In lieu of GPA I ask what kind of classes they took and what were their favorites. That list is a much better indicator, I think. It also lets you gauge what kinds of questions you can reasonably ask and the types of solutions that you can expect. If someone didn&#x27;t have to study graph theory, they likely won&#x27;t see a graph theoretic answer and you shouldn&#x27;t as a question that leads heavily to that type of solution, and if someone studied a lot of combinatorics, you might see them bijecting your problem to other problems they&#x27;ve seen.