Reply to Possible to get into a great grad school/become a prof at a highly-ranked college

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]With bad grades in college, if you do well in grad school? If yes, how bad can they be before your chances are significantly lower than a student with higher grades?

By the way, by "highly-ranked," I don't mean to look down on schools that aren't. Many schools provide a great education. My understanding is that the highly-ranked schools are able to provide better job security and pay higher salaries and benefits.

Thanks in advance! [/quote]

Say Jane Doe is a bright student with, say, a 2.7 GPA at a really good, tough school.

She has a strong interest in some topic, like geriatric care management, that's important and understudied. She's already doing good research where she is now, and the people she works with like her a lot.

She has weak grades because she did poorly freshman year, she spent too much time on research, or she got into a car accident, or came down with bad Covid-19.

Then: there's hope of her going to grad school and doing well there. She might not get into the snazziest grad school, but maybe she'll get in under the wing of some researcher who's doing important, interesting work. She'll work hard, and she won't be a professor at Stanford, but she can have a lovely career at Upper North Not Well Known State University of Some Mountain State.

But, if she has bad grads because she was a little depressed and draggy, and it's hard for her to focus, then a good grad school will probably reject her, partly because pulling her into academic life would be terrible for her.

Being an assistant professor is fine for a well-organized person who can bang out a 30-page paper no matter what.

It would be absolutely torture for a bright but depressed or anxious person who needs to do a 200-page dissertation and starts playing video games instead. Because she would have to deal with the dissertation, AND teaching undergrads, AND maybe lab work, AND dealing with faculty politics.

If Jane Doe is in that second situation, I think she'd be better off trying to improve her health, and asking for career ideas on the jobs forum, than trying to shoehorn herself into a doctoral program.
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