<p>Hey all, so I transferred twice before receiving my Bachelor of Science degree. At the first school, I did terrible and was there for 50 credit hours. At the second school (community college), I did good and was there for 60 credit hours. At the third school, I did great and was there for 105 credit hours. </p>
<p>My cumulative GPA (all schools) is 3.38. My GPA for my third school is 3.75. The classes at my third school were all the most related to my major and were mostly/all upper level classes. The third school is also the best and most prestigious of them. The classes for my first school were mostly not at all related to my major and were lower level. </p>
<p>Is it ethical/acceptable to say on my resume, "Cumulative GPA = 3.75"? FWIW, when I transferred for to the third school, they wiped my GPA clean and they put the "cum laude" (3.5+GPA) honor on my diploma.</p>
<p>Let’s take it to an even greater extreme and say that a lazy student who had a 2.5 GPA his entire undergraduate career decides to transfer in the last semester of his fourth year. He gets a 4.0 GPA in that semester.</p>
<p>Is it ethical for him to say that he has a cumulative GPA of 4.0?</p>
<p>This should answer your question.</p>
<p>A 3.7 GPA on your resume is not misrepresentation since you did graduate cum-laude from your final college - the only college employers care about. I wouldn’t state “cumulative GPA” on a resume though, just: College - 3.70 GPA, Cum Laude.</p>
<p>No one really cares where you went to for your 1st and 2nd college except for grad schools. At that point, grad schools will compute your “true” cumulative GPA.</p>
<p>Orion,</p>
<p>Hey I see your point, but that case is very extreme. The majority of my undergraduate career was at the 3rd school. Also, I’m pretty sure that most colleges (including my third one) will not grant you a degree, let alone give you honors with the degree, unless you complete a minimum number of credit hours at that school. So your case with the transferring at the very end of an undergraduate career in order to misrepresent your GPA is not something that actually happens in real life. </p>
<p>So can I get a few more opinions on this? Will simply stating, “GPA: 3.75/4.00, cum laude” on my resume keep me out of trouble when employers conduct background checks into my education+GPA?</p>
<p>I’m in the same boat. I had planned to put either the more ambiguous version, something like:
3rd college
B.S. degree 3.x/4.0
Cum laude, deans list, PBK, bleh</p>
<p>Leaving college 1 and 2 off</p>
<p>Or the more qualified version:
3rd college
B.S. degree,
Institutional gpa 3.x/4.0
Cum laude, deans list, PBK, bleh</p>
<p>2nd college
A.S. degree
Institutional gpa 4.0/4.0
Valedictorian, honors, deans list, PTK, bleh</p>
<p>Leaving off 1st college as no degree was awarded</p>
<p>My employer is running a super extensive background check on me now (will check for GPA as well) and this GPA thing is starting to worry me…is this rational? Should I be worried? Here is exactly what I put on my resume:</p>
<p>“Name of Degree-granting Institution
Cumulative GPA: 3.75/4.00, cum laude, dean’s list, ect.”</p>
<p>I put cumulative because that is my total GPA for ALL classes attended at my degree-granting school. It’s not just the GPA for my major-related courses. But I guess if one takes “cumulative” to mean my averaged GPA over all three schools, I am technically lying. </p>
<p>I didn’t mean to be deceptive at all…but just starting thinking about this recently. Again, I had a really “unbalanced” undergraduate career. I did absolutely TERRIBLE at my first school (I did drugs a lot and wasn’t focused and didn’t like my initial major). THe classes though were ALL one’s not at all related to my major that I graduated with. I have a Bachelor of Science and literally all the classes there were non-science classes. </p>
<p>At my third school, I had almost all science-classes and almost all major-related classes, and these are the classes in which I averaged the 3.75 GPA.</p>
<p>Is worrying about this rational?</p>
<p>As already stated, you’re worrying about nothing. You graduated cum laude with a 3.75 GPA from XXX University; where you received your degree from is all that matters to most employers.</p>
<p>You haven’t broken any laws or committed anything unethical. But if it makes you feel better, list all the colleges you’ve ever attended and the respective GPAs for them (I don’t recommend this at all!).</p>
<p>Do you even know what the employer background check entails? Nothing about your GPA. So stop worrying.</p>
<p>SFSRules, you were right, I was worrying about nothing because I just got word yesterday that I passed the background check (including GPA). </p>
<p>I will continue to keep the 3.75 GPA on my resume for the future (or for a few more years since I’ve heard you should taken it off the resume after working for a while), but remove the cumulative part of it.</p>
<p>My university told me to list all institutions from which I have been granted a degree, and if I’m listing the GPA, use the GPA as calculated by that institution. I don’t see a problem here, as long as the resume isn’t formatted in such a way that the “cumulative GPA” doesn’t appear to be calculated from multiple schools. So as long as you’re putting the GPA on the same line as the school where that GPA was earned, I don’t see how it could be misinterpreted, with or without the word “cumulative.”</p>