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How do PhD admissions weigh undergrad GPAs vs. more recent accomplishments?

In our January “how can we help you?” thread, a reader writes:

I have a question about PhD admissions screening.

Is it common for programmes to filter out applicants purely based on undergraduate GPA before the rest of the application is reviewed by the committee? I have seen many online posts claiming this happens, but I am unsure how accurate that is.

My undergraduate GPA was below 3.0, but that was over ten years ago. Since then, I completed a master’s degree and published a journal article in Synthese. I am currently waiting for PhD decisions and am worried that my old GPA may lead to an automatic rejection without consideration of the rest of my profile.

I would appreciate any insight or similar experiences.

I’d be curious to hear about this. I would hope that in the OP’s case, admissions committees would give much greater weight to the applicant’s more recent record (i.e., their publication in Synthese and GPA in their Masters program). Then again, I’ve never served on a PhD admissions committee.

Do any readers have helpful insights to share?

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2 responses to “How do PhD admissions weigh undergrad GPAs vs. more recent accomplishments?”

  1. Anonymous

    I don’t serve on the committee, but work as one of the evaluators. The idea is that masters is a lot more important than undergrad. (This is very explicit instruction.) I would probably overlook a terrible undergrad if there were an excellent master GPA. But I would also take like 5-10 seconds on the subjects taken. Like if your terrible under GPA was due to some non philosophy courses (or some philosophy courses we don’t care about), then we would add a further note like “strong where it matters.”

    A publication in an excellent journal, on the other hand, would prompt me to add an additional comment, something like “has one excellent pub(s).” The comment would be noticed by the committee.

    So I would recommend you to relax. If any institution holds your under GPA against you, you probably shouldn’t go there in the first place.

    Reply
  2. member

    I am pretty sure that it won’t be an *automatic* rejection in most places. But everything will be taken into consideration for an overall evaluation.

    Reply

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