<p>What is the ideal GPA for a first year Chem or Bio Engineering major? </p>
<p>There really isn’t an “ideal” GPA. If your GPA is below a 3, after your first year, you need to rethink your study habits or major. Lots of first year engineers turn into 2nd year business majors :)</p>
<p>Bio(medical) Engineering typically requires a higher than average (for engineering) GPA, as a BS is not viewed as terminal degree (an exception for engineering majors). To be employable in this field you’ll need a MS (or to go on to med school, law school, etc.). For that reason you would want a GPA over 3.5 your first year, to stay on track. </p>
<p>Last summer when my son was filling out on line applications for internships, they actually had the question on the first page or so “Do you have a GPA over 3.0?” Clearly, you were done with application if you said,“No”.</p>
<p>“Ideal” GPA is a 4.0, but that is not a realistic expectation for most students.</p>
<p>But it appears that there is a sharp jump at 3.0 in terms of ability to get interviews for internships and post-graduation jobs, since that seems to be a popular cut-off for interviewing candidates. There may be smaller jumps at other GPA levels (e.g. 3.5, 3.7, etc.) that some employers use as cut-offs.</p>
<p>From my experience, the “ideal” GPA is not 4.0, as many employers will have severe biases against you, but rather 3.8. </p>
<p>However, I think most stereotypes associated with 4.0 GPAs are justified. You don’t get that high by being smarter than everyone else, but by taking fewer risks, learning less difficult material, etc. Not a good trait to have. The smartest engineering students I knew had a GPA higher than almost anyone else but it was not 4.0.</p>
<p>“You don’t get that high by being smarter than everyone else,” - Being smart AND working very hard is what yielded 4.0 for a few (very few) students at my STEM school. The coursework was pretty standard - the did not have less difficult material. </p>
<p>I will admit to gaming the system in my favor to maintain a 4.0 for 7 semesters such as optimizing semester schedules to balance stem/gened/lab loads, choosing professors with good reviews (note this does not necessarily mean “easy”), and also utilizing any and all resources to learn the material (solutions manual to check work, studying past tests questions). I also attribute a lot of my success to tutoring other students since practicing explaining the material to other students in different/digestible ways forced me to understand the material better. I am speaking in past tense because I got an A- this past semester, but I’ve been going through a divorce/custody battle since august and that particular class midterm was an unfortunate casualty of bad timing (got a 44/100) .</p>
<p>However when push came to shove I never backed down from challenging coursework and/hard professors. In fact the most rewarding classes I’ve had so far were traditionally considered hard subjects with brilliant but brutal professors (organic chemistry, computational astrophysics, etc). </p>
<p>I did a rough head count of people who garnered summa cum laude (top 2% ) in last year’s graduating engineers (yes I played the video for an hour while eating lunch). I was surprised that the majority were electrical or computer engineering majors, and usually those who also doubled in math. My conclusion is that in fact those with the highest gpa’s are actually those who study the hard stuff, not project management…</p>
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<p>The only 4.0 GPA student I knew in college was a genuinely smart engineering major who did not shy away from taking difficult courses, was disciplined in studying but had time for social activities, and had more A+ than A grades.</p>
<p>If you can get a 4.0 in Engineering, that’s fantastic. :)</p>
<p>Heck, anything over a 3.0 is wonderful. :)</p>
<p>However, don’t sacrifice internships, co-ops, design projects, research or other outside EC’s for that 4.0.You want something on that first resume that show’s you’re a team player with decent social skills (because the interviewer will focus his/her questions around skills, social and engineering). </p>
<p>@NeoDymium, sounds like you have “severe biases” against 4.0 engineers as well. </p>
<p>There is in fact a stereotype that works against students with a 4.0. The stereotype is that those students do nothing but study and have no interpersonal skills. My son actually had employers tell him that they did not like to hire 4.0s because they were not able to “think outside the box” and were not well rounded enough. Does that make sense? A student with one B would be a great hire, but a student with no Bs is defective?</p>
