What's considered a 'good' gpa for engineers?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>@Thomas_</p>

<p>"GPA acts mainly as a “negative filter”</p>

<p>This what i wanted to hear. I know it is not everything but it does help the admission committee to weed out applicants. Thanks a lot. </p>

<p>I have another question. don’t u think a 3.6+ from UCSD will carry more weight from 3.1-3.2 from berkeley? And by any means UCSD is not an unknown school, it is up there with other prestigious engineering schools if not among the top 10. </p>

<p>The reason i am saying that is i haven’t come across with a single admitted students who got into Stanford/MIT grad schools with below 3.6 in CS, which clearly says GPA does matter.</p>

<p>Thank you so very much</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>I guess it depends on how you define “carry weight”. By “weight” I meant how important the fact is to the admission committee relative to other facts in your application. I believe the primary question admissions tries to answer by looking at the GPA is “is this person intelligent enough?” (of course there are also other factors, like hard-working, etc). </p>

<p>For example, a 4.0 from a completely unknown school carries little weight. It may mean that the applicant is very intelligent, but it could also mean that the the school was incredibly easy. The information content is low. To decide which one is the case admissions will look more closely at other parts of the application - like GRE, recommendations, outside work, etc. These will carry more weight in that case.</p>

<p>A 3.1 GPA from Berkeley on the other hand will carry a lot of weight. Admissions know that Berkeley is difficult, but a 3.1 to them means that you probably aren’t hard-working or intelligent enough to get good grades. It’s all the information they need. So unless one has exceptional research, recommendations, or awards, it’s extremely unlikely he or she will get into a top grad school with a 3.1 GPA.</p>

<p>Once you are above a certain threshold however (let’s say 3.7+) there’s not much more information to be gained from GPA. Does a 3.95 really contain a lot more information than a 3.75? I don’t think so, the latter may just have taken a harder course load, more extracurriculars, or whatever. You can’t say that there is a significant difference in intelligence between these two candidates. If you have a relatively high GPA from a good school it means you are probably sufficiently intelligent. Then the admission committee will move on to other parts of the application answering other questions about you, like “Can this person do research?”, “What do other people say about him? Is he easy to work with?”, “Is this person a good fit for the school”, and so on. GPA doesn’t help answering these questions in any way, that’s why other parts of your application are very important.</p>

<p>In terms of UCSD, it’s definitely not an “unknown school”, it’s a top school. I’d say there isn’t much of a difference in how admission looks at a Berkeley vs. a UCSD GPA. A 3.8 from UCSD probably looks better than a 3.6 from Berkeley, based on my personal feeling that is.</p>

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<p>@Thomas_</p>

<p>did anyone ever tell you that you are the most helpful dude? It was a very brief insight man. Thanks a LOTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT for taking ur time out and write such brief thing. </p>

<p>From your posts on other threads, i came to realize that you might be in EECS. If you are, how hard it is and is it very difficult to do well? The stories of other people really scare me. Cal has been my dream school since i came here but those horrifying stories forcing me to back off. I just want to do well wherever i go so that i can be satisfied with my education and continue to grad schools.</p>

<p>That being said, Do you recommend me to come to Cal or just go to UCSD and try to do well from there? (i know that SD isn’t a piece of cake either, bt it should be at least 1% easier than Cal. I could be wrong though). </p>

<p>btw, i am a transfer student. In case i didn’t tell you. Thank you once again</p>

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<p>Haha, thanks :slight_smile: Yeah, I was an EECS major, and also a transfer student.</p>

<p>Hm, it’s a tough choice between UCSD and Cal. I don’t regret coming to Cal, but that’s only because I ended up doing okay in my classes. I know a couple of Engineering transfer students who messed up their GPA and regretted not choosing an “easier” school. </p>

<p>I think the main benefit you get from going to Cal instead of UCSD is not the name, but rather the access to opportunities and people in CS. Cal is ranked #1 or #2 in the country/world for its CS graduate program, so the professors and graduate students at Cal are top notch. I briefly worked at the university, and I can tell you that the graduate students (and professors) were the smartest people I have met in my life, definitely smarter than me. If you can get involved in research, or get recommendations from these people, it will mean a lot for your graduate school application. UCSD also has great professors and opportunities, but I would argue that Cal has a bit more to offer in that respect.</p>

