I am a senior in high school that will be attending the United States Military Academy at West Point. I am interested in becoming a mechanical engineer, but one of my fears is that if I choose this major, I will not earn a very high GPA because West Point is not an easy school and ME is not an easy major. Coming out of West Point I will have to serve in the Army for a minimum of 5 years, but I intend to do at least 9 years so that I can get an MBA and have it paid for by the Army. I plan to branch into engineering, so by the time I leave the Army I should have a minimum of 9 years of working experience in the engineering field. When I enter the civilian world, will they overlook my low GPA because I went to college so long ago and because I already have 9 years of working experience under my belt? Or will my low GPA still play a factor and make it harder for me to get a good job?
You will do little to no engineering in the Army. An MBA will all but guarantee that you won’t get an engineering job. With minimal engineering experience, your GPA will still matter.
Didn’t have any idea how different Army engineering is from civilian engineering. Since I won’t have any actual engineering experience when I leave the Army, would it be a bad idea to get an MBA? I’ve heard that people who get MBA’s before they have working experience sometimes struggle to find work.
Why assume that your GPA will be low? Your GPA is a function of how well you understand the material you are trying to learn. If you didn’t learn it, how do you expect to make a career of it?
Oh, and I was one of those managers that round filed every engineering applicant that also had their MBA’s. I was hiring engineers, not business people. So, yes, it is hard to find an engineering job with am MBA.
@balrog29, the military has a lot of jobs that require engineering knowledge, but hardly any that resemble civilian engineering. If you want to do a part-time degree while finishing your term, I would get an MS to refresh and update your skills.
That having been said, defense contractors would likely hire an officer with an engineering BS and an MBA, just not for an engineering job.
I don’t think I’ll earn a high GPA at West Point for several reasons. The cadets at WP are fairly intelligent people, but the average GPA for a class of 2010 cadet was only 2.8, even though a lot of cadets are in easy majors such as psychology and sociology. Additionally, I read that West Point uses a harder GPA scale(not sure if most colleges use this scale as well) than the one I am accustomed to: A is 4.0, A- is 3.67, B+ is 3.33, etc. There are also classes at West Point that I am required to take that I heard are literally impossible to earn a high grade in. I have to take boxing plebe(freshman) year and I have heard that the maximum grade one can earn in boxing is a B-(which equates to a 2.67), but most people earn C’s or D’s. At West Point I’ll also have to dedicate a considerable amount of time while at WP to military duties, sports and staying in shape; I can’t simply focus on my studies like I could at a regular college. Combine these factors with the fact that ME is considered one of the hardest majors at West Point and I don’t see myself attaining all that high of a GPA. I scored a 35 on the ACT and I haven’t gotten any grades lower than an ‘A’ since my freshman year, so I think I have the tools to learn ME well, just not the ability to earn a high GPA while at West Point. If I went to a regular college I am fairly confident that I would be capable of earning at least a 3.0.
there are quite a few schools where the engineering GPA averages are below 3.0. My son goes to one of them and maintains a GPA above 3.5. I asked him what distinguishes a 2.5 student from a 3.5 student. He said it’s not really smarts, it’s work ethic and organization. You have the tools to do well. Put your mind to it and you will.
As eyemgh points out, you can maintain a good GPA even if the “average” GPA isn’t stellar. Most applicants I would interview didn’t just spend time studying in college (and if they did, they probably wouldn’t pass my “plays well with others” screen). They play sports, get involved in all kinds of activities outside the classroom. I played varsity ice hockey in college. My best grades were when I was in season as it required me to be organized in my daily life to get things done on time.
Instead of wasting your time making excuses now why you won’t do well at West Point, spend time honing your study and time management skills to prepare yourself to do well and get a decent GPA.
The A=4.0, A-=3.67, etc. is the normal system that most colleges use.
I’d always take the letter grades and recompute an applicant’s GPA using that normal system. My company has a strict 3.0 min GPA that I could not bypass. I could compute a GPA based only on STEM classes, but that had to meet the 3.0 cutoff.
I don’t remember making any excuses. I remember listing the reasons that I don’t think I will achieve something because you asked me question: “Why assume that your GPA will be low?” Answering your question = making excuses? There are reasons I believe I can’t do a lot of things, that does not mean I’m making excuses.
I find it unlikely that I can become an NFL player. Why? I weigh south of 150 pounds and I’m short and slow. Is that me making excuses as well? Being realistic = making excuses?
