What is considered a good GPA?

3.0 is a B average. Not GREAT, but good…

“Good” is pretty subjective. Good for what? Grad school? A job? Just generally?

They say 3.0 is the minimum you should have to put it on your resume, so I would say that could be considered “good”.. and @mrrich724 beat me to it.

Why not strive for a 4.0?

@Jeruba makes a good point.

A college professor once told my class something funny, and funny b/c it was so true. He said, “Why do you kids ask me what grade you need on the next test to get a passing grade in the class? If I tell you you only need a C or a D, are you going to aim to miss a certain amount of questions? Why not just do the best you can and get the best grade you can?!”

@heresjohnny I meant “good” as in good for undergrad colleges. I applied as a transfer student to various places and one school called me and said they needed my final transcripts to make an admissions decision. I just finished my semester, so naturally, I’m stressing. But I’ tried to get as close to a 4.0 as I could.

You need a 3.3 to even be in Masters programs.

4.0 is good. Shoot for that.

I have to agree with @MyNewtBoobs. Anything above a 3.3 is good, especially if you’ve taken challenging classes. Whether it’s good enough to earn you a spot as a transfer student depends on the school you’re transferring into, and how you stack up against other transfer students you’re competing against for a transfer spot.

I think a 3.5 or better is good, and a 3.0–3.4 is only better than average.

With grade inflation these days, 4.0 is the new 3.0.

It depends on who’s considering, what the student is like, and especially what school it is. Er, and what classes are being taken, and… etc.

A prep school student was talking about someone with a 6.0 GPA. Grade inflation indeed!

@Zaku That’s not grade inflation. Grade inflation is when work that would have been a B 20 years ago is now considered an A. People get 6.0 GPAs because they’re taking college classes (AP courses) in high school. This is actually grade deflation – where what would have been an A in the past is now a B or a C, or where it’s still an A, but As aren’t good enough unless they can do a little song and dance to sweeten the deal.

@MyNewtBoobs The way I heard this case, it was, “American kids almost never get a 6 in any class at my school. American kids at most get like a 4. Only the Asian kids who do nothing but study get a 6. But (an American) got a 6…”. And, “The school acts like it is this great, serious, hard prep school where all the kids have to be really smart and work a lot. But it’s really not that good or hard, and there is a ton of sex and drugs going on all the time. And there is a huge double-standard where some mostly-good kids get expelled for getting caught sneaking out past curfew, but others get caught with cocaine and get to stay, because their parents give a lot of money to the school.”

In this (depraved) context, it seemed to me that having the grades possible to go up to 6, might be getting 4’s and then talking about how they are 4.0 students, even though that isn’t even the highest grade, but people used to a 4-point grading system might likely assume that a 4 was the highest grade. Which seemed like a weird crass way to accomplish grade inflation to me, which would be fairly consistent with the other travesties I know about the school’s unfair and corrupt record and apparent mission to make rich donors’ children be attractive to colleges even though they are corrupt druggies whose academics really aren’t that great..

@Zaku What’re these 4s and 6s in this context? I never got a 4 or a 6 in a class, I got an A, B, C, D, F with +/- addons.

Just because Asians get better grades in school doesn’t mean they’ve actually absorbed the material more – there’s really quite the case to be made that being so concerned about a grade leads you to take less risks and think outside the box less than those who aren’t as concerned with grades.

@MyNewtBoobs Yes, the grades for each class are given as 0.0 to 6.0, with no letter grade. One opinion I just asked for is that a 5 is actually more like an A in a traditional prep school, and 6 is more like an “A ++” or “A super-plus-plus” or whatever.

And yes, I agree that a focus on elaborate grading systems can be counter-productive, focusing attention on something other than appreciation and development from the actual subject of the course, and/or development of the abilities and capacities used studying it.

excuse me but I think that if you have a 3.0 and above your doing well. Not everyone can have a 4.0 . I in fact have never had a 4.0 but have been able to stay at a 3.6.