how do you explain a weak GPA?

Honestly, the answer is it depends. If you're 5 or 6 years removed from undergrad, and you have a great record of performance, and you have a high GMAT, there really isn't a great need to explain your gpa unless its just awful, I'd say under a 2.5. That would especially go if you had a difficult undergrad degree, i.e. engineering.

If you only have 1 year of work experience, and had a weak gpa, its more difficult. If you worked full time, or did collegiate athletics, site that as a reason. Really, you don't want to focus on the bad part of your application. I would mention it briefly in one of your other essays that is talking about the strong parts of your background, speaking about what you've learned from that experience. If you lost interest in your major, talk about understanding how important doing something your passionate about is. If it was a difficult major, talk about how you like to challenge yourself. If you worked, talk about how that made you more responsible and that the trade off was either eat food or get a high gpa, and food was more important. Seriously though, if you're scoring in the 99th percentile on the GMAT, and you are a good performer at work, great extra curriculars, good essays, good recs, the gpa isn't that important anymore. Remember its only one part of the application, and not everyone getting into the top schools is amazing at all of them.

I speak from experience. I had a 2.88 gpa in undergrad, chemical engineering. GMAT 760. You can get into good schools, just make everything else great.

Since I have a situation similar to you, I guess I can jump in. First off what most people suggest is that you should make sure all your other parts of your applications is strong, IE strong GMAT, strong work experience, strong extra cirriculars. If you are just out of school, you may want to wait a little bit so that you get some distance from your grades. Also you can try to take some classes, go for classes that are from well known institutions with course known to be rigirous/business related yet you can get an A in.

In your essays you should highlight you strengths and try to tackle why you're GPA is weak in the optional essay unless specifically asked elsewhere in the application. For optional essay, you should try not to focus the entire essay on boohoo look at me, but try to balance with "hey this is a low point in my life, but look what I have done since"

I think that's the important part, "what I have done since." Since I think if you spend too much time worrying about your GPA, you may be able to fix/explain your GPA, but never give any reason for someone to accept you.

Goodluck!

This is an over-generalization, but your GPA probably needs to be at least below 3.2 for it to be a red flag. A 3.3 with a 760 will take care of any academic concerns for any school.

Hjort, I agree with you. When converting from Argentine system in the 4.0 system I felt frustrated that my GPA was so outside schools' range. But then I did some research and figured that what I thought was a 2.4, was actually equivalent to a 3.2.

On this matter, try this link:

https://www.wes.org/gradeconversionguide/

It may help.

Cheers. L.

Course, if he hadn't, someone would have told him to search for threads and probably linked this one anyway.

I know, I have been trying to do something about my bad breath too. Is that optional essay material?


_________________

Thanks..let me know how it goes.
Yea, I'm leaning towards not mentioning it too.
I'm applying fall 09..so there's still plenty of time to think bout this.
congrats on your Duke admit !

Hi All,

I graduated in 2009 with a CGPA of 2.6 in electrical engineering from U of Toronto. The engineering program is ranked 8th in the world and 5th in North America by USNews, so the school is indeed "top" (I do realize my GPA is indeed crap, irrespective of the fact if it is from a good school or not). I am working for a solid F500 company now in an engineering role. I am being pro active in my role and my group lead has given me the entire responsibility of a part of team management for a near-future project !

One of the reasons for my low gpa is that midway through my first year my mom had an accident and I had to drop off from school to take care of her as I am the only son(I didn't mind as I was only 16 at the time I got admitted. But this incident left me shaken to see my mom in such a state). I came back next year to finish my first year. My gpa has been an upward progression from 2nd year (albeit from a very low start. 2.2 in 2nd year. 2.6 in 3rd year and 2.9 4th year for a cumulative of 2.6/4.0). Another "excuse" for my low gpa is that I wasn't really interested in engineering and wanted to study history. But I am from an Asian background and my parents would not even let me allow anywhere near history. I have excellent extra curriculars (winning university wide case competition, managing a student council, mentor for freshman kids, coaching the engineering intramural flag football team etc etc)

Ofcourse I am still a good 3-4 years from applying to B-schools (not aiming for H/S/W. I am targeting the likes of Duke/Darden or CMU. At Darden close to 10% of the students has a GPA below 3.0 and at CMU this percentage was in the high teens. So I have some hope). But when I do apply, do I still have to prove my "quant skills" since I am from an engineering background? I took 3 calculus course, a discrete mathematics course, a differential equations and linear algebra course and a probability and statistics course. My marks range from a 60 to 95 in these courses with a few mid70s thrown in. In all my courses I was either at or above class average.

