AVERAGE HIGH SCHOOL GPA
While P&Q has long collected average high school GPA scores for the business schools we ranked, we did so to provide information for parents and students in their university search. We hadn’t directly used the metric in our ranking methodology for several years.
We added it to our ranking metrics last year and kept it for 2026. Through the years, we’ve adjusted our metrics and weights based on school feedback and changes in admission practices.
While high school GPA is a widely reported metric on college applications, it can be difficult to compare across schools. Grading systems vary significantly from one high school to another, an even more so for international students. Some schools use a traditional 4.0 unweighted scale while others apply weighted systems that award extra points for honors, AP, or IB coursework. Others use a 5-point or even a 100-point scale. A student taking a rigorous course load may have a GPA above 4.0 at one school, while a similarly strong student at another school might appear lower on an unweighted scale.
Colleges also differ in how they recalculate GPAs internally, so the “average GPA” they report often reflects an institutional methodology rather than a single, uniform standard.
Because of these differences, GPA should be understood as a directional indicator rather than a precise, apples-to-apples measure of selectivity. It provides a general sense of the academic profile of incoming students and should be looked at as a ballpark guide to admissions standards at target schools.
In our ranking, we asked schools to provide the average GPA for their incoming classes on a 4.0 scale, and whether the GPA was weighted or non-weighted. We converted weighted GPAs to a standard scale for ranking calculations, and the metric accounted for 15% of the Admissions category. The table shows the GPAs reported by each school before ranking calculations.
2026 Rank |
School |
GPA |
| 1 | University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) | 3.9 |
| 2 | University of Virginia (McIntire) | 4.0 |
| 3 | Cornell University (Dyson SC Johnson) | 3.9 |
| 4 | University of Michigan (Ross) | 3.9 |
| 5 | University of Southern California (Marshall) | 3.9 |
| 6 | New York University (Stern) | 3.9 |
| 7 | Georgetown University (McDonough) | 3.9 |
| 8 | University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | 4.4 |
| 9 | University of Notre Dame (Mendoza) | 4.3 |
| 10 | Emory University (Goizueta) | 3.8 |
| 11 | Washington University in St. Louis (Olin) | 4.2 |
| 12 | Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) | 3.9 |
| 13 | Wake Forest University | 4.3 |
| 14 | Villanova University | 3.9 |
| 15 | Georgia Institute of Technology (Scheller) | 4.1 |
| 15 | University of Illinois (Gies) | 3.9 |
| 17 | University of Richmond (Robins) | 3.8 |
| 18 | Boston University (Questrom) | 3.9 |
| 19 | University of Washington (Foster) | 3.9 |
| 20 | Northeastern University (D’Amore-McKim) | 4.2 |
| 21 | University of Wisconsin-Madison | 3.9 |
| 22 | University of Miami (Herbert) | 3.8 |
| 23 | University of Minnesota (Carlson) | 3.9 |
| 24 | William & Mary (Mason) | 3.8 |
| 25 | Southern Methodist University (Cox) | 3.8 |
| 26 | University of Pittsburgh | 4.1 |
| 27 | Binghamton University | 3.9 |
| 28 | Texas Christian University (Neeley) | 3.7 |
| 29 | Fordham University (Gabelli) | 3.6 |
| 30 | Tulane University (Freeman) | 3.6 |
| 31 | Trinity University (Neidorff) | 3.7 |
| 32 | Purdue University (Daniels) | 3.8 |
| 33 | Elon University (Love) | 4.0 |
| 34 | Lehigh University | 4.0 |
| 35 | Brigham Young University (Marriott) | 3.9 |
| 36 | University of Georgia (Terry) | 4.0 |
| 37 | Syracuse University (Whitman) | 3.8 |
| 38 | Bucknell University (Freeman) | 3.6 |
| 39 | Miami University (Farmer) | 3.9 |
| 40 | University of Colorado Boulder (Leeds) | 4.2 |
| 41 | Fairfield University (Dolan) | 3.7 |
