<p>Now I hear that it's pretty hard to maintain a 4.0 GPA majoring in any school and that most employees don't differentiate that much between a 3.5 and 4.0 persay. Granted, I'm still a freshmen and I don't really want to have a nervous breakdown if I bomb a test or something.. what's a "good" GPA for above-average engineering students? If you could break it up from freshmen-junior year~ that'd be nice. I'm just a little worried..</p>
<p>I have no idea where you got the idea that a 3.5 is equivalent to 4.0. Thats like saying, if your in the top 20% its equivalent to the top 1%. In short, No.</p>
<p>But anyways, considering that a 3.0 is the average in Michigan Engineering, I would consider the following:</p>
<p>2.7 - 3.0 = pretty good [B- to B]
3.0 - 3.3 = good [B to B+]
3.3 - 3.7 = Really Good [B+ to A-]
3.7+ = Excellent/Awesome. [A- to A+]</p>
<p>oh, and breaking it down by year, I would expect the average cumulative gpa of each year to go something like this:</p>
<p>3.2 Fresh
3.1 Soph
3.0 Jun
2.9 Sen</p>
<p>so you can kindof compare yourself to that.</p>
<p>Is that yearly break down really fairly accurate? I feel way lamer if so.</p>
<p>I’ve always been told that the average freshman GPA is 2.9 for engineering.</p>
<p>3.8+ = competent and hardworking
3.5 - 3.8 = competent OR hardworking
3.0 - 3.5 = incompetent OR lazy
3.0 - = incompetent AND lazy</p>
<p>Actually, each of those should be a point down given average gpa ~2.9-30. I’m not too sure how I got the last values.</p>
<p>3.1 Fresh
3.0 Soph
2.9 Jun
2.8 Sen</p>
<p>This is my guess to the OP’s question given that as a student takes more Engineering courses, his/her cumulative gpa goes down.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Why would this be?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well first of all, this is apparent from the fact that engineering students have a lower average gpa than an LSA student, and engineering students typically take more engineering courses from year to year. </p>
<p>For instance, in a typical engineering student’s first year, they take one engineering course per semester (ENG 101/100). The average LSA gpa is 3.2 so we can conclude that their gpa is closer to the LSA average gpa (my guess is 3.1) than the Engineering average gpa (of 2.9-3.1). And so on…</p>
<p>But in terms of why, engineering courses tend to be curved much harsher than LSA courses. You can expect the curve of an Engineering course to be towards a C+/B- while almost everyone in a Psychology/Humanities course gets a B or even an A. Its slightly different for LSA science/math courses which correlates a little more with the engineering scale but is still a bit on the higher scale. </p>
<p>Of course, this is all a ‘guesstimate’ but I did put some logic behind my numbers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re discounting a lot of hidden variables that influence things. We can all agree that engineering courses are generally curved harsher than LSA courses, but that doesn’t say anything about engineers’ GPAs going down as they go on.</p>
<p>I’d say it’s the opposite. Typically people in engineering have a difficult adjustment period at the beginning - and they also take the most difficult courses, the weeders, at the beginning as well. Classes tend to get graded easier as you go on, especially as you move on towards the 400 and 500 level.</p>