{"slug": "should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective", "title": "Should I attend a worse college for better GPA in an EA perspective?", "summary": "A student in Taiwan weighing AI risk reduction as a career goal asks whether attending a mid-tier college for a higher GPA is better than a top-tier college with grade deflation, given that U.S. graduate programs may weigh GPA more than school reputation. The student estimates a 3.8 GPA at a mid-tier school versus a 3.2 at a top-tier school, and seeks advice on the best choice from an effective altruism perspective.", "body_md": "Hello everyone,\n\nMy career goal is to reduce AI risks. If I major in CS, I could attend a top-tier college in Taiwan. In the future, I may pursue a master or PhD degree in US.\n\nHowever, according to some EAs, chasing a high GPA is mostly for signaling rather than improving my research abilities, because some college courses are irrelevant to AI risks.(I'm uncretain about this view)\n\nIn Taiwan,** a person who gets a 3.8 GPA at a mid-tier college might only get a 3.2 GPA at a top-tier college due to grade deflation.**\n\n**When applying to master’s programs and internships in the U.S., GPA seems to matter much more than the college name in Taiwan**, especially because U.S. evaluators may not know how large the difference in student ability is between top-tier and mid-tier Taiwanese schools.\n\nSo the choice may look like this:\n\nIt seems obvious that option 1 gives the weakest academic credential in the US. So** the choice may be between options 2 and 3**: whether it is worth investing around 1,000 extra hours to improve the “school name” on my resume.\n\n**What do you think is the best choice for an EA? If uncertain, what are your main cruxes?**\n\nOf course, there are still other advantages to choosing a top-tier school, such as better peers and research environment. However, these advantages seem to come at the high cost of spending more time maintaining GPA.\n\nPlease don’t aim for a rigorous answer. A one-minute gut intuition would already be very helpful. Thanks a lot for answering", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective", "canonical_source": "https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/SmjzEoCad8n7xiWAr/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea", "published_at": "2026-06-16 12:37:18+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-16 12:52:37.823166+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-policy", "ai-ethics"], "entities": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/should-i-attend-a-worse-college-for-better-gpa-in-an-ea-perspective.jsonld"}}