Depends on the year. I mean, they take like over 5x the students now than they did when I was there. For the time I was going, they weren't accepting transfer students like myself with anything shy of a 3.9. I think that was the lowest I saw for accepted on the stats website.

I had a 4.0 before I moved up to Seattle. I thought it was going to be a done deal but then I got some bad professors and it screwed me over. Quite unfortunate.

I don't think people need to get into top private schools. It's just a matter of how hard you want to work after college because you won't have had the same footing as those other folks.