<p>Many employers do not really even look at GPA to hire. What have you actually DONE in college. Your resume should discuss your work related research and experience. You need to show that you are well-rounded. Lots of good advice here for the interview, but you need to get to them first. Sometimes it is more a matter of who you know. Your profs can hook you up with people in your field. Leverage them for suggestions…of course, this assumes you have built good relationships with them. I know of great students who are virtually hated by their instructors because they come across as arrogant rather than interested in learning. Good Luck!</p>
<p>There is a common perception on these forums that GPA and/or school name is the primary factor in hiring decisions. This is generally not the case (some companies do apply a minimum GPA filter to applicants). A survey at CollegeGrad.com found that only 4% of entry level employers said that GPA was the most important factor in their hiring. The top 3 most important criteria for their hiring decisions were the student’s major, interviewing skills, and experience. The poster who resurrected this thread said he has a 3.7 GPA. It is extremely unlikely that his problem is a 3.7 GPA is too high. It’s far more likely that the criteria employers listed as most important in the survey was lacking, such as interviewing skills and/or experience.</p>
<p>Back when I applied for my first full-time job, I didn’t list my GPA on my resume. It wasn’t bad. I just didn’t list it. Nevertheless, most companies I gave my resume to at campus career fairs invited me in to interview. They were willing to make a significant investment without knowing my GPA, including cost of air travel/hotel/car rental for out of town as well as the time it takes to conduct the interviews. One company went so far as to mail me plane tickets even though I did not give them my resume and had previously told them I was not interested. While my resume did not include a GPA, it did include a large amount of relevant experience including currently working a part-time job for a tech company and previously starting my own company; relevant course work, skills, programming languages; minor awards, such as scholar-athlete and programming contest win; double co-term and finishing BS+MS in slightly under 4 years; etc. At first interviews didn’t go as well as the resume, and I did not get job offers. At the time, I was very unemotional, much more so than I am now. Some students gave me the nickname “Data” based on similarities to the Star Trek character. Eventually I learned that once I started to display more emotion and feign enthusiasm during interviews, I started to get job offers. A successful interview generally involves more than just being able to answer tech questions correctly.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Could be more like “dragging the group forward” rather than “carrying them.” I remember a group (or pair… me and one other guy) I had in one of my classes. We have 4 projects for the class. We’d make an agreement to meet and work on it at a certain time. I’d show up then, and the other guy had just done the whole project by himself already. He’s a good dude, very smart and very hard working, but, well, you know what it is. I don’t know what his GPA was, but I suspect it was in the 3.9 range. </p>
<p>The stereotype of the 4.0 student doing all the work is bothering me. In groups I keep my mouth shut until someone else asks me to do something. I absolutely avoid being the polarizing dictator. I only step into leadership if things start to fall apart (which rarely happens), otherwise I’m content to do as little work as possible in groups. Not all A students are type A.</p>
<p>I have encountered many peers in Engineering who are book smart but definitely lack in the common sense department. </p>
<p>In particular, the type of nerd who is obsessed with minor details to the point where it is either his way or the highway. I would imagine, those people wouldn’t last long in a corporate team work environment before they realize they need an attitude adjustment. </p>
<p>
I can think of more than one type of person that would have this problem.</p>
<p>I know a fair number of people who had more success listing their GPA as 3.8 than anything higher, with the exact same resume. </p>
<p>Face it, this thread demonstrates quite well that people have preconceived notions about 4.0 students. A whole lot of people want to believe that they are not well-rounded, not capable of working in a team environment, etc - it’s a matter of wounded pride mixed with legitimate concerns (I wouldn’t say that the prejudice against them is entirely unjustified). Whatever the reasons are, there is such a thing as having too high a GPA for regular work (top companies/organizations excluded).</p>
<p>If there is concern about GPA, I suppose you could list something like … “Dean’s list - semesters” </p>
<p>There might be some preconceived notions…but I have never had a problem getting an internship and even job offers from those internships. Last week alone I had 7 interviews. </p>
<p>I have a feeling it’s more a function of industry than gpa being too high. </p>
<p>
That looks even more suspicious.
Understating GPA is what I’