Sadly, many careers now have such gate-keeping tasks, or "hoop jumping":
Medicine/MCAT, Law/LSAT, PhD/GREs, Undergrad/SAT, and for all of the above you need a high GPA, which is not a good measure because it's localized to the school and is not weighted for class difficulty.
My own story: I was pre-med at a deflationary school, I did very well on the MCAT, but my GPA was below average, so I got 0 interviews on 11 apps (thousands down the drain and years of effort too), and decided research was a better field for me than medicine.
Medicine/MCAT, Law/LSAT, PhD/GREs, Undergrad/SAT, and for all of the above you need a high GPA, which is not a good measure because it's localized to the school and is not weighted for class difficulty.
My own story: I was pre-med at a deflationary school, I did very well on the MCAT, but my GPA was below average, so I got 0 interviews on 11 apps (thousands down the drain and years of effort too), and decided research was a better field for me than medicine.