<p>SwimSwimSwim: when I was doing BME, my school requires GPA of 3.4 and above in order to go for Master or Phd. Even if anyone has graduated with BS and with low GPA, they will not be able to continue going to grad school.</p>
<p>I have been on the honor programs and am doing Dual Degree programs with Vandy/Johns Hopkins ( I chose Vandy). The first thing, Vandy asked me was how was my GPA?..I told them about my GPA and right then I was accepted. Furthermore, they told me if my GPA was around 3.0 then I would be in big trouble. Although the programs only require 3.0 but hardly ever anyone with 3.0 would be taken.</p>
<p>So, doing engineering with 3.4 is hard but doable and lots of my friends doing BME, they all have GPA more than that.</p>
<p>Here is another thing about Low GPA and can not get a job. Posted by Hpuck35 as follows:</p>
<p>Sorry, but more bad news. The company I worked for would adverstise calling for a 3.0 min GPA but would get so many resumes that HR would just pass on the ones with something around 3.3 or 3.4 and above.</p>
<p>THEN again: to each, each own and who is stopping anyone from getting GPA cumulative 3.0?</p>
<p>Luck had nothing to do with it. The fact is there is no magic GPA, especially if you are dealing directly with hiring parties such as at a career fair. The fact that you consider that “such a low GPA” is quite astounding, actually. Sure, I could certainly have benefited from it being a bit higher, but it certainly didn’t stop me from having good job overs at above-average starting salary for my field, or many others that I knew.</p>
<p>The fact is, I had a perfectly acceptable GPA and a list of internships and other things going for me, as do many people with a GPA between 3.0 and 3.4. It was not luck, it was being a strong applicant despite failing to satisfy your arbitrary criterion. You can’t make generalizations like that. If you must pick some general “safe GPA”, 3.0 is a much better number to go with. I know plenty of people who had a sub-3.0 GPA that got jobs just fine, but that is where you started to see people falling into the less desirable jobs.</p>
<p>The only time you start looking at things like a 3.4 or 3.5 being a cutoff would be some place like Google or Intel. Even then, internships and other experiences can trump.</p>
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<p>“Probably” makes for such a compelling argument, doesn’t it? Look, cosmicfish is a valuable member of this community and is spot-on in his commentary. You don’t seem to understand it all that well though. The aerospace industry is inherently cyclical, especially on the defense side where the companies live and die by government funding, and in case you missed it, the government doesn’t have a lot of funding to hand out right now. Naturally, they would be looking at higher-profile candidates first when they have fewer jobs to go around. That does not make this the general rule, however. I could make the same comments about your ConocoPhillips anecdote.</p>
<p>Here’s the thing: it is all about supply and demand. A given company or industry has a certain demand for new engineers, and a limited supply to pick through. Very limited, in fact, if you believe the stories about STEM shortages. In fact, a company doesn’t even have the entire field of graduates from STEM degrees to choose from; just those that apply. Naturally, then, a company’s selectivity will be related to the number of job openings versus the number of applicants. Take a company like Google, for example. They have a very well-publicized, eclectic work environment, make and pay out cash hand over fist, and everyone working there seems to love it. Naturally, they get a ton of applicants and therefore have to reject a lot of them. This tends to push the GPA they look for upward.</p>
<p>Similarly, the petroleum industry is very en vogue right now, so its applications have been steadily increasing (similar to the dramatic increase in petroleum engineering enrollment of late). Naturally, it would lead to more selective hiring as the supply starts to outpace demand. I know around the time I graduated, Exxon was throwing job offers around willy nilly, while now you hear about them being much harder to get a foot in the door.</p>
<p>However, outside of the select few companies that attract giant pools of applicants due to any number of factors (salary, location, work environment, etc.), most companies have a far more limited pool of applicants to choose from, and with national average GPAs hanging in the 2.8 range, there hire a lot of people with below a 3.4, even at the “good” companies. On top of this, if you have work experience through co-ops or internships, that is worth a lot more to most companies than a numerical representation of how book-smart you are (or in many cases, how hard you studied).</p>