<p>From my experience, above a 3.5 is excellent for job hunting. Between a 3.0 and a 3.5 is also good. Your resume must also show quality ECs. Employers and grad school admission offices also know and take into account which schools (like Purdue) do not have grade inflation and therefore have overall lower GPAs. If you have a 4.0, congrats! But be prepared - you may have to overcome the ignorance (and sour grapes attitude) of an insecure interviewer who did not have a 4.0! (Lucky for me that having a 4.0 was never an issue). :-j </p>
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<p>It sure sounds like bias, and I would have thought that you were right a few years ago, but experience has shown that what seems like sour grapes on the part of the employers is usually justified. It isn’t a universal rule, but what I’ve noticed is that people who care about their 4.0’s are usually those who ask what classes are the easiest to meet requirements rather than what classes they will learn most from, who cheat and/or use dubious methods in their courses, and who just in general value the number more than what that number is intended to represent. It is hopefully understandable that I have little respect for that crowd.</p>
<p>That said, for the smartest students in any given major, getting anything but an A (even if they have, say, 6-7 difficult classes per semester) is almost a fluke; they rarely got it because they didn’t understand the material, those B’s or C’s are usually the result of some form of bad luck. It is conceivable that someone could simply get lucky enough not to have any such bad luck for a few semesters in a row, which would definitely get them a 4.0. But given that someone has a 4.0, it is much more likely that that someone received it through less-than-honorable means than that they were simply good enough to push themselves to their limits and come out unscathed.</p>
<p>Some employers certainly have their own insecurities. But as a rule of thumb, most hiring managers I’ve known have little to fear from someone who is no less than a decade away from being able to take their own job, and they are well aware of that fact. </p>
<p>My son’s GPA just dropped to 3.992. Should he change his resume to remove the dreaded 4.0?</p>
<p>This is something I never really understood.</p>
<p>I have a 3.92 (at Purdue, Civil Eng). I have 4 co-ops (will have 5 by the time I graduate). I completed a design project freshman year, I’ve been active in various ambassadorship roles (unfortunately constantly being away on co-op did limit how involved I could be in my ECs), and I’ll be working part time in my professors’ lab next semester.</p>
<p>Is the near 4.0 GPA the deal breaker, or is it the lack of ECs and lack of certain social skills that is the true deal breaker? It’s unfortunate that poor attributes are attributed ot the 4.0 GPA, rather than being a detriment that stands by itself.</p>
<p>I’m curious Seirsly. How did do that many coops while attending school. A coop usually takes the place of a semester or a quarter? Is the program a 5 year program?</p>
<p>I don’t buy the argument that people who try to maintain their 4.0 take easy courses or do the bare minimum. In any engineering curriculum there are eventually going to be hard courses that cannot be avoided. If a student is has not paid their dues before coming into such a course then it is unlikely they will be able to bs their way through with an A, especially junior/senior years when their schedule by definition juggles 3-5 stem classes. I made it through calc II without missing a single quiz or exam question because I worked my ass off in that class. That level of understanding has paid dividends in courses like differential equations, dynamics, and upper level physics courses. </p>
<p>This is also somewhat dependent on what school you go to. Yes math is math, physics is physics, etc., but how you are graded is not correlated between programs. It’s really only relevant amongst your peers at your institution. Last time I checked, HMC had graduated five 4.0 students since their inception. That’s less than one per decade. I’m sure there are other schools that graduate 5 or more 4.0 students per class. </p>
<p>@Lakemom </p>
<p>This explains everything better than I could: <a href=“Office of Professional Practice - Purdue University”>Office of Professional Practice - Purdue University;
<p>I’ve known for a long time that HMC had almost no 4.0. What surprised me was that at my DD’s CU (Colorado) graduation of 6000 students of ALL majors… only three students had perfect 4.0 GPA. </p>
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<p>Well, unless you are some kind of superhuman, most students who get 4.0’s in an engineering program are sacrificing other areas of their lives to obtain that extraordinary GPA. Usually, the first things to go when becoming a perfect student are social and other life-skills. There’s simply not enough time in the day to do everything, and be perfect at everything.</p>
<p>Interesting Seirsly. Thanks for the link!</p>