Graduate school is a very impressive feat for some people to accomplish and is important in regards to certain majors and what they are required to do and use their earned degree to the fullest. But we are more than our grades and out standardized test scores. We understand that you have a limited amount of spots and a TON of applications to sort through, we're just asking you give us a fair chance.
Not everyone is a 4.0 superstar that was over involved on campus and is neighbors with the governor of the state who wrote their recommendation letter. Some of us are 3.0 and 3.3 students, who are well rounded and passionate in the things we involve ourselves in and aren't doing what we do just for the resume. Life experience is so important rather than the fact someone has an A in almost every class and nothing else but that schooling. Now I'm not saying having a high GPA is bad, what I'm saying is having an average GPA and involvement on campus and in the community shouldn't be thrown away because they aren't in a 3.8 to 4.0 range.
To all the people out there with the 4.0s and huge amounts of involvement I commend you because that truly is remarkable, I hope you made the best of your college experience and you deserve to get into whatever program you desire. But to the people with the 3.2s and the 2.9s who worked so hard and got involved in everything that they loved to do and made an impact on the campus or in the community, I think we deserve a fair shot too. We've put countless hours into executive boards for clubs, volunteering, shadowing our fields, and overall campus betterment, and because aren't perfect in our classes, our applications get trashed because there are people with higher GPAs. There are fields that are competitive, yes, but I'd rather a person who was a 3.4 with tons of experience in regards to the field working with me or for the community than the 4.0 student who did nothing except get a 4.0.
We also get that due to the competitive nature of some fields a 1.9 or 2.4 just doesn't cut it in some fields. But a 3.0 is a B average, and that shouldn't be looked at as a bad thing. Not all of us are A+ students and shouldn't be faulted as such. If a Job search can sort through applicants and spend approximately 30 seconds on each resume, can't you look at our resumes as a factor too? I'm not saying everyone will make it to the interview, but just a peek beyond our grades and standardized tests would make us feel a little better.
The graduate school search for a program is stressful for everyone, but it's hard to judge passion, talent, and practical applications based on a sheet of paper because we might have rocked all the practical portions and bombed the test because our professors wanted word for word definitions. There is no such thing as a textbook case in any field or profession, there's always something you're going to need to improvise, and that might just be what I'm best at.
You can't judge a book by its cover, so why judge based on just our transcript?
