Why is GPA such a big factor? How do adcoms manage to compare GPAs across school?

[Bayern]

Different universities have different grading standards. How do adcoms use the GPA as a sorting factor to admit students? Maybe they might have a lower limit of a GPA maybe of a 3.6 or 3.7 (or whatever it is), after that how do they decide that a 3.9 from one school is better than 3.7 in another school? Many people might bring in the reputation factor of the university itself, but if we ignore the students coming from top 15 research universities, there will be a lot of universities of good reputation... the national universities and the LACs... how do they possibly compare students using GPA?? To bring matters more to perspective, I come from a top 40 LAC. The grad school will definitely know my school, but they also know lots of other schools which are of good reputation. How will they sort using GPAs? How will they decide the math classes I am taking are more/less difficult than other schools, because the standard of grading cannot be similar across so many schools, and there has to be grade inflation/deflation in many places.

[asa_sl]

Originally Posted by Bayern

Different universities have different grading standards. How do adcoms use the GPA as a sorting factor to admit students? Maybe they might have a lower limit of a GPA maybe of a 3.6 or 3.7 (or whatever it is), after that how do they decide that a 3.9 from one school is better than 3.7 in another school? Many people might bring in the reputation factor of the university itself, but if we ignore the students coming from top 15 research universities, there will be a lot of universities of good reputation... the national universities and the LACs... how do they possibly compare students using GPA?? To bring matters more to perspective, I come from a top 40 LAC. The grad school will definitely know my school, but they also know lots of other schools which are of good reputation. How will they sort using GPAs? How will they decide the math classes I am taking are more/less difficult than other schools, because the standard of grading cannot be similar across so many schools, and there has to be grade inflation/deflation in many places.

thats why they are looking for good GRE score and recommendations as well.
I dont think adcoms select students only got good GPA.

[IntEcon80]

Originally Posted by Bayern

Different universities have different grading standards. How do adcoms use the GPA as a sorting factor to admit students? Maybe they might have a lower limit of a GPA maybe of a 3.6 or 3.7 (or whatever it is), after that how do they decide that a 3.9 from one school is better than 3.7 in another school? Many people might bring in the reputation factor of the university itself, but if we ignore the students coming from top 15 research universities, there will be a lot of universities of good reputation... the national universities and the LACs... how do they possibly compare students using GPA?? To bring matters more to perspective, I come from a top 40 LAC. The grad school will definitely know my school, but they also know lots of other schools which are of good reputation. How will they sort using GPAs? How will they decide the math classes I am taking are more/less difficult than other schools, because the standard of grading cannot be similar across so many schools, and there has to be grade inflation/deflation in many places.

In my opinion it makes thE Adcom's life easier. Just select those who have the highest GPAs and GREs first, then read their letter of recommendation, and then finally select the best from those. Myself, I had a very hard undergrad major, theoretical physics, and my GPA came out to only 3.2. Because of this I know ahead of time that I will be rejected at every single Top 50 school thats for sure. I have not yet met anyone here on testmagic who got in a Top 50 school with a GPA below 3.5. I wish it was not all about GPA.

[jjmann]

Sorry to hear about you IntEcon80. I hope they apply GPA inflators for majors like theoretical physics. Also, I thought it was only the top 15 programs or so which sort out applications first using the GPA and GRE lower bound, and Schools other than that goes into deep into applications and transcript, and does not throw out applications using GPA lower bound (maybe, just maybe they do it for lower GPAs like below 3.4 or sth). But still the question remains, how they really compare students' grades across schools? It seems that LOR should be the most important factor, but I dont happen what happens in reality... Anyone with an opinion, please contribute.

[apropos]

Originally Posted by IntEcon80

In my opinion it makes thE Adcom's life easier. Just select those who have the highest GPAs and GREs first, then read their letter of recommendation, and then finally select the best from those. Myself, I had a very hard undergrad major, theoretical physics, and my GPA came out to only 3.2. Because of this I know ahead of time that I will be rejected at every single Top 50 school thats for sure. I have not yet met anyone here on testmagic who got in a Top 50 school with a GPA below 3.5. I wish it was not all about GPA.

I would say that low GPA makes it very hard to get into a top 20 US program, even if you have other parameters in order. However the schools ranked below 25 should be game (note, I am talking about usnews ranking which ranks only US programs, not econphd), as long as GPA is the only weak part of your application.