”. Most top universities have at least some kind of soft cutoff, which means it will be pretty difficult to get into a top grad program with a GPA below 3.7ish. Above 3.8, other things, like your research and recommendations, start to carry a lot more weight. GPA acts mainly as a “negative filter”, a bad GPA will keep you out, a good GPA alone won’t get you in anywhere. Research and recommendations are what truly matters.</p>
<p>Also, yes, graduate schools take into consideration the competitiveness of Berkeley. That means, a 3.8 from Berkeley will carry more weight than a 4.0 from an unknown state school. That is not to say the the state school applicant has a lower chance to be accepted, but other things in his application, like GRE, and recommendations, will carry more weight than his GPA does.</p>
<p>PS: What I’m saying applies to Engineering grad programs, not medical/law, etc.</p>
<p>@Thomas, thanks for the insight.</p>