Why are the average GPAs at some Top 10 business schools so low?
I was amazed that the average GPA's of Top 10 b-schools are so low considering how competitive to get in. According to Poets & Quants, some of the average GPAs for 2018 were the following: Wharton - 3.60, Booth - 3.60, Ross - 3.50, Tuck - 3.49, Sloan - 3.48, and Cornell Johnson was only 3.39.
A 3.5 GPA is barely above average at most schools for undergrad and is the bare minimum to be eligible for competitive jobs. So how are the average GPA's so low at these top schools?
I'll bet any amount of money you don't go to a top school
I go to a highly ranked school, better than most. I understand that it is difficult to get a 3.5 at MIT, Princeton, etc. but most students aren't in programs as competitive as those. The average GPA at Ross is a 3.6. The cutoff for most strong IB and consulting firms are a 3.5.
Dude maybe it's because some people actually go out and party and have friends and go to events instead of studying 24/7
One reason may be that these MBA programs take a good deal of applicants from engineering programs and undergrad b-schools where past grade inflation is kept to a minimum relative to other majors/schools. That said, this may change in the upcoming years as its seems there is a greater deal of coddling on campus and an "everyone gets a trophy" mentality these days to the point where I could see GPAs inflating.
Another reason could be it's a holistic assessment and after a certain point, a higher GPA is not that important. It would be like comparing NFL receivers to Olympic sprinters. Sure, receivers need to be fast but their numbers are nowhere near as fast as Olympic sprinters. That's because they need more than speed; they need hand-eye coordination, strength, good vertical jumping ability, etc. Simply focusing on speed at the expense of other traits would be mis-prioritizing things. Same thing for MBA applicants. They need a good GMAT, strong work experience, good teamwork skills, etc. A well rounded applicant is much better than one with only a high GPA. This of course assumes doing one thing happens at the expense of another, which is subject to debate.
you forgot being an URM/female candidate in your last paragraph
Fuck the hell off dude. People have forever bitched that URM/female students are "unqualified" and "taking spots away" from more qualified students. The recent college admissions scandal shows that it was actually unqualified rich white kids who were taking spots away the whole time
Undergrad majors in Wharton's Class of 2020: 45% Humanities, 29% STEM, 26% Business Undergrad majors in MIT Sloan's Class of 2020: 24% Humanities, 40% STEM, 41% Business (thereof 21% Economics), 5% other
Most certainly the differences among schools in the same tier are almost entirely attributable to student demographics.
Besides Sloan, most MBA business schools">M7 programs have 3.6-ish average GPAs. Notable exceptions are H/S, whose average GPA is >3.7. This makes sense because they admit the largest share of gold-platted candidates in terms of (a) undergrad institution (*cough* grade inflation) and (b) first employer (who usually prefer higher GPAs, as OP correctly states). Cornell is two tiers below the MBA business schools">M7, so you'd expect their average GPA to be lower.
One more thing to OP: Stop giving a damn about the averages, they don't tell you much other than the rough ballpark of where your raw stats should be and even then you're not competing with the TFA or military types for a spot, but (presumably) with the finance types. No matter how good you are, there's a shitload of applicants with equal or better stats than yours. You better work on your story than jerking off on your undergrad GPA.
Lastly, I want to respectfully say fuck you to the person who quotes URM and women as the reason. Your argument lacks even the tiniest grain of substance, because there are hardly any differences in the programs' percentages of URM and female students, so how on earth would that explain differences in the average GPA? You just like to believe the narrative that you -- I assume a white guy -- have to work harder than anyone else. You don't. Stop being an asshole.
Quick word about your last paragraph - never applied to an MBA, nor looking at doing one. Just surprised at the number of people disclosing URM/Female when they want people to evaluate their MBA chances - thought this has a true impact, just like for undergrad applications whereby URM applicants have lower raw stats. I am sorry but these are facts - never said it was a good thing or a bad thing, rather just something to consider. If anonymised individual profiles were released it would be interesting to support my argument with empirical evidence - I just did an econometric analysis of the gender pay gap in the UK, supporting the fact that the gender pay gap exists and suggesting better policies to reduce it. Would happily PM it to you.
Whites and Asians must work much harder to get into these schools due to affirmative action policies/handicapping. This isn't up for debate, it is a fact. GPA, GMAT, and work experience requirements are materially less stringent for "minority" applicants because these schools have quotas of how many they want to admit and have to set the bar lower to hit the numbers.
Was going to write a long response to OP, but basically, this. A 3.0 in electrical engineering from MIT, hell even a 2.8, is better than a 4.0 in gender studies from Chico State.
And then, there's your performance outside of school. A low GPA who made it rain in B2B sales is better than a mid-office analyst from Stanford. True story, I met a risk analyst from Stanford at my old company. Smart guy but no real ambition or drive.
Success in business school, and business really, is almost never due to raw brainpower. I see posts like this all the time: "Should I take string theory courses to prepare for IB? Which major would be better for consulting, computer science or physics? Why do Amherst English majors have a better shot at Goldman than my state school engineering buddy?" These indicate a fundamental misunderstanding about how these industries work. High school is over, and no one cares how good you are at calculus. If you have some intellectual achievements that make you more impressive on paper, that's always a plus, but you have no edge over the other recruits by having a 1600 SAT score over their 1450.