<p>The downside of choosing Cal is, like you said, it will probably more difficult to get a good GPA than at UCSD. Unfortunately no one can tell you if you will be doing well or not. There are people who do well, and there are people who don’t do well despite studying like crazy. It really depends on your background, motivation, talent, and so on. You know yourself better than anyone else. Maybe look at some of the Cal lectures (webcast.berkeley.edu), problem sets and past exams, and check how difficult the material is for you. If you think you can be among the top 10-20% in the class, go to Cal. Just be careful about being honest to yourself. If you think you’ll have problems with the material, go to UCSD. Sorry if this isn’t really helpful.</p>

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<p>@ Thomas_</p>

<p>sorry for being late. i have been busy with my finals. Anyway, so since u were in EECS, u might have taken 61ABC and upper division CS classes. How hard those classes were to u? Do u think maintain 3.5+ from CS is doable or just impossible. I am not a genius but i really work hard and very serious about my grade. And last but not the least do L&S CS students get the same jobs as you guys (EECS)? or employers favors you over them? ( i know that the the only diff is physics+calc 3, which i have completed at CC )</p>

<p>thanks a lot dude</p>

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<p>Keep in mind that graduate admissions vary quite a bit from department to department. The criteria to get into EECS PhD study is much different than say, CEE or ME masters program. Just a thought.</p>

27

<p>@Quantam12</p>

<p>Dude, I was in the EXACT same situation as you. I got accepted to UCSD CSE and UCB EECS as a transfer student for Fall 2013. It was really hard for me to decide which school to go to. I was really afraid of Berkeley because of the grade deflation and my GPA is extremely important to me because I want to go to grad school. I liked UCSD a lot but Berkeley is Berkeley… Hard to give that up. After talking to A LOT of people and doing A LOT of research, I finally made my decision and will be attending UC Berkeley for Fall 2013. It is true, Berkeley is going to be very hard and I don’t consider myself to be super smart just like you. However, I am a hard worker and almost every single person who I talked to that attends Berkeley said that they are in the same category. I also talked to a few friends at UCSD and trust me. They said it is REALLY hard to get an A over there as well. (For Computer Science/Engineering because CSE is actually a REALLY good major at UCSD) You’re going to have to be working your butt of at UCSD so why not just work your butt off at Berkeley? Berkeley is notorious for their department and it is right next to Silicon Valley so finding a job will not be bad at all. Also, as for graduate school admissions, everyone knows that Berkeley has a grade deflation so they will take that into account but unfortunately not that much. It’s okay though. GPA is only 1 factor for graduate school admissions and the opportunities you get at Berkeley is priceless. As for the competitiveness, it will be very competitive HOWEVER, it is not what you think. People form study groups ALL THE TIME for CS/EECS, help each other out and work as a team so there is nothing to worry about. MCB and Haas on the other hand might be a little cruel depending on the people but those are the only majors where I heard the real competition is. As for social life, Berkeley > UCSD by far IMHO. </p>

<p>What am I trying to say? Don’t ever let fear be the deciding factor for making a decision. DO NOT REJECT Berkeley because you are scared of the competition or because you think you won’t be getting grades. You have a shot at going to the #1 public university in the world. Sure, graduate school you might think you can get into MIT, Berkeley, or Harvard, but what if you don’t? What if you get a 3.5ish GPA at UCSD (which is actually pretty good) but don’t get where you wanted to go? Then you will always regret the decision of rejecting Berkeley.</p>

<p>The choice is yours, however I just wanted to share what I went through when I was deciding between UCSD and UC Berkeley for CS. Remember, most of the people (freshmen and transfers) are having the same feeling as you: “Am I good enough? I am not naturally smart” So, you’re not the only one.</p>

<p>Let me know what final decision you make! If you end up choosing UC Berkeley, then hit me up! We can chill since we will have classes together! :smiley: It would be cool meeting someone before school even starts that is in the same situation as me!</p>

<p>I hope this was somewhat helpful.</p>

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<p>@bhargav21…</p>

<p>i cannot believe that whatever you’ve just said exactly matched with my thoughts. But one of the problem of going to Cal is i will be getting B.A from L&S whereas you will be getting B.S from CoE. I know that it is not a big deal, since it’s CS from Cal but i am a Math & Physics guy. </p>

<p>The horror stories of the people made me even worried about my future. The cons of Cal:

  1. B.A & not in college of engineering.
  2. will end up with low gpa
  3. 4.5k+ more cost annually than ucsd.
  4. probably no time for research.
  5. i googled the grad school acceptance rate and trust me all those people who got into Stanford, MIT or even Cal didn’t even have below 3.6. So that clearly means something. My CS department head told me that grad schools have a cut off GPA to weed out students.</p>

<p>i have 5 days left to make the decisions and i do not know what to do. This is very hard to turn down a school like Cal. </p>

