<p>My good friend was told by a hiring official from a prestigious government organization that they consider a 3.5 from a top public university (Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, etc.) to be equivalent to a 3.8 at top private schools (e.g. Stanford, Harvard, etc). I witnessed the conversation, and he said this with a straight face, making no bones about it. </p>
<p>Can’t speak for grad schools, but hey, the people who hire the smarties seem to know what’s up!</p>
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<p>We don’t care about ‘prestige’ as in USNWR prestige. Though it helps a lot for one to go to a school that is well regarded in one’s particular field or if one has an opportunity to work with heavy hitters in one’s field, even if the school itself isn’t highly regarded in general. Schools can have a fantastic X department, but a so-so Y department. </p>
<p>Sure keep your GPA up as best you can, but be good at writing standardized tests, and - I can’t emphasize this enough- get research experience! It’s great if research leads to conference papers, presentations, or maybe publications, but it serves other purposes that matter a lot. Such experience will show future schools that you have a genuine interest in research, that you can make an informed decision about a research career (you know what you are getting into), and it will enable you to work with professors in your field of interest. Those professors can guide and direct your applications to graduate school, evaluate your ability and potential to do research, and they can tell us about your ability and potential! If they are our friends, coauthors or even acquaintances, or just recognized published names in the field, that will go a long way- we trust their opinion A LOT! </p>
<p>As for patterns of grades, it very much depends on the field and subarea. We happen to care very much about one’s quantitative abilities, so prior advanced coursework and the grades obtained in quant courses matter a lot more than courses less relevant to our field. We also look for the grade pattern to tell a story - that is, do we see one is consistently weak in a particular type of course, what courses one choose, and such. And we might look more closely at the transcript if one has standardized test scores that seem unusual. But all this has to be taken with a grain of salt. It varies a lot by field, school and such. And by individual faculty of course. </p>
<p>Also keep in mind, as another poster mentioned, PhD programs are very different than professional programs. PhD programs typically deal with relatively small numbers of applicants and the selection process is done by faculty members. In contrast, professional programs with huge numbers of applicants, have teams of admission staff members who can do some or all of the selection process (and that may lead to very different selection methods).</p>
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<p>What I find quite amazing indeed is that certain people will complain about others spinning facts to make personal, inaccurate, and inappropriate points unrelated to the OP’s original point, when they were the ones who did so in the first place. For example, when the OP specifically asked for which schools besides the Ivies inflated their grades, certain posters would respond that a certain Ivy, say, Princeton, does not inflate grades - which is not only inaccurate - but is also not what the OP asked - and then complain when others don’t discuss the OP’s topic. That’s a level of irony rarely seen outside of postmodernist fiction, or perhaps the level of political discourse in Washington.</p>
<p>To be clear, I have no problem with posters shifting the topic of a thread. Those who are not interested in the shift can simply choose not to read those posts. Many threads on CC shift as a matter of course along with the flow of the conversation as certain subtopics emerge towards becoming the new topic of focus. I further note, of the last 10 posts, not a single one dealt with the OP’s question, but rather is dealing with grading standards in general and their meaning within the context of grad school admissions, which is fine by me. But I certainly won’t complain that the thread had been shifted, particularly if I had been the one who had shifted the thread in the first place.</p>
<p>But how’s this: I am actually going to answer the OP’s question now, which certain others posters never have:</p>
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<p>The most obvious example: Stanford.</p>