<p>I was premed until halfway of my sophomore year and did i change only recently to economics. it is possible for me to graduate in 4 years, but i would like to take my time and graduate in 5 years which would also help me boost my gpa. during the recruitment process, will i be at a significant disadvantage compared to someone who has the same gpa, credentials, and is graduating in 4 years? if so, how much disadvantage?</p>
<p>bump anyone?</p>
<p>How low is your GPA?</p>
<p>other than gpa, if i graduate in 5 years in order to finish my required courses, would this be really bad, bad, or doesn't matter? a lot of people from my school, uc berkeley, dont graduate in 4 years...</p>
<p>Okay, I can't give you the answer if you don't tell us how much of a gpa boost you hope to get.</p>
<p>Not to mention that this can't be quantified anyway. It's not like someone can say if you have a 3.28 GPA that you have 18% chance of getting a job, but if you raise it to a 3.42 GPA that you would then have a 32% chance of getting a job. There was guy in my analyst class from Cal/Berkeley who graduated in five years; so I really don't think it matters as compared what you can offer the firm as a employee.</p>
<p>Yeah, you need to weigh how much benefit you actually derive from the extra year. If all you get is a somewhat higher GPA (how much can you really raise it in 1 year out of 5) then my immediate sense is that it probably wouldn't be worth it. If you can get wicked work experience in that extra year, get the presidency of a prominent organisation on campus as well as a couple of other high profile achievements during that time in addition to a significantly higher GPA, then it may well be worth doing. </p>
<p>It would help to know what your GPA is right now.</p>
<p>Any particular reason why you didn't finish all your required courses on time? If it's legitimate, then no, it probably wouldn't count against you. But, if it's because you failed a few courses and you need to retake them then I would say save your money because the banks will find out.</p>
<p>if i graduate normally in 4 years, i would be applying september or october of senior year and my gpa will be 3.50. but if i graduate in 4.5 or 5 years, i will be applying probably september or october of beginning of 5th year and in that extra 1 year i would be able to raise my gpa to 3.62. the reason i want to graduate later is cuz i was bio major until halfway of sophomore year. i now found my academic niche and am an econ major and am also considering to minor in stats. it is difficult to cram this in 4 years considering the fact that i started taking econ and stats relatively late.</p>
<p>So you actually can graduate with an econ major after 4 years? </p>
<p>Your GPA right now isn't terrible if you want to land a position with banking. You certainly won't get weeded out in the first round and Cal has some strong recruiting. But, do you have any work experience that's relevant to banking? Any internships?</p>
<p>i do have internships but graduating in 4.5 or 5 years will be that bad?? if i choose to graduate in 4 years with econ major and stats minor, it will be really tough, although not impossible.</p>
<p>is my situation legitimate karot? what is a legitimate reason? i mean i didnt know i was gonna go to finance until end of 1st semester of sophomore year. and if i take one more semester to graduate, when should i apply? beginning of 5th year?</p>
<p>I would say the difference between a 3.50 GPA vs a 3.62 GPA is virtually nonexistent in getting interviews, or at least not worth delaying graduation over.</p>
<p>if my major gpa is higher at about 3.9+ will this help me out significantly? also, count in the fact that i would have a minor and more intern+work experience if i graduate in 5 years. not only that i also want to take few upper div. math classes.
but it seems like my rather than my question being answered, im just being told not to graduate in 5 years...i just want to know how much of a disadvantage in recruitment process this will put me in.</p>
<p>Well from what I'm hearing, you already have some relevant work experience going for you, which is going to be the meat of the application.</p>
<p>If you graduate now, you say that you'll have a 3.5 GPA. Gellino hits this spot on in that 3.5 and 3.62 won't make any difference, but this is assuming that you do have the work experience.</p>
<p>There isn't going to be a disadvantage to graduating in 5 years but there certainly isn't any advantage to it. Yeah, you can stick out the extra year to bump up that GPA but the GPA issue is pretty much nonexistent. </p>
<p>Indeed, taking extra time at this point might even hurt you because you have to put down an extra year of tuition for zero added benefit. </p>
<p>From your original question, if someone graduated with your same credentials and experience in 4 years and you took 5 years, then yes, you'd be at a disadvantage against that person. </p>
<p>What internships did you do and where?</p>
<p>im not saying i will graduate with a 3.5 gpa. im saying i will be applying when i have a 3.5 gpa. dont most people apply beginning of their senior year? okay then, sorry but another question? what if i do graduate in 4 years but dont apply until after i graduate from college?</p>
<p>im not sure if my internship is relevant, but this internship is for the sake of a better internship in the future. im currently interning at korea's world trade center at the 2nd largest korean bank. the section im in specifies in international trade between large enterprises and i am allowed to participate in organizing, receiving, sending negotiation documents between those enterprises. i also learn about the processes lying behind international trade. i can also participate in other regular commercial banking sections too like giving loans, credit, etc...to be honest, im not sure how this internship is gonna help me in ibanking or consulting... it could be a stepstone to a more relavent intern/work later.. by the way i just ended my sophomore year so i will be looking for more internships in the future.</p>
<p>From what I've seen it's like this</p>
<p>0-3.49 your grades will be a hinderance and in many cases your application will be rejected because of this alone.
3.5-3.79 your grades neither help nor hurt your application.
3.8-3.99 your grades may help your application in some cases.
4.0 your grades may make up for deficiencies in other parts of your application, such as lack of quality work experience.</p>
<p>^From my experience, it's not nearly so cut and dry like that; not to mention that there's a fair amount of randomness thrown into the process.</p>
<p>Maybe, it was before the days of more recent grade inflation, but coming out of Colgate (which is maybe in the #20-25 range of recruited schools), I knew many people with GPAs under 3.5 who got BB IB analyst positions, T14 JD, T10 MBA offers, which according to this site would be very close to zero.</p>
<p>I never said it was cut and dry. I said certain grades will make getting this type of job harder, not impossible. I also said certain grades may help your application somewhat.</p>
<p>Yeah, that is generally true, although the whole thing is really very nebulous. I know when I was going through resumes deciding who we would interview it was sometimes hard to quantify why you liked one candidate better than another; you just knew you did. For the most part, I never really saw applications thrown out based solely on GPA (or at least not one as high as 3.49), even if the old 3.3 is the new 3.5. You realize pretty quickly that the difference between a 3.3 GPA and a 3.5 GPA is not going to determine who is going to be good at the job and who is not going to be good at the job. </p>
<p>Maybe in this era of more consolidation, it has become more competitive to get an IB analyst position. I wonder what has changed more in the last 20 years, people interested in analyst positions or actual analyst positions?</p>