Perhaps you are not making excuses but you are assuming something that may not, in fact happen. That is sort of making an excuse for the possibility that you might not get stellar grades. What everyone is telling you is that you probably have the capacity to do well at West Point, at the very least in your technical courses if not in the boxing. The key is putting in the work and being organized. This is no different than other rigorous engineering schools.
i also agree with the advice that you should seek a technical MS while in the service. This may open some opportunities for you in a more technical role and help you find a job when you get out.
There are cadets and Mids who make excellent grades but the Service Academies have far more requirements than normal college that cut into study time for even the most dilligent student. Formations, sports period, leadership classes, general military training, mandatory guest lectures, etc. all take time away from study. A plus is the academic support provided outside the classroom is probably on par with tutoring programs for D-1 athletes.
OP,
“I will not earn a very high GPA because West Point is not an easy school and ME is not an easy major” certainly sounds like an excuse to me.
Entering any college with a positive attitude is the first step to doing well.
What you quoted sounds like an excuse to me as well, but if you read the words before what you quoted, it says “one of my fears is that if I choose this major, I will not earn a very high GPA because West Point is not an easy school and ME is not an easy major.” it doesn’t sound like as much of an excuse, to me at least. Maybe I was making excuses without realizing it. That wasn’t my intention though, I was just trying to be realistic with myself and explain the reason for my fear.
You are probably right in that a positive attitude would help me and this thread has helped me be a bit more optimistic.
Why are you getting an MBA if your intention is to do engineering? An MBA is the kiss of death to getting an engineering job, as much if not more than a low GPA. Read the other threads in this area and you’ll see many comments to that effect, including a lot by me. Any resume that I saw that included an MBA was immediately round filed. Business and engineering are two very different fields and I saw the MBA as definite sign of a less than committed engineer.
As long as I’m asking questions; why West Point if, again, your intention is a career in engineering? Seems to me that West Point is more for those wanting to make the Army their career.
I see no problem with wanting to spend 5-10 years active military and then pursuing another career for the decades following that - this is pretty common, actually. And the service academies have decent engineering programs.
OP needs to be less pessimistic. West Point has a lot of cadets with excellent GPAs, and regardless YOU should not go to a school where you do not feel YOU can keep up. Service as a military officer will give solid, albeit specialized, management experience but won’t give engineering chops even if your job title says “engineering”. If OP wants to be an engineer, the best route is to get an engineering MS immediately prior to leaving active duty. If OP wants an MBA, he can leverage that into a business position in industry, but will have effectively ended their engineering career.
Is there really anything else to cover? Discussions of attitude and such aren’t helping anyone.
It really depends on the type of engineering job you will be assigned out of the academy. If you go into USACE, then you will get a lot of practical hands on experience managing civil engineering projects. If you go into the acquisition corp doing program management work, you’ll mostly be doing systems engineering type of work, or overseeing the work of contractors in terms of programmatics or deliverables, and going to lots of meetings and doing tons of powerpoint. But you will be very sought after by contractors (or the government) after leaving the Army, especially if you have the desired clearances, program experience and PM experience. At that point, your GPA will not matter at all. It will be all about what you did in your career up till that point. You might also look at branching into the Signal Corp for engineering jobs in computer systems, comms, cyber, etc.
Any employer that is looking at your GPA 10 years after you graduated is not worth sending your resume. Even if you don’t work in ‘pure engineering’, much of if is process engineering and that is used in all areas of civilian and military life. 10 years after graduation, your resume is going to speak to the leadership and projects on which you worked, not classes that you took in the past. For many employers, the military background will not only help for those with government contracts (vis-a-vis the clearances) but just the reputation of former military in terms of discipline and work ethic.
As for school, to a certain degree everyone at the academies is an engineer…or at least a novice. You will have a lot of support. The program demands a lot of your time, but there are also not as many of the distractions that you find on the typical college campus. You will be surrounded by a much higher percentage of dedicated teammates that will work together so you all do well. Put forth the effort and you will be rewarded. Good luck and thank you in advance for your service.
GPA might matter and it might not so much. More GPA = more options as a rule. You might be able to swing an AFIT grad school slot if every thing goes just right, for example.
Everything matters to some degree, and while GPA becomes less important than experience in the future, everything is cumulative in more ways than people understand while in high school and college. Don’t think in terms of “how can I make up for a bad GPA” but in terms of “how can I mitigate the factors that I think will lower it?”
If it’s not an easy school then it’s not easy for everyone. That’s sort of why you get a lot of respect points for managing to do well there.