How important is GPA?

Question

I tried searching to find if this has already been discussed but couldn't. So I am starting a new thread. How important is GPA for B-school admissions? I have like 3.6 in grad school. If I do well in GMAT and have a good work experience do I have any shot at any of the top business schools?
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Just realized that I have posted in the wrong section. Sorry about that. I am still familiarizing myself with the forum.

coaks · Answer

You're golden with a 3.6 in grad school. Don't worry about your undergraduate GPA. Unless you have some absurdly awesome reason for the low UGPA, e.g. you raised a sibling during college or genetically engineered a high-protein vegetable strand, I wouldn't even mention it in the optional essay.

Check out this year's and last year's admit/ding thread. I don't know how low your UGPA is but there's at least one of us this year that's gotten into an international top-10 with a 1.9. There are several others, including myself, with UGPAs under 3.

With your grad school work, I think you're good. Pretty much anywhere, as long as the rest of your app is up to snuff for that school.

merkin · Answer

I would actually say the opposite. Almost everyone has a high GPA in most graduate programs (law and med excluded perhaps). Your undergrad GPA is far more relevant for business school admissions purposes, unless you have been out of school for 10 years or something. 
Graduate work will be considered, but for most candidates undergrad is the primary GPA metric. Having said that, b-school admissions are much more random than law or med given the importance of work experience, volunteerism, etc of the candidates. It's much much more than a formula, unlike law school admissions.

rhyme · Answer

I respectfully disagree. Your graduate GPA is not only a better apples to apples comparison of to how you might do in another graduate program, but also a more recent - and in some cases substantially so - metric than any undergrad GPA.

merkin · Answer

I'm speaking of course of Masters of x programs. Everyone I know who has done some generic masters program has a 4.0 or damn near it. I think ad coms recognize that, in fact I believe Montauk speaks to it in his book. Getting a masters in something like education, political science, et al is not an appropriate gauge for ability to perform in an MBA environment. An exception, as I said, would exist if you have been out of school for 10 years.

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willdo2010 · Answer

Thanks a lot guys for replying. Actually I am getting a PhD. Would be done with it in a year or so. I don't know how important GPAs are for people who already have a PhD.

GoBruin · Answer

PhD is completely different than Grad School we're talking about. With a Ph'D you do stand out enough and most schools will respect a Ph'D as in that you can handled Bschool very well. However, the question a new Ph'D studend would need to answer is WHY MBA, or more specifically, why spend all those years getting a Ph'D and applying to Bschool.

gmattest12345 · Answer

I have a 3.5 undergrad gpa, but a 3.0 in masters...will that be frowned upon?

dankur · Answer

<< more pertinent for international undergrad GPA >>

If you are international student, then it is quite likely that the adcom would not have the proper specifications to understand your undergrad school's grading system. In such situations, a (high) GMAT score is a better indicator.
Regarding grad school GPA - this might be a better indicator of your recent performance. But IMHO, a grad school GPA from an american univ is not a true indicator of one's undergrad performance (again if you are from an international undergrad program).

PranavChamp · Answer

Hi.
I'm from India and did my undergrad in Electronics & Communications Engineering with 68%. I just attended Booth admissions event in Bangalore and got to know from adcom that i can use www.wes.org to convert my percentage system to GPA system. I used this GPA calculator and got my UGPA 3.79/4.00.

I have couple of questions:
1. Is this WES iGPA calculator relevant for international students for GPA conversion? Do B School adcoms approve GPA from this calculator?

2. How you view this 3.79 GPA in terms of getting into top b school programs?

Thanks and eagerly waiting for reply.

Jeanette · Answer

my guess is that grad school GPAs are a factor that mitigates rather than replaces an undergrad GPA, much like being a mathematics major mitigates a poor GMAT. The problem with saying that a grad school GPA should "replace" an undergrad one from an admissions standpoint is that you've suddenly taken away one of the few apples-to-apples comparisons that the admissions committee has (even though GPAs vary enormously from grade inflating liberal arts colleges to stingy science and engineering schools).