I am very confused as to what steps I should take to mitigate my low GPA. A 700+ GMAT is obviously going to be very important. I plan to take some accounting courses at a local community college to build an alternate transcript. Say I do well in these courses, would my new gpa matter or am I going to be judged primarily on my UG gpa? Is this a good idea? Or since I am an engineer I have to show adcoms my soft skills/leadership/communication skills instead?

Thank you,

enggtomba

@ emoryhopeful

good posts never miss my KUDOS! +1.

A couple of things:

1. Did you come from Europe to the US (or from another foreign country to another country?) This could be a mitigating factor. Adjustment. This only works of course if your year over year GPAs improved.

2. It wasnt terribly clear to me if your sophmore year was better than your freshman, and your junior better than your sophmore, etc. But you can use this to show improvement. Maybe, depending on your situation.

3. Can you weave in other demands? Maybe you had a full time job?

4. Are there other mitigating concerns you can think of? Death in the family?

5. Did you change majors during your stay? Did this improve your performance?

6. How does your GPA looks if you "discount" freshman year as an "adjustment period" (for example, mine jumps by almost .40)

7. Were you an economics major or math major or otherwise a "hard science"? Maybe highlight a few "hard" courses you did well in. For example, "Although my overall GPA is regrettably lower than I'd like in signficant analytical courses such as X and Y, I flourished."

8. Can you tie any particular courses you took to the school's teaching style? For example, maybe you took one that was focused on case studies rather than fundamentals and you got an A in that course. Or maybe one was focused on team projects, and you got an A in that. This experience, and the method of learning you witnessed are what have made you interested in school X.

I also have a question regarding this.

How do you explain if the grades were worse in the final undergraduate year?
My grades are very good in the first 3 years, but they are getting worse starting from the 2nd semester of 3rd year, and the final year was the worst with only 2 subjects. The main reason is I didn't like the project I was doing, and also I lost interest in studying it at that time.

any idea? certainly it is worse than improving grades, isn't it?

You got me. Maybe you can cite other circumstances? A job? A death in the family? I have no clue.

exactly the same situation for me.
I did my undergrad in Electrical engg(EE). Sometimes in the penultimate and the final year i lost interest in EE.Unfortunately in my country it's almost impossible to change major midway during the degree course. I did non credit projects in Computer Science and ignored most of the core EE subjects;which is the reason i have a good GPA in year 1 and year 2 but a terrible GPA in year 4.
Subsequently after finishing my degree i have been working in the software industry for 3 yrs(could not think of working for an Semiconductor,Telecom or core EE company).

Questions:

1) Can a high GMAT mitigate a low GPA.

2) Would it be prudent to explain these factors indicating the change of interest to the adcomm in the optional essay?

High GMAT can (and does) absolutely mitigate a low GPA. But... be forwarned here. It isnt everything. There will always be another applicant with the same numer of years of experience, same gmat and a higher gpa. But yes, it does mitigate.

I dont know if I'd suggest "lost interest" as an explanation. How will the adcom know that you wont loose interest in your MBA?

You got me there

Thanks for the reply.

I guess that's why it would be hard(if not impossible) to get into a top school with avg or below avg GPA.

Oh well..GMAT is the only hope now.

[quote="rhyme]
For Low GPA-

I read somewhere that there are certain websites/services which offer online courses(Maths,Stats,Accounting and the like) which one can do and that these services give grades and transcripts which can be used in the application as evidence that one has improved. (Ofcourse if one does well in these subjects)

Is there someone who is aware of such a course.

I am not in the US and we do not have community colleges/evening colleges where one can sign up and do additional courses.

I really do want to mitigate the GPA part somehow to have a decent shot at the good schools.

I have a good GMAT 770(50,47) -however, as rhyme rightly said, perhaps that will not be enough.

Well, with 770, I wouldn't really suffer actually. Develop some credible reasoning of why has your focus changed from courses you had to something else, kill the adcoms with cool essays - and they'll forget about the GPA. (IMHO.)

I'm doing the best i can on my essays.
Actually i started hating my major in the 3rd year itself. But our education system is so dogmatic that there is no question of changing majors. Furthermore there are no electives also.Curiously i have done well in courses which were outside my major. And right now i work in something which has no relation to what i majored in!

I think i will write down all this stuff in the optional essay.


I earnestly hope they do.
Thanks very much for your advice.

Depends on how the adcomm views view you.

If you have a 2.5 GPA and a 650 GMAT, they might think you don't have the brains for the school.... that means you have to take extra classes at the community college and get some As.

If you have a 2.5 GPA and a 780 GMAT, they might think you were lazy. You just have to spin off something about being immature blah blah and now you've changed. You have a great work ethic blah blah....