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<p>You seem to be confusing my position of realism with one of encouraging people to aim low. My position is actually quite the contrary. Work your butt of and get the best GPA you can; it can only help, and it does open of the door to some of those elite companies, after all. Just come in realizing that even the people in the 3.0 to 3.5 range get some really good jobs, so it isn’t like you have to destroy your personal life to succeed in engineering. In fact, while I do support shooting for the highest GPA possible, I absolutely do not advocate doing so at the expense of the rest of your life. You have to make sure you have leisure time as well or you risk burn out, in which case your 3.9 isn’t going to help much when you dropped out in your 7th semester.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the idea that you need to get this über GPA so you can get your dream job right out of school is dangerous. Very rarely to people, even with their high GPA, get their dream job right out of school. In fact, the vast majority of people switch companies several times throughout their career. Most dream jobs - or at least dream positions - require experience anyway, so you aren’t going to get it right out of school anyway in all likelihood. That isn’t to say you should work to that end - you should - but you have to realize that you probably will have to keep working for it after you graduate and that it is going to take a lot more attributes than just your GPA. You will need good experience and good interpersonal skills to boot if you want to climb the ladder.</p>
<p>So what is the takeaway from all of this? You can sum my argument up on a few key points:
There isn’t some arbitrary GPA cutoff for getting good jobs, and if there was, it would likely be closer to 3.0 than to 3.4.</p>
<p>2) Telling kids they need a 3.4 is scaring them unnecessarily in a way that could lead them not to even try engineering for fear of failing - something that would be truly sad given the need for people trained in STEM fields.</p>
<p>3) There are always companies who are exceptions to the general, and these trends are often cyclical.</p>
<p>4) You can’t expect your dream job straight out of college. It just doesn’t happen very often. Instead, work to get the best starting job you can, which should give you that much of a head start toward getting your dream job later down the road.</p>
<p>Boneh3ad: I am still in college but Hpuck35 and the other guy, recruiter from Conoco, they have been out of college with years of experience in recruiting college grads. They are the once who have posted in here about kids with 3.0 GPA will have trouble being recruited or finding J.O.B.</p>
<p>Also, cosmicfish said the same thing for Aerospace Industry that they will not take anyone with GPA hovering 3.0.</p>
<p>For me and OP, GPA 3.4 is easy…my GPA is way up there and I am not scaring anyone in fact I have said it many, many times: to each, each own…but if anyone is only able to get 3.0 GPA then they are the once who will have the problems getting a job, not me.</p>
<p>Finally, wo says Engineering is easy? and most engineering major is GPA killer. But, still lots of kids have been able to get GPA above 3.4…who is stopping them for getting 3.4?</p>
<p>Anyhow, personally, I am more comfortable looking for jobs with high GPA than with low GPA…after all, if the company has only one spot and everything is being equal then the one with higher GPA will get the job. </p>
<p>It is like comparing Kobe vs LeBron James…and Michael Jordan said: the one with five rings (Kobe) is much better than LeBron with only one ring.</p>
<p>This simply isn’t true and so far you have provided no concrete information showing it is true. If what you say is true, then only a small percentage of engineers would have jobs at graduation. Do you think this is the case? The average GPA for graduate in STEM majors tends to be in the range of 2.8 to 3.0. Some easily obtainable data would be like that at Texas A&M (<a href=“http://registrar.tamu.edu/FacultyStaff/Report/PDFReports/20121/gpac20121EN.pdf[/url]”>http://registrar.tamu.edu/FacultyStaff/Report/PDFReports/20121/gpac20121EN.pdf</a>). You can get similar data at most schools that show similar trends. The data shows that as of spring 2012, the average engineering GPA is around 3.95 and the average and that only some 26% of students were above a 3.4. In other words, what you are saying is that 74% of these students are pretty much screwed. Hiring statistics show otherwise.</p>
<p>The rest of your argument is irrelevant to what I have been saying. At no point have I said that a person shouldn’t or can’t aim for a high GPA. I have said quite the opposite.</p>
<p>Boneh3ad: Thank you for the info so STEM Majors GPA is only 2.8 and 3.0 for TEXAS only or it is also for the rest of the country?..</p>
<p>My school Tulane Univ. if someone has major in BME and is only capable getting 2.8 or 3.0 then forget about advancing to grad school, PERIOD. However, the BME Dept has lots of grad students and that mean their GPA is above 3.4 and when they graduate they will have a ball getting a job, since as per your assessment if you have 3.0 and lower, you will easily get a job?..</p>
<p>Moreover, there are three (03) people I have quoted and they all say…lemme repeat what they say: GPA 3.0 will have hard time finding J.O.B…this is not me that saying it but those three people.</p>
<p>So, I believe what those three have said…and I did not say 74% are screwed. But if they have hard times finding J.O.B then they all are screwed because of L.O.W gpa.</p>
<p>Finally, I love Michael Jordan and I believe his quote will hold: Kobe with five rings are better than LeBron with only one ring…!!!And kids with GPA 3.4 and above have better chances of getting J.O.B than those of GPA 3.0.</p>
<p>Do you think any kids with GPA of 3.4 above will have hard time finding a job? IF not then what I have been saying all along is true and that is higher GPA (above 3.4) is needed to get a job in Engineering while 3.0 is anybody’s game if not they are screwed.</p>
