Grad School Options

[freeloader]

Without knowing what degree you want to pursue next, it really is impossible to say.  There is a huge difference in difficulty and admissions requirements in gaining admissions to the 100th ranked medical school vs the 100th ranked law school vs the 100th ranked MBA program vs the 100th ranked graduate program in education, to name just four areas of study.

Your GPA is fine to good and your school is fine for admissions to a higher ranked program; they aren’t exceptional, but certainly not bad enough to disqualify you automatically.  Depending on your field of study and the schools to which you are applying, they may or may not be sufficient, but that’s impossible to say without knowing more about you and your ambitions. Depending on the degree you want to earn, your standardized test scores (GRE, LSAT, MCAT, etc), letters of recommendation, certifications/licensure, research experience/shadowing, work experience, and/or writing samples may all figure into admissions decisions.  Different degrees prioritize those things differently. Different universities may also prioritize those differently. 

There also are differences in admissions to programs (like law, business, medicine) where students typically pay for their degrees and admissions to PhD programs where students typically have their degrees funded by the university and typically receive a living stipend. PhD admissions decisions often feel like whether or not you are in the right place at the right time. I will assume for a moment that you (or your parents) are North African. If you want to pursue a PhD in Arabic, French, anthropology/history/politics, and study North Africa, you typically want an advisor who studies something close to what you want to study. If that person is overrun with applicants and current grad students, you probably don’t stand much of a chance at being admitted. If that person wants to supervise grad students but never gets any applicants, you might be admitted despite having credentials that are well below the average stats for the program or university as a whole.  That can be true for any field of study, just picked areas that seemed potentially relevant to you. 

Finally, there are often different admissions standards for online versus in-person degrees, even for the same degree at the same university.  Some online degrees are much more selective than their on-campus equivalents, some are about the same, and some have easier admissions standards. 

TLDR; maybe(?), it depends.