Is the results section an accurate portrayal of what admissions really look like?

[child of 2]

I'm talking about the "Results Search" Tab at the top of the page that consists of acceptance/rejetion postings. You see the GPA, GRE scores, and sometimes they have comments about things like publications and whatnot. Is this a good source? I know research and recommendations are important, but the GPA's I'm seeing are super high, and there doesn't seem to be any noticeable trends, other than I haven't seen anybody with below a 3.8 being accepted to any of the top 20 programs I've seen.

[TakeruK]

No, I think there is a large bias in the results section. I think people who do better (i.e. have higher GPAs/scores) are more likely to post their results so you are probably only seeing the top admitted students, not all of them. I think the most useful part of the results section is figuring out the times that you'd expect to hear back (and whether or not there are interviews) based on previous years.

[lilgreycells]

I would definitely echo TakeruK's comments. During my admission cycle I used the results section to let me know if the institutions I applied to had started contacting people (and tried to make sure I posted when I was contacted). Though I will say that every once in a while people like to post that they got a decision or a phone call when it is not true just to mess with folks. So a great back-up is to check your discipline's board for previous cycles. That way you might be able to get more information about the academic profile of people and when they found out about interviews or admissions decisions.