How does an A- look compared to an A?

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bishop556
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Joined: Sat May 02, 2015 6:20 pm

How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by bishop556 » Sun May 10, 2015 10:51 pm

Just out of curiosity how does an A- look compared to an A to graduate committee compared to let's say a B or B+?

kangaroo
Posts: 130
Joined: Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:31 am

Re: How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by kangaroo » Mon May 11, 2015 1:43 am

Good grief are you still on this? You f***ing listed all your grades on the other thread, is that not enough? I seriously doubt your claim of not being a troll.

And if not, you do realize you'll take at most 6-8 more classes in grad school? Grades don't even matter after the second year. No one is gonna heap any sort of praise on you if you get A+ in a class. You get judged by the research you're doing, no hand-holding like you get in classes.

damdum
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 8:48 pm

Re: How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by damdum » Mon May 11, 2015 4:17 am

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Last edited by damdum on Tue Jan 12, 2016 5:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

bishop556
Posts: 4
Joined: Sat May 02, 2015 6:20 pm

Re: How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by bishop556 » Mon May 11, 2015 4:58 am

kangaroo wrote:Good grief are you still on this? You f***ing listed all your grades on the other thread, is that not enough? I seriously doubt your claim of not being a troll.

And if not, you do realize you'll take at most 6-8 more classes in grad school? Grades don't even matter after the second year. No one is gonna heap any sort of praise on you if you get A+ in a class. You get judged by the research you're doing, no hand-holding like you get in classes.
I do not understand why you are acting the way you are. I understand that you may be annoyed, but resorting to personal attacks is pretty silly. I get it, it is kind of nonsensical to complain about a 3.95 gpa or about an A- grade. I used to think the same thing to until I saw the heap of 4.0 gpas that get rejected on this forum from the top schools. I'm sorry for being worried.

damdum
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 8:48 pm

Re: How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by damdum » Mon May 11, 2015 6:53 am

I think their point was that GPA is not the deciding factor in grad school admissions and that you're worrying too much about a very tiny difference in your GPA.

'The heap of 4.0 gpas that get rejected' does not imply that you need a near perfect GPA to get in to a grad school by any means. Look at the other profiles. There are lots of other factors that play into grad school admissions and GPA is only one of them.

TakeruK
Posts: 941
Joined: Mon Jan 02, 2012 3:05 pm

Re: How does an A- look compared to an A?

Post by TakeruK » Mon May 11, 2015 11:17 am

One A- instead of an A or instead of a B+ makes no real difference. Of course, there is a bigger difference if you say ALL your grades are A- instead of ALL your grades being A.

I am in a top 10 school and I have several B grades. In fact, I have B grades in exactly the topics I am pursuing graduate education. But those grades didn't matter because the majority of my grades were A- and above, and that I have plenty of research experience in the topics I applied to grad school for.

Grades/GPA are just one of many ways the graduate program will evaluate your application. They are looking for evidence that you can succeed in their PhD program and produce a lot of papers/results. Grades show that you have the potential to do really well, but many other things (actual research experience, strong LORs) demonstrate that you can actually do what they want you to do.

In my opinion, once you pass some minimum** that does not raise any flags, GPA/individual grades are one of the less important parts of your application. Because applications are judged holistically, you will see many people with 4.0s being rejected at schools. But if you look at these profiles, you may see other major problems with their applications (no research experience, weak LORs, didn't pick the right schools to apply to, lack of research fit, terrible interpersonal skills/attitude etc.). Sometimes, it's not evident from the profile posted (since not all information is provided).

(**I think this minimum is something like 3.0, 3.3, and 3.5, depending on the level of competitiveness of the school in question).



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