Hey guys, I’m currently a junior in college with a GPA of 2.6. Majoring in Business Finance. What do you think my chances are of getting internships. I’m trying to apply to as many as possible and get as much experience and knowledge as I can before I graduate. Any tips for the application process? Please let me know youre thoughts
I had a 2.88 when I was looking for internships, and I found nothing… literally nothing, after dozens of applications. Wound up taking something described as a “marketing internship” that was really just a traveling sales job because I was desperate to have something labeled “internship” on my resume… that lasted 3 weeks before I quit and waited tables for the rest of the summer.
Ultimate result? I wound up accepting a full time offer with a legitimate company the fall of my senior year; in the four years I was at that company, at least five different other companies expressed legitimate interest in acquiring me before I finally left for greener pastures. Moral of the story is that an internship is helpful but not life-or-death, and once you graduate, your GPA gets less and less meaningful every year.
yea thats what my dad always tells me, after your first job, your gpa becomes almost the least important thing to companies haha experience. Just trying to give myself an extra boost with some experience when i graduate and interview time comes
Basically what @chrisw said. Though don’t think GPA has no impact, I’m not sure where chrisw ended up but generally, a low gpa will disqualify you from most legitimate (big name) companies due to their high volume of applications. Not because they necessarily “care” about GPA but because they need some way to narrow down their search for recruits and typically first years exiting college, have very similar resumes that it’s one of the few differentiating factors.
As for the whole internships thing, it’s just one of those things where all the “good” internships are highly competitive and due to the laws in some states, it’s not always feasible for many companies to do it. Therefore many of the ones who do offer the “good” ones are usually putting an investment into it, that you’ll just go from internship into working for them. This is especially true in business. If they wouldn’t normally hire you, they probably wouldn’t intern you.
I just wished they had more post-grad internships.
@Noteworthy I can add a little more info to my story: My GPA was still sub-3 when I was going through recruitment during the fall of my senior year; I wound up with a 3.12 to graduate, but that was irrelevant since I had secured my job by then.
I applied for my first full-time jobs over the summer of 2010 (before senior year); I actually got one interview, for a management position at a restaurant group. It was pretty cool that I got to fly to an interview in California and that I got wined and dined all throughout, but they had fears that I would go to law school after just a couple years, so I didn’t get the job.
In September of senior year (Sept., 2010), I went to career services and had them review my resume. They tore it to shreds, and I wound up completely rewriting it. After that I began applying to jobs in earnest. Stats:
Job applications: 52
1st round interviews: 7 (first was in October, last was the week before Thanksgiving)
2nd round interviews: 2 (one was in early November, the other was in late November)
Offers: 2 (one in Las Vegas, NV and one outside of Philadelphia, PA; both offers came within a day of each other, the week after Thanksgiving)
It was a HIGHLY STRESSFUL experience. Out of the 52 applications, I got explicit decline notices from only 25 or so, and one of those decline notices didn’t come for a full year after my initial application; of the 5 first round interviews I had but didn’t get to the second round, none of them contacted me to tell me I was out of consideration. Each application took about 3-4 hours (roughly 20 hours a week for 10 weeks) since I was certain to rewrite my cover letter for each position I applied to; for each interview I got, I spent 2-4 hours researching the company and the interviewers, and I spent an hour writing thoughtful follow-up/thank-you messages to each interviewer; after getting offers, I spent about 10 hours reviewing and considering the best option for me. Overall it took about 240 hours during first semester to secure a job. Add that to my courseload and extracurricular activities, and it was a rough semester!
I applied for positions in government (State department, FBI, DIA), and in retail (Macy’s, Pepsico), but mostly in consulting (management consulting, strategy consulting, technology consulting). To Noteworthy’s point, I am fairly certain that my sub-3.00 GPA got me eliminated from most of the larger companies.
Did you consider other ways of searching for an internship? I did mine in Bali at a startup which means you can get higher positions easier because they don’t have the same amount of staff big corporate companies have. Found mine through http://startmeup.careers They basically connect students with startups so you’ll always have a placement