I'm not sure who in here is in graduate school("grad school") or PhD school in the United States or abroad. I'm in a MA(Master of Arts) History program in my university in Texas. I've completed 3 semesters of graduate work. I've completed one semester internship at a institute/musuem place. I've been a Graduate Research Assistant at my history department also. But I'm unsure if my GPA is shit. Let me explain Fall 2014 semester my grades were B-, B, A- I had a 3.11 GPA. I mean shit happens, it was my first grad school semester. I work a little better in the Spring 2015 semester when I got a A, A-, B-. I had about a 3.4 semester GPA and bumped up my GPA to a 3.28 overall. I just completed my Fall 2015 semester and had B, B, A- so I had a 3.22 semester GPA and my overall GPA went down a little to 3.26. I'm unsure if my GPA is shit or not. I just know, that the minimum GPA to "stay" in the Graduate College at my university is 3.0. I mean anything under 3.0 is a sign for concern as I've heard. My college isn't prestigious like UT-Austin but we are in the UT system though. I'm not a dumbass, but I felt like a 3.26 is crap. I haven't failed a class, but I know I can do better. I've had good rapport with faculty members I've had classes with. My goal for the upcoming Spring 2016 semester is to get my overall GPA to a 3.4 at least. I'm close it.
3.28 is perfectly fine. And unless you're going on to a Ph.D somewhere else, GPA is pretty irrelevant anyway. Simply having the degree is what matters, and any UT school is a perfectly decent school. Also, schools expect that GPA will rise as students continue on in their program. Grad school is a different level of scholarship from undergrad, and more work is expected. So... You can always strive to improve it, but give yourself some credit for maintaining a 3.28.
I always feel hesitant to disclose my GPA to other guys or girls in my department. I feel intimidated somewhat, when I hear about a guy or girl mention they have GPAs 3.4+. Though I recall this one girl I liked who was new to the MA program, mention she barely had a 3.0 after the Spring semester and she only took one history grad course. So I doubt I'm the only guy with a GPA that's crap. I mean no one hasn't told me officially like an administrator or faculty and told me ,"(my name), your gpa is bad......." Basically the generally rule of thumb here is if you have anything above a 3.0 your "okay."
Hi scorpiontx91, A "good" GPA is very relative. It will depend very much on your degree program and what you want to do with the degree. Generally, if you don't intend to go to into a PhD program, your GPA has little relevance as long as you graduate. For that purpose, 3.28 is just fine. If you are trying to get into a PhD program, I would think that very few PhD programs would accept applicants with a 3.28 GPA given how few spots there are and how many applicants there are with a nearly perfect GPA. In my experience, there tends to be a lot of grade inflation in grad school. I recently completed a master's degree in CS with a GPA similar to yours. I spent my first year in the program taking undergrad CS courses and graduate math courses because I had no background in CS. The grades I got for the graduate CS classes ended up being slight higher than the grades I got for the undergrad classes. Of course, this may partly be because I tend to do better in a subject after I'm more educated in it. In my experience (which may be due to my school/major), this is how grades for grad school typically compare to undergrad: grad > undergrad A > A- to A A- > B to B+ B+ > C+ to B- B > C B- > C- C+ > D+ C > D C- > D- D+ > F I think this happens because: 1) You're competing against better students. Instead of curving the class average to a B, it may make sense to curve the grade to an A- because that's what the median grade might get when compared to the grades that undergrad students might get. 2) The grade requirements for grad school are higher, usually by a grade letter. Instead of averaging a C to pass, most grad schools require you to average a B. Instead of needing a D- or better to get credit for a particular class, most grad schools require you to get a C- or better to get credit for that class. By curving the grades, the professors can afford to get into really advanced course material without having to fail everyone. In my experience, the classes with the most advanced course material (by design of the professor so the students learn a lot) tend to be the courses in which the instructors will most likely used a curved grading system. As an anecdote of how difficult classes tend to have the highest grades (at least in my major/school), the professor for the first computer networks class I took intentionally make the tests so difficult that the average raw grades were about 50%, and he gave us really difficult programming assignments early in the quarter. For instance, he gave us 2 weeks to write a wireless sensor network simulator that calculates how many randomly dropped nodes are needed for what % of coverage in a certain coverage area, while requiring us to provide support for 10 different options. When telling us about the assignment, he told us that he (a PhD working at Cisco) had been thinking about that problem for a long time before he came up with the solution to calculate the output, but he expected us to write a program from scratch for it in 2 weeks with no help other than a hint of how to tackle the problem. However, he curved the grades such that the top 1/3 of the class got an A, mid 1/3 got an A-, and bottom 1/3 got lower than an A-. To get back to your GPA, is it (3.26) bad? If your goal is to graduate with the masters and get a job, no. I'm not sure about jobs related to history degrees, but most employers don't care very much about GPA so long as you graduate. Your particular skills, job experience, and how good of an impression you give during interviews would probably make a much greater difference when it comes to job opportunities.
