<p>What is this madness? Lol. I've been stressing about finals so much this week, and today my dad told me this. Is this at all true (I mean, I'm sure it does if you fail everything)? I'm in CS. Right now I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself about these tests (trying to get A-s up to As and Bs up to B+s) but is the stress not necessary? Is it just not like high school where it's important to get straight As? I had never heard this and assumed I had to get as close to 4.0 as possible, but reading some other threads like this it seems like as long as you're over 3.0 employers don't even care.</p>
<p>Employers care less than schools do, but they still care. Most employers will use GPA as part of the hiring decision, but it is not the only part - they are looking for passion and talent, and they know that sometimes those do not always come out in GPA. Most companies will have GPA’s below which they will not hire, and GPA’s close to that level will require some mitigating circumstances or otherwise exemplary qualifications. This level can be pretty low for some companies, but can be pretty high for others, and might be position dependent.</p>
<p>So a high GPA never hurts on its own, and can really help both to qualify for certain jobs and to improve your competitiveness in general. That having been said, you want other things as well - co-ops, professionally-related club activities, work experience, etc. Make sure that pursuit of straight A’s doesn’t keep you from doing that stuff too.</p>
<p>GPA can help in more than just getting the job - many companies use a rubrik to determine initial salary, and often include GPA as part of that calculation. I know that at least one of my offers got a significant boost because of my GPA.</p>
<p>As a last note, a year after you start a job no one will care what your GPA was… this may be what your father was talking about.</p>
<p>GPA also matters A LOT if you want to attend graduate school.</p>
<p>GPA is also very important if you want to work for very elite industries like management consulting or investment banking.</p>
<p>Your father is right. As long as it is over 3.0 most corporations do not care. What is important is your experience, interview skills etc. And I am talking about getting your first job after graduation. After that, nobody looks at your gpa anymore.</p>
<p>The only caution with the above is that the 3.0 cut-off is not universal. 3.0 is the most commonly used threshold, but some companies use 3.2 or 2.8 (and many others as well). As ickglue mentioned, for high prestige positions the cut-off is usually 3.5 or higher. Also, grad schools will look at your GPA if you have interest in that. </p>
<p>But, all-in-all, GPA is less important than most people think. For people seeking industry positions, internship or co-op experience is more important.</p>
<p>I would go as far as to say that if a graduate school has a non-degree or provisional status, taking 2 or 3 grad courses and employer reimbursement checks hitting student receivables MAY make a graduate admission office not look at undergraduate GPA.</p>
<p>I don’t want to snitch on anyone in particular :-)</p>
<p>Some schools explicitly state that policy, some tolerate it, but others will out-right tell you that won’t happen. In some schools, if you apply as a non-degree seeking post-bac they make you sign a form agreeing to not pursue graduate studies in that school in that field.</p>
<p>Though I guess you could always take graduate classes at School A then use the grades in those graduate classes to convince School B that you’re a serious student.</p>
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<p>I agree that it depends on the school. If you do a search on Cornell’s site for the words non-degree…nothing comes up and I did not really see anything that even states non-degree and/or provisional admission.</p>
<p>Columbia actually states that one can complete their graduate certificate program (which is about half of the M.S. program) and will NOT guarantee admission for the full program.</p>
<p>Overall the non-degree process is more for experienced engineers who did not exactly light up the undergraduate academics (like myself).</p>
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<p>But high GPA is often required to get those internships in the first place.</p>
<p>Yes, unless you have summer experience or relevent volunteer projects/association activities to boot.</p>
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<p>Not usually. It’s usually easier to get an internship than a full-time position at most companies… a 3.0 would be fine. I’ve even hired freshman without a GPA.</p>
<p>Rule of thumb: </p>
<p>Law school and med school: As close to a 4.0 as possible. The higher the better.<br>
pHD programs: Not as important as research experience. Maybe having a low grade in a prof’s class would limit your ability to do research with them?<br>
Engineering firms: 3.0 = okay/borderline, 3.5 = good, 3.7 = pretty good
Usually firms have a cutoff. Somewhere from 3.0 to 3.8. 3.5 is probably pretty common.</p>
<p>How woud an engineering firm view a student with a Major GPA > Overall GPA. </p>
<p>For example, Major GPA ~ 3.6 and Overall GPA ~ 3.3. </p>
<p>Do you thnk they can be considered for a 3.5 cuttoff at an engineering firm?</p>
<p>Virtually all students have a major GPA greater than their overall, so it would be seen as common. As far as the “3.5 cutoff”, I’ve never seen it that high outside of high prestige positions (banking and MBB consulting). A 3.5 GPA is top 1% in many engineering schools. </p>
<p>The most common cutoff is 3.0. That’s at least 50% of companies.</p>
<p>Wow this is still so surprising for me. I’ll probably still have to work really hard, because I’m not sure if I want to go to grad school or not, but its relieving to know that I can stop losing sleep over whether I’ll end up with a 3.7 or 3.85 for the semester lol.</p>
<p>Well, let me backpedal a little bit. It depends on the school. If you attend Texas A&M College Station, a 3.0 is fine because TAMU attracts enough top notch employers that an above average student gets plenty of visibility. Now, if you go to Texas A&M Corpus Christi, there are far fewer options for you based on the school, so you need to be one of those very top students to get visibility at good employers.</p>
<p>On a sort of unrelated note, does being female help in the post-college process (jobs and such)? I was a bit shocked to learn that at my school the major is only about 8-10% female…that seems crazy low</p>
<p>is the academic rigor at ucla engineering similar or lower to that of TAMU?</p>
<p>So a top student at a “lesser” school (say 3.8 at RIT, including a year of co-op experience) is much worse off than an average student at a top school (say 3.0 at MIT with a summer internship)?</p>
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<p>I don’t know about the other engineering areas but this it not the case in software engineering where knowing the “latest & greatest” takes precedence over most anything.</p>