| 42 | University of Rochester (Simon) | 3.7 |
| 43 | Providence College | 3.7 |
| 44 | Case Western Reserve University (Weatherhead) | 3.8 |
| 45 | Marquette University | 3.6 |
| 46 | University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Isenberg) | 4.2 |
| 47 | University of Tennessee (Haslam) | 4.2 |
| 48 | Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) | 3.9 |
| 49 | University of Dayton | 3.5 |
| 50 | Loyola Marymount University | 3.9 |
| 51 | Butler University (Lacy) | 3.8 |
| 52 | University of Houston (Bauer) | 3.4 |
| 53 | The Catholic University of America (Busch) | 3.4 |
| 54 | Lipscomb University | 4.0 |
| 55 | Rutgers Business School – New Brunswick | 3.5 |
| 56 | Susquehanna University (Weis) | 3.7 |
| 57 | Texas A&M University (Mays) | 3.4 |
| 58 | Seton Hall University (Stillman) | 3.6 |
| 59 | Bryant University | 3.2 |
| 60 | North Carolina State University (Poole) | 3.9 |
| 61 | Florida Southern College (Barnett) | 3.7 |
| 61 | University of Missouri-Columbia (Trulaske) | 3.8 |
| 63 | University of New Hampshire (Paul) | 3.6 |
| 64 | University of Delaware (Lerner) | 3.1 |
| 65 | University of Evansville (Schroeder) | 3.7 |
| 66 | University of St. Thomas (Opus) | 3.6 |
| 67 | The College of New Jersey | 3.6 |
| 68 | University of South Carolina (Darla Moore) | 3.6 |
| 69 | University of San Diego (Knauss) | 3.7 |
| 70 | St. John’s University (Tobin) | 3.7 |
| 71 | Rochester Institute of Technology (Saunders) | 3.6 |
| 72 | Towson University | 3.7 |
| 73 | Rutgers Business School – Newark | 3.6 |
| 74 | Marian University | 3.3 |
| 75 | Seattle University (Albers) | 3.5 |
| 76 | Christopher Newport University (Luter) | 3.7 |
| 77 | University of Connecticut | 3.1 |
| 78 | Drexel University (LeBow) | 3.7 |
| 79 | Saint Louis University (Chaifetz) | 3.4 |
| 80 | Hult International Business School | 3.2 |
| 81 | Duquesne University (Palumbo Donahue) | 3.7 |
| 82 | Roger Williams University (Gabelli) | 3.5 |
| 83 | Ohio University | 3.7 |
| 84 | University of Denver (Daniels) | 3.7 |
| 85 | Adelphi University (Willumstad) | 3.7 |
| 86 | University of Oregon (Lundquist) | 3.6 |
| 87 | Hofstra University (Zarb) | 3.7 |
| 88 | Longwood University | 3.6 |
| 89 | Texas State University (McCoy) | 3.7 |
| 90 | Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst) | 3.5 |
| 91 | Texas Tech University (Rawls) | 3.7 |
| 92 | University of Mary Washington | 3.8 |
| 93 | University of North Carolina-Wilmington (Cameron) | 4.0 |
| 94 | University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal) | 3.6 |
| 95 | Ithaca College | 3.1 |
| 96 | American University (Kogod) | 3.6 |
| 97 | Iona University (LaPenta) | 3.4 |
| 98 | University of Michigan-Dearborn | 3.6 |
| 99 | Sacred Heart University (Jack Welch) | 3.5 |
| 100 | Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Lally) | 3.4 |
| 101 | University of Kansas | 3.8 |
| 102 | University of the Pacific (Eberhardt) | 3.4 |
| 103 | San Diego State University (Fowler) | 3.8 |
| 104 | San Jose State University (Lucas) | 3.4 |
| 105 | Florida International University | 3.9 |
| 106 | Oregon State University | 3.5 |
| 107 | Stony Brook University | 3.7 |
| 108 | Northern Illinois University | 3.4 |
| 109 | University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (Lubar) | 3.5 |
| 110 | Kennesaw State University (Coles) | 3.4 |
DON’T MISS THESE STORIES IN OUR 2026 RANKING PACKAGE:
- Poets&Quants’ Best Undergraduate Business Schools Of 2026
- The Complete Methodology
- How Alumni Rate Their Undergraduate Business Degrees
- Salary, Bonus & Total Compensation Data For 2025 Grads
- Employment & Internship Rates For 2025 Graduates
- Average SAT, ACT & GPA Scores At The Top B-Schools
- Acceptance & Graduation Rates At The Top B-Schools
- Total Cost & Scholarships At P&Q’s Ranked Business Schools
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