How Important is GPA in a Doctoral Program?

I've been musing on the idea that the GPA you earn while attaining a doctorate degree is not all that important anymore. I busted my hump earning a high GPA on my masters, but I'm not sure that it is all that relevant once you reach your terminal degree. Of course there is a minimum GPA to be able to stay in a program and I think that's usually a 3.0, what I'm wondering is whether there is any benefit to having a GPA that is higher. In other words, would a 3.95 do anything for you as opposed to a 3.0. I can't think of much.

Thoughts?

 

I think that most grad programs have a requirement for a minimum GPA. I suppose if your GPA was low enough you might not be allowed to move on to the dissertation stage.

 

Yes, I think that it is often just a 3.0, which most serious students could easily do. I'm wondering if there is any benefit for a 3.95 or 4.0 as opposed to the barely making it 3.0. Thanks for bringing that up, Kiz, I'm going to rephrase my original question.

 

Some Masters programs will allow a student to get up to two C grades. The rest should be A and B grades.

 

There is no benefit once you're past your comprehensive exams. Some programs have a minimum GPA in coursework to qualify for comprehensives. Your dissertation is what people will review and question.

 

Once you pss the comps there are the research classes and dissertation classes which were Pass/Fail at NCU. These classes did not count toward a GPA, once you passed comps the GPA was done.

 

NCU changed it up recently. The RSH classes no longer exist.
Now the school interleaves specialization courses with research methods courses that start with the BTM prefix.

After the four foundation courses the student enters into the following sequence:

Specialization Course 1
BTM8102 Business Research Methodology
Specialization Course 2
BTM8103 Research Design
Specialization Course 3
BTM8108 Qualitative Research Design
Specialization Course 4
BTM8107 Statistics II
Specialization Course 5
BTM8106 Quantitative Research Design
BTM8109 Planning Dissertation Research in Business

The COMP and DIS are pass/fail

CMP9500B Doctoral Comprehensive Examination (PhD) - 3 credit hours

**Dissertation Courses - 12 credit hours
DIS9501B Doctoral Dissertation Research I
DIS9502B Doctoral Dissertation Research II
DIS9503B Doctoral Dissertation Research III
DIS9504B Doctoral Dissertation Research IV

 

Isn't that Doctorate GPA is important to land a tenure track?

 

Publications is probably more important than GPA.

 

No. The only reason to look past the posted degree and dissertation title is to see how many areas outside your major that you might have 18 graduate hours in.

There are too many people that never get past ABD to quibble over the gpas of those that actually finished.

 

Exactly. It seems to me that getting a dissertation approved outshines any GPA you could earn, so there's not much difference between someone who earned a 3.0 or a 4.0 as long as they finished their dissertation. It just doesn't seem to matter that much anymore.

 

Scholarship and Experience gets you on the Tenure Track.

BTW - at many teaching universities, mine included, use the Boyer model of scholarship:

Boyer's model of scholarship - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

In general, GPAs only matter for graduate admission. I have never been asked to provide a GPA in my life for job applications.

As stated here, publications are worth a lot more when applying for academic work.