Back when i was on the adcom at Kellogg, a few colleagues and I would always wonder what the lowest admitted GPA and GMAT scores were for any given year. we knew there was no "official" GPA cutoff. meaning: we never stopped reading a file just because a GPA or GMAT score was super low. every application was read and scored from end to end, regardless of how low the GPA or GMAT was. with that said, however, there was certainly a correlation between high GPA and rate of acceptance. candds with high GPAs from strong programs were always more likely to be admitted than the opposite. but every once in awhile you'd hear about some guy with a 2.5 from a state school and a 560 GMAT getting into HBS, and no, he wasn't friends with the dean. these outliers always mystify and further complicate an outsider's understanding of the admissions process. to help dispel some of this confusion, i wrote this article:
http://www.thefirstread.com/low-gpa-can ... a-program/ in reality, it'd take an entire book to discuss how GPAs are evaluated at the top MBA programs, but hopefully this provides a concise high-level view.
best of luck to everyone this year,
-james young
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http://www.TheFirstRead.com
Former Kellogg adcom member, offering a new approach to MBA Admissions Consulting.
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