GPA requirements for employment?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>Suprisingly, I have to agree with your comments aalba and marc. I’ve always felt engineering jobs are not tickets to big-money (not that I care about money) - neverless, my examples of medicine and law are stock answers but terrible ones as you’ve explained.</p>

<p>However, I do disagree with your very last comment marc.</p>

<p>You assume that a person studying engineering is capable of doing well in any of the arts majors, but a person majoring in one of the arts majors is incapable of doing well in anything math or science related. Of course, employers may very well assume this (however wrong they are) - but that is a hefty assumption.</p>

<p>For example, I’m a double major - but not in math, engineering, or hard sciences.</p>

<p>However, I would say that I am one of the more capable in math or science than most on this campus. Of course, not majoring in the field it’s hard to back up. But I guess I can say that I got an 800 on the SAT Math, 36 ACT Math, 800 SAT II Math, and that senior year of high school I took both Differential Equations and Multivariable Calculus at a nearby college (yes, while still in high school) and got A’s in both classes - I breezed through problems while others struggled. Not to mention 5’s in BC Calc (I took Junior year) and AP Chem.</p>

<p>I also frequently won state wide and national math competitions while in high school. One year, 4 people out of 3,000 in my school passed a highly specialized critical thinking math test - 3 seniors and 1 sophomore. I was the sophomore.</p>

<p>Yes, it is obvious to me that I am adept at math — but studying mathematics in college seemed extremely boring and math as life or career does not interest me in the slightest. I’m not going to do something I don’t like just because I am good at it.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, due to my dual social science majors, my peers and employers might sneer at my percieved math abilities. No matter how dumb they themselves might actually be when it comes to math. It is annoying, you could say.</p>

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<p>^ gosh, what a math nerd :P</p>

<p>I’ve never heard of a minimum GPA for jobs. For most jobs, you don’t need a specific degree. Employers just want to see that you have a BA/BS, some work experience, and a work ethic. Or at least that you’ll show up at 9 am 5 days a week.</p>

<p>So it makes sense to major in whatever you want, unless you’re looking for a specific job (like engineering, nursing, architecture). The point of liberal arts - which includes math and science - is to teach you about a subject, not really to prepare you for a job. I guess the good thing about math/science degrees is that you can apply for pretty much any job that doesn’t require a skillset - the majority of jobs - and you can still apply for jobs in STEM (Science/Tech/Engineering/Math), which most people can’t. Even Humanities fields like English teach certain skills (thinking analytically, writing skills) which are practical for jobs. That doesn’t mean your knowledge of Shakespeare will come in handy, but those reading skills might. </p>

<p>Oh, and if you want to get rich, just invent something awesome, that’s what I’m planning to do.</p>

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<p>@SmithieandProud: No one is arguing we need a diverse group of people in all fields. It’s obviously good we’re not all great at engineering because we need florists and teachers too…</p>

<p>@marc93: I agree - most colleges make students take a bunch of foreign language classes, but they never make us all take advanced math. It’s not a coincidence we have a shortage of students willing to study STEM fields; they’re hard. Or that it’s common to switch from physics to history, but not vice versa. Or that the average GPA in engineering is much lower than in sociology. Rarely do I encounter someone who’s great at physics but can’t write an essay - in reality, most science majors do just fine when they take classes in the English or History dept. Or maybe the arts classes in my college is just really easy, I don’t know.</p>

<p>I think the reason social sci/humanities majors often have difficult in quantitative type classes is because they’re not used to thinking abstractly. In History, everything is so literal, memorizing all these name and dates. It’s not like that in theoretical physics. I don’t think it has to do with being dumb or lazy.</p>

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<p>

Not at all - you do realize there is an entire field of science and technology jobs which aren’t academic at all? Obviously most people with degrees in chemistry don’t end up working in academia, they end up working in industry jobs, in biotech and biomed firms, or in research/development in corporations. The difference is, they can also apply for all the same jobs as the humanities major. </p>

<p>

Not unless you want to work in those fields…for most people, those degrees would be quite useless. </p>

<p>Also, does anyone know how to quote to make it say “originally posted by ___” when you quote? I notice a lot of people do that. I just figured out how to quote by putting

[quote]
before and after the sentence, but that’s it.</p>