I can't answer the first question, but I can try to answer this one: a 3.79 is above the averages at every business school i know of, and probably around or just below the 80th percentile of top schools.

shaselai · Answer

gpa is supposed to be equally important but who really knows? obviously top schools will attract students with high gpa so it might be "important" to differentiate... but so is the high gmat score.. I have a 2.92 UG and 3.27 G and i hate how it turned out but there's nothing i can do.... just gotta move on , do gmat and essays/interviews.

Dawgie · Answer

I think you are giong to be fine, you have a pretty good grad gpa. Regardless good luck and nice GMAT score.

madammepsychosis · Answer

So what about law school GPA? I ended up having a better GPA in law school than my UGPA, mainly b/c I actually tried in law school. My law school GPA landed me in the top 5% of my graduating class, and I graduated with magna cum laude distinction, but my UGPA was much less respectable (3.5ish from large state university with poli sci major).

Jeanette · Answer

Probably depends heavily on the school you went to. If you went to a top 20 law school, graduating in the top 5% is really impressive. If you graduated in the top 5% at a less well known school, it may still help neutralize your undergrad GPA a bit, but probably not that much. It seems to me, though, your biggest challenge will be getting a really high quant and explaining convincingly why you want an MBA.

EDIT: Oh, you said you had a 3.5 GPA. That's really unlikely to hurt you. GPAs at business schools don't tend to be all that high (e.g. H=3.67), though at the top schools those relatively lower GPAs tend to be from the top undergraduate institutions. Still, the GPA thing is not going to be very concerning to the admissions people compared to the the worry about your reasons for going, your employability after, and your quantitative skills.

tmino · Answer

Very roughly speaking I think GMAT > UGPA > Grad-GPA

Based on GMAC studies, the GMAT is a better predictor of academic performance in during the MBA than UGPA's.

https://skoolix.com/images/GMAT.JPG

Also, a school's average GMAT score is more closely looked at in rankings and by applicants than average UGPA's.

UGPA's prob outweigh Grad-GPA's because schools report their average UGPA's for rankings (not Grad-GPA's). And, as mentioned before, in specific fields everyone gets a high score (plus grad school only shows 1 year of academic performance, while college is 4 years).

Jeanette · Answer

I think you're right in ranking, but I do wonder if the correlations are a bit misleading.

The problem with a study that compares GPA to performance is that it's institution blind. That would be fine if admissions officers were institution blind too. I doubt admissions people have some sort of scientific conversion, but most likely they're going to informally or subconsciously adjust those GPAs based on institution and major. I would predict someone who got a 3.3 at CalTech in an engineering degree to do just as well or better than someone who got a 3.8 at their local state college branch in sociology.

My point is only that I imagine if you could somehow figure out a way to see the correlation between UGPA as adjusted in admissions committee members' minds and MBA grades, you'd probably come out with something that is much closer to the GMAT. After all, what an adcomm views your GPA as is what matters for admissions, especially because there's only a slight benefit to boosting absolute GPAs in the rankings.

PranavChamp · Answer

my question is : How to convert percentage system to GPA grading sys? Do adcoms use something such as iGPA of www.wes.org ?

as I'm international student. I want to know my possible GPA to find out my competitiveness in top Schools.

tmino · Answer

I think AdComs don't rely on some conversion website. They know foreign education systems quite well, especially from key markets like India. For example, knowing that an applicant graduated from IIT Delhi and was in the top tier of the class is already a good indicator of strong academic performance. It's the same in the US. A 3.8 GPA from some community college is just not the same as a 3.8 from an Ivy league school. India has the same differences in their educational system and AdComs are aware of this.

Just plugging in some percentage score from India into a website and getting a standard US GPA is kind of useless.

tmino · Answer

Jeanette,

Just reading your post now and totally agree (and in fact just posted the same point to PranavChamp). Would make sense to differentiate by tier of undergrad institution.

How important is GPA?

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