I appreciate the comments. My university is really top-tier, despite being part of the University of Texas system. My school is growing and there is talk and talk of reaching "tier 1" which sort of is like a broken record whenever I hear it. Anyway. My MA-History program's minimum GPA to stay in the program is 3.0. I never gotten below B- in my classes. I only have earned 2 B-s, I have earned 2 Bs, 2 A-s. And I have taken two electives outside my department(Sociology and Bilingual Bicultural). I have been interested in getting a PhD with the Bilingual Bi cultural Department(BBL) at my school because the minimum GPA to apply for that PhD is 3.4. I know the chair of the department as I had taken a BBL course with her last Spring. I earned a A solid in the class, she liked me as a student. Also, I work for her as Graduate Research Assistant.
Yeah...Chip is correct that grad school GPA is a fairly irrelevant concept. It matters much more that you have the degree and where it came from. Basically, to me the translation (put to me by others) was something like: a grad school A is comparable to an undergrad A; a grad school B is comparable to an undergrad C; a grad school C is comparable to an undergrad F. I think my school only permitted two C's before dropping a person from the program. But any mix of A's and B's is fine for the degree itself. I would take a B as "I think you're doing fine" and an A as "you're doing fine and I think you could handle Ph.D. level work in this area if you wanted to."
I know UT-Austin is a bit more tougher in their standards than my school's MA History program. UT-Austin has PhD history programs and they are more harder standards. I've been busting my ass to get "decent"(it depends on who's definition) grades. My first semester GPA was 3.11(Fall 2014), 3.28(Spring 2015), 3.26(this semester-fall 2015). So I've been doing better.
There is some snobbery about GPAs in grad school. It's not as prevalent as in undergraduate school, but it's still there if one has their feelers out. It also depends on what kind of program it is and which school one is attending. Like you said, if you keep it above a 3.0, they can't mess with you. Do try to move the grades in an upward direction if possible. But you're doing fine as it is.
This response is obviously a bit late. I was going to send this message by PM instead of bumping this thread, but I forgot to check if you were a full member, and got the dreaded message saying I can't PM you. So I'm bumping this thread instead of throwing away what I wrote... It sounds like you're in good position for finishing the master's degree. As for a PhD... There are several things to consider. The minimum GPA is usually just a quick and easy way for them to eliminate candidates who they're very unlikely to accept. Occasionally, people might get into programs like these with little more than the minimum GPA, but those cases are the exception, not the norm. The fact that you're attending a good university probably helps, since the same GPA for different schools may be evaluated differently, but I'm guessing that in order to have a good chance to get into the PhD program you want, your GPA will probably need to be substantially higher than 3.4 (although I could be wrong). You can see some of the grades for accepted or rejected applicants at thegradcafe for reference. Something else to consider: What is your endgame? Why a PhD? Getting a PhD takes much longer than getting a master's, and many PhD candidates wish that they just went into their respective industry instead of getting a PhD. Unless getting a PhD in the field is crucial for working in the field, I'd highly recommend reconsidering pursuing a PhD because of all the time and pain I've been told it involves. Are you saying that you're interested in this particular PhD because it's easier to get into the program? If so, I would advise against it. My understanding is that people who don't absolutely love what they're studying tend to almost always burn out in PhD programs, and I get the impression (though I may be wrong) that you're interested in getting a PhD largely for the sake of having a PhD after your name.