<p>Will i be in disadvantage going to UCSD? In terms of getting a job right after graduation? </p>

<p>(FYI: sd gets more money from the federal govt. for research than cal, ucla, mit. It’s among the top 10 schools in america which gets more money for research).</p>

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<p>Getting a B. A. has no difference than getting a B. S., trust me there is no difference if you want to go to the software side (which I am assuming you do since you picked computer science) I will take the exact same courses as you with the exception of the 2 required lower division ee courses. But those courses aren’t going to make a difference in getting a job or for graduate school because I don’t expect myself to take any upper div ee courses. In terms of college of engineering vs college of letters and science, sure engineering looks a little better on paper but who cares? Companies or graduate schools don’t care what college you graduated from. Companies care about what you know, and in terms of software engineering, you will know JUST as much as the rest of us. And anyways, getting into BERKELEY is not easy at all. Not everyone gets into berkeley for college of letters and science. In my honest opinion getting into berkeley college of letters and science > sd college of engineering. People aren’t going to look down at you just because you’re not in engineering. Heck, our career fairs are exactly the same. And who says you’ll end up with a bad gpa at Cal and a good gpa at Berkeley? Ucsd is amazing for computer science and is in the top. I wouldn’t even be surprised if some sd professors are harder than berkeley. </p>

<p>Don’t worry about cost. He cost difference is 9000 all together which you will easily get back as a software engineer. If you’re worried about 9k right now, then I definitely hope you aren’t going to go grad school right away after graduation. The cost for grad school is 50k± a year with little financial aid. Also, I plan on working after graduation and hopefully have my company pay for my masters… :-), if you do that, your gpa is SIGNIFICANTLY less important. </p>

<p>Saying you have no time for research is too early right now. Sure, you’ll be busy studying but that doesn’t mean people don’t do research at Berkeley. I have a lot of friends doing research. Some of my friends in eecs got research their very first year which is ridiculous. </p>

<p>In terms of gps cutoff, that is true. Most Universities have a gpa cutoff, however I personally got a chance to talk to a uc berkeley graduate admission officer in person. She told me that they just put the gpa cutoff to discourage under qualified people to apply. Because of this listed gpa cutoff, the only people that would apply that don’t meet the cutoff gpa would be people that are REALLY interested and believe that their gpa does not tell the full story. She told me that they look and every single application carefully in person so there is no program that automatically rejects you if you don’t meet the requirements. She even told me that a lot of people get accepted to uc berkeley even when they don’t meet the gpa requirements. That just proves that gpa isn’t everything. Letters of recommendation are extremely important and going to Berkeley could help a lot for that. Since graduate school, you will likely be doing research, you will probably choose a professor /lab/area you want to get involved in. Now, say you had a professor at Berkeley and formed a really close relationship with him. Maybe you even did research with him for a year. Now say you want to do your masters/phd at Berkeley and you’re interested in doing research in cloud computing. So, you would want the professor who is doing research in that field to be your mentor. Now imagine you had that professor for undergrad and formed a really close relationship with him. How effective do you think that letter of recommendation will be? (keep in mind that for grad school (especially phd, the professor accepts the people.) totally different than undergrad. Now if that professor really knows you and knows that you’re a hard worker, it won’t matter that your gpa is pretty bad because the professor actually knows you as a person and wants to work with you. </p>

<p>In the end, ucsd is a very good school and you will be fine where ever you go. In terms of finding a job in silicon valley, I’m sure berkeley will be easier but it’s not like it’ll be too hard finding a job from ucsd. Good luck! Let me know your final decision!</p>

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<p>@bhargav21…</p>

<p>You are too awesome dude. I didn’t see anyone replying to me that early. Thank you sooo very much for your brief and insightful reply. </p>

<p>I will definitely let yoou know about my decisions. But for now on, i think i am leaning toward UCSD. It is a very difficult thing. THere i was dreaming abt Cal for the last 4 yr and now that i got in do not feel like going. Someone definitely cursed me…lol I never believed that i would ever have to go through this dilemma. This is hard. Thanks a lot dude. </p>

<p>oh btw, i forgot to mention that the problem with L&S CS is, lets say i keep doing bad and want to switch my major, only good options i will have are physics and applied math. It is hard to believe i can’t be an engineer. anyway, just a thought.</p>

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<p>@Quantam12 </p>

<p>I first want to disclose that I knew nothing about the CS scene until last summer, so I have no knowledge of the UCSD program so my opinion will be bias towards Cal. But I still want to give you some insight into the difficulty.</p>