<p>Bye the way, you have not posted any stats for those 3.0 03 2.8 GPA how many of them got the job and not (still unemployed or how long they have been looking for J.O.B…!! Kindly, post it in here so we can make comparison. Thank you.</p>
<p>A quick check of a few other schools across the country shows similar trends. You can get the same kind of data a decent number of schools. Sometimes you have to mine for it a little bit. Feel free to look around yourself. Wisconsin, for example, has the data available but you have to check for it. Texas A&M is the third largest undergraduate engineering program by enrollment, so it is a reasonably sized sample. The only shortcoming is it is not varied across the country. I don’t have the time to compile that kind of data from all the sources, however.</p>
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<p>Yes, you have quoted three people, two of which are anonymous on the internet. None of those quotes have provided hard data of any sort. Furthermore, one of them doesn’t even support your claims and another is known for being somewhat alarmist. Meanwhile, I provided data surveying an engineering department nearly 8,000 strong.</p>
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<p>To my knowledge, there isn’t a good place to find the detailed employment data by GPA like you asked for. Those sorts of things are self-reported, so schools likely don’t have that kind of information even if you call and ask really nicely. Of course, they may have some sense of the employment statistics, but it won’t be nearly as concrete as you would like. You can go by the statistics gathered by the schools but they will usually be skewed toward optimism since unemployed people tend not to report it back to their school. Similarly, you can go by the hearsay on the internet but that will skew toward the pessimistic since it will mostly be the distraught, out of work people. There simply isn’t a good source of this data.</p>
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<p>First of all, this is a non sequitur. If people with a 3.4 never have a hard time getting a job, that has absolutely no bearing on whether people in the 3.0 to 3.4 range will have trouble. All it implies is that having a high GPA is helpful for the job hunt process, an assertion that I have agreed with all along.</p>
<p>Be that as it may, I will tell you flat out that there are definitely kids with a 3.4 who have a hard time getting a job. For one, GPA is not everything, and there are plenty of people with high GPAs but no work experience and/or no social skills that will have a reasonably hard time finding a job while that kid with a 3.2 and three internships snatches one right up. GPA is not everything and there is not always some magic cutoff. Any magic cutoff that does exist is on a company-by-company basis. There is no general rule.</p>
<p>Finally, basketball is not job searching, and a basketball player’s legacy is not the same thing as a job seeker’s qualifications. Your basketball statements don’t mean anything in this context.</p>
<p>boneh3ad is right. Someone with actual experience but a GPA on the lower end will more often than not get a job before someone with a higher GPA and no experience. Why would a company want to hire a person who is only known for being book smart but has no understanding of how industry or real engineering works?</p>
<p>The fact is, they will prefer someone who understands how engineering really works and can solve real problems (which is shown through internships, not homework and tests). If you think about it logically, it wouldn’t make sense for one’s GPA to be what companies care the most about compared to actual experience. </p>
<p>Now a high GPA will help you a lot, but this is particularly true if you have shown a passion for your area by taking on projects in clubs and learning valuable engineering skills outside of the classroom and taking part in internships and stuff like that. A person with just a high GPA and nothing else will seem like an antisocial individual with no real passion and, let’s be honest, nobody wants to hire someone like that. Fortunately people get interviews to try and save themselves if they have this situation, but still.</p>
<p>The real goal for students (at least what I feel) :
Work hard and get the highest GPA you can, but try to aim for at least a 3.0. While doing this, go have fun working on some engineering oriented projects and getting involved with an internship, coop or research. You will gain invaluable skills that will help you with a job much more than a high GPA will.</p>
<p>More to the point Swim, the info you should be seeking is the nature of the work you will eventually be doing and how satisfying/suitable it will be for you for the duration of your working life. Both fields fall in similar salary range at outset, slightly longer ed requirements before working in Pharm (6yrs PharmD if freshman entry). Do you want to create/problem solve or dispense/educate? How much flexibility might you want in work conditions? Pharmacy: part time/ full time, retail, hospital, IV/Chemo, research, academic ect., no limits geographically. The engineering major you are looking at is rather specific which might limit work choices/parameters but may provide more dynamic/interesting work experiences. Job satisfaction is equally as important as money.</p>