A reasonably smart person that has a good pedigree, good social skills, good assessment of risk, and who can make good judgments of other people will go much further than the 4.0 brainiac with none of those things. This is not rocket science, this is business. It's about relationships, thoughtful decision-making, and influence. These are the things top business schools select for, so if you're trying to get into one I suggest you work on improving them.
If high GPAs at good schools and high GMATs are so easy, why are some of you so impressed with yourselves? It’s just table stakes isn’t it? What’s the point of this?
I hate dimestore psychology so I won’t suggest you’re still seeking validation now that you’re in the working world and realize there are tons of people as smart and pedigreed as you.
I hope the people who scream “Use the search function!!1!” about actual interesting topics will start saying so in these threads now that every angle of GPA is covered.
Because they are evaluating you on a wide range of factors besides your GPA. B-schools are looking for future business leaders. There are other factors besides the ability to cram until 1AM every night that drive success in business.
There are plenty of 3.7+ candidates who also meet the GMAT bar. But when you layer on professional experience (quality of firm + quality of work + promotional track record), true leadership experience, soft skills, the quality and source of professional recommendations, and the ability to show that you are goal oriented and can accomplish those goals (including how you plan to launch pre-MBA experience into your post-MBA goals), plus whether you need an MBA, that pool of candidates drops dramatically. If you are strong in all other recommendations, a high GPA will help you in b-school admissions. If you are not, it is not enough to overcome the difference.
And yes, schools look to build a diverse class. Taking out any humanitarian argument, this is practical, because they care about recruiting metrics, and hiring firms are looking to hire a diverse workforce. Hiring firms are willing to be more flexible on requirements for diverse candidates, so schools need to do the same.
While I agree broadly with your suggestion that a wide range of factors besides GPA are evaluated, I think your ordering of the importance of those factors is too idealistic.
If business schools really evaluated candidates based on the factors you mentioned in your second paragraph. MBA business schools">M7 classrooms would be filled with investment bankers, private equity guys and consultants with a relatively smaller population of engineers/programmers. These are the professions that give 20 year olds exposure to critical business issues (M&A, Capital Markets, Financial Analysis, Legal Diligence, Market Research, operating plants, building software products, etc.). Broadly speaking these fields demand its professionals be both goal-oriented (and know how to sell that) and have high GPAs (presumably high GMATs) and they provide strong professional experience (leadership, soft skills, access to quality (i.e. high level MBA grads) references)). As a practical matter, these professionals are overwhelmingly Caucasian/Asian American men. The population of professionals in those industries is larger in the United States than it is in any other country and that population (the mere existence of corporate "diversity" programs attests to) is primarily Caucasian/Asian males. I'm not saying that there aren't women or Latin/Black men in these professions but, they are fewer and further between. I'm also not saying that no other profession provides exposure to critical business issues but again, those professions are fewer and further between.
I am fresh off of campus visits to Wharton and HBS and I can tell you that the distribution in the classroom by race, sex or nationality does not reflect the distributions of the populations of those professions. The men/women split was almost 50/50. The HBS classroom had all the flags of the countries represented in the classroom and they filled up three walls. I have been an investment banker for ~6 years and I've been to a number of conferences catered to C-suite executives in the sectors I cover. The ethnic diversity of the populations at those conferences is nowhere near the level of ethnic diversity represented in those classrooms (it was honestly like the Michael Jackson Black or White music video).
Interested in exploring this further, I looked at ~200 LinkedIn profiles of current Wharton students. I recorded sex, ethnicity, international vs domestic (as determined by location of undergrad institution) and pre-MBA experience. In that random sample the M:F ratio was ~45:55 and International:Domestic ratio was ~40:60. One really fascinating thing I found was that the overwhelming majority of Domestic males came from a Private Equity or MBB Consulting background. The only exception was a guy with a SpecOps background. The international males had broader backgrounds i.e. tech sales, engineers, etc but still heavy finance. However, women, both domestic and international were all over the place with regard to pre-MBA profession. There were women with backgrounds in Marketing, non-profit work, Teaching, federal regulation, etc. My conclusion was that if you are an American male, unless you did 2+2 banking to PE or MBB Consulting, you had almost no shot of getting into Wharton but if you are a woman, you can have done whatever the hell you wanted and still gotten in. I'll caveat this by saying 200 people is only ~11% of the class size.
This is not meant to be a criticism of the MBA adcom methods. They have decided that class diversity is very important (maybe for the recruiting metrics reason you mentioned) and as such, build the class around that. But, there is a give and take between building the most "qualified" class and building the most "diverse" class. We are fooling ourselves if we think prioritizing one does not mean some sacrifice of the other and from what I learned on my visits, they are firmly entrenched in prioritizing diversity.
So true.
I remember a story from my MBA days (I went to an M7). Was at a party and met an IB recruiter who recruits at my school. We get into talking and she says my school isn't diverse. I told her that's very strange to hear, because for me it's been hands-down the most diverse environment I've been in. Almost half the class came from another country. She says "yeah but that's not the diversity I meant . . we care about four groups: female, black, latino and military". As such, my school didn't meet her standard for diversity because it was behind other schools in those categories. Meanwhile I had a ton of classmates from China and India who were some of the most interesting people I'd ever met.
The whole diversity thing has become such a joke, schools just want to check boxes to meet the standards of others, who in turn are just trying to check their own boxes as well.
It's because you fucking nerds with high GPAs don't know how to exist in a social setting and don't make it to MD or CEO because your inability to talk to someone skullfucks you