<p>One of the first things I want to say is that unless the difference in difficulty is very substantial, I think you will adapt to whatever school you go to (especially since you say you are hard working). What I mean by that is even if Cal is more competitive and harder, that will just drive you to work harder than you would at UDSD, and you may end up with the same grade.</p>

<p>In regards to EECS vs CS, if you are interested in software, there is no need to be an EECS major. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine who graduated EECS about the CS classes I plan to take to complete my CS minor and he said, “What?? You took more CS classes than me.” So just because someone is EECS doesn’t mean they have substantial CS knowledge. Of course they can choose to take more CS courses though. But people like my friend for example, opted not to do so and go more of the EE route in EECS. Also, as is said many times on this board, it’s about what you know. I also want to add that I have a friend who graduated with a degree not in anything CS or EE related and landed a software engineering job just from personal experience projects etc. </p>

<p>Now I want to talk about your main concern; the difficulty. In no way do I mean to sound braggy or anything like that, but I think most people will agree with me when I say that Cal is not as hard as it appears from the outside (in all subjects). If you have previous programming experience you will do fine and can get A’s at Cal. If you don’t have previous experience you can get A’s as well. I had absolutely no prior programming experience before taking 61A and I’ve done fine. If you really enjoy CS, I think you won’t even have to worry about switching majors (you’ll naturally work hard at it and all you need to do is work hard). Even if you do bad and have a GPA of 3.0 or below 3.0, you can still get a job. A friend of a friend of mine had a GPA of 2.8 and got a job at Apple still. But that might be irrelevant to you since you’re concerned with grad school. I can’t really comment on this since I’m not familiar with UCSD’s program. The point I want to get across though is that the CS program at Cal is PHENOMENAL imo. Every class I’ve taken I’ve learned so much and at such great detail. Now, this could be a universal thing with CS in general I suppose, but I can say after taking CS courses at Cal, I can see why people say it is a top program and I can see why software engineers from Cal are valued highly. Also, like someone said, the professors at Cal are superb and well known. One way I’d recommend getting a good letter of recommendation from them is to eventually become a TA for a course. As a bonus, TAs get free tuition.</p>

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<p>@xfer123…</p>

<p>thanks a lotttttttttttt dude. it was indeed very helpful. Like you said your friend with 2.8 gpa got a GPA at apple, which is great BUT do u think he will have a shot at the graduate program at MIT, Stanford, Cornell, Caltech even at Berkeley??? He might not. I know that GPA isn’t necessarily the most important thing for grad school but they do take it to consideration to weed out students. </p>

<p>The point i am trying to make is Cal is undoubtedly an awesome school BUT i don’t want to go to CSU or lower tier school for my graduate education. Don’t get me wrong here. When you are at the top, u only aim for better not anything lower. </p>

<p>i have a very last question, do u know any of ur friend mantaining over 3.6+ in CS? because i heard the avg gpa is 2.9-3.1, which is really scary. Please let me know how the CS student at cal are doing</p>

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<p>@quantam12</p>

<p>Yea, you’re right, my friend’s friend with a 2.8 GPA probably won’t have a shot at the top grad schools you mentioned. His goals were different than yours though so everything worked out well for him. </p>

<p>I also highly agree with what you said about aiming higher. Personally I’d LIKE to go to grad school for CS but I got into the CS game too late to have the resume to get me into a top grad school. I may be able to build it and attend later but that’s up in the air of course. But my point is that I pretty much feel as you said; I may be able to get into a CSU or lower grad school, but mentally I just can’t do it after attending Cal. Of course that isn’t the way one should think, but I can’t help it. </p>

<p>Your last question is hard for me to answer as I don’t know any CS majors well enough to query them about their GPA. It’s true that the average is 2.9-3.1, as the avg for most (if not all) of the CS courses fall in that range for their grade distributions as per the grading guidelines of the CS department (btw, do you happen to know the avg GPA for UCSD in CS for comparison? I’m curious and it’s definitely something to take into consideration). Also, I’m assuming you mean cumulative GPA so if you do well in your breadth courses that should help too since there’s a lot of courses there attributing to your GPA. But back to your question about maintaining a 3.6. I’ll give you my opinion on it assuming you are able to maintain a 3.6 in your other non CS related courses (so basically my opinion on maintaining a 3.6+ in only CS courses). </p>

<p>So far I’ve taken CS70, CS61ABC, and CS188. CS188 is known to be one of the easier upper divs and the 61 series and CS70 are lower division so they’re expected to be the “easier” CS courses (I say “easier” because I’m talking relative, they are not easy in of themselves and have an avg of ~2.7-2.9 as usual). I mention this because this means I haven’t taken any of the “hard” CS courses yet so maybe things don’t seem as bad as they are to me yet. But then again people fear Hilfinger’s course like the plague but it wasn’t as bad as people made it sound for sure. Anyways, just keep those things in mind as I give you my opinion. From my experience so far, I’d say it’s doable but will just take a lot of work. I mean, someone is getting those A’s after all. I would guess that the amount of students maintaining a 3.6+ would be the amount of students receiving some type of A in the CS courses which is roughly 20% (~17% in lower divs and ~23% in upper divs according to the EECS grading guidelines [Grading</a> Guidelines for Undergraduate Courses | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Policies/ugrad.grading.shtml]Grading”>Grading Guidelines for Undergraduate Courses | EECS at UC Berkeley)). That percentage isn’t too low actually. One fifth of the students with a 3.6+ actually sounds like a lot to me now that I look at it. I also want to note that even though the 61 series is not graded on a curve, the grade cut offs are made by the professors from years of experience so that the grade distribution basically follows the same distribution that would occur if they did use a curve (so essentially the classes are “pre-curved” like having 85 or 80% be an A- for example). </p>

<p>Sorry I wasn’t really able to answer your question. One thing I want to say is if you do end up choosing Cal, don’t feel intimidated or think about the average so much. Just because the average is a C+/B- doesn’t mean that you are going to get the average. I think many people feel that way and use it as an excuse to make themselves feel better and not kick it up a notch to boost their grade by studying more. Also, as is common with most things, you tend to hear feedback more from people who didn’t do so well compared to people who did do well. As a result, you only hear the bad stuff. People may sympathize with someone who didn’t do so well but no one likes to hear someone talk about their A, which is why you don’t hear that side of things as much. There’s no reason why you can’t be the student that everyone wishes they were. </p>

<p>/end pep talk</p>

<p>EDIT: Also consider if you don’t maintain the GPA you want at UCSD or it doesn’t feel like you’re being challenged enough. The latter could make you slack more and maybe even end up lowering your GPA. It’s good to consider if any of the two things I mentioned will make you wish you had gone to Cal instead. </p>

<p>Feel free to PM me if you want to ask me more detailed questions or anything.</p>

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<p>@xfer123…</p>

<p>Thank you so very much. You are really nice. It was very kind of u to write such an elaborate reply.</p>

<p>So as i was saying GPA is a huge factor to me, so i found out this about UCSD <a href=“Undergraduate Statistics”>Undergraduate Statistics. i suppose CS falls under Engineering. Let me know what you think. I really really want to go to a famous graduate school like Berkeley or MIT but if my GPA is relatively low at CAL it will definitely hurt my chances. I have to decide by today, so plz lemme know ASAP. </p>

<p>Based on your Experiences at CAL in 61ABC, CS 70, EE 42 classes do u recommend me? cuz i heard CAL try not to admit their undergrad for grad program and B.A/M.S program only take handful students, so that basically is like impossible. It is going to be hard for me reject Berkeley but if it is for the better, i am ready to do that. </p>

<p>i don’t know what to do. I don’t want to regret after going to UCSD neither do i want to ruin my chances at famous grad schools… this is hard.</p>

<p>btw, thanks a lot dude. You & @bhargav21 were very generous to me. I really can’t imagine people to be that nice to each other may be i never met someone like u guys. Thanks a lot :). I really appreciate the time u guys took to reply all the dumb q. i posed</p>

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<p>hmm I don’t know anything about the Cal not admitting undergrads thing, so I can’t really comment on that. Based on your situation, it’s hard for me to say I’d recommend Cal > UCSD. If it were purely for undergrad and not about getting into grad school after, I definitely would. </p>

<p>If the average GPA is ~3.0 at UCSD, then it seems pretty close to Cal’s. In that case, the only reason, academically, I can think of to choose UCSD > Cal is if you believe you can outperform the average UCSD students AND that you can’t outperform the average Cal student. </p>

<p>I’m tempted to recommend UCSD to you because I know some friends who went to UCD and went on to UCSF for bio related fields, so that situation is similar to yours (except they didn’t get into Cal for undergrad so they didn’t have to make the same choice). On the other hand, Cal’s CS program is so great and unfortunately I don’t know enough CS people to know any that went on to grad school after undergrad at Cal. But keep in mind that it IS possible to get A’s at Cal. It is 100% not as bad as people make it sound. I’ve had experience in both CS and MCB (pre-med) courses too and can testify. If it were me, I’d choose Cal in a heartbeat with the belief in my head that I will just work extra hard to get the grades I want. But it’s up to you. I think either choice will work out in their own way. Good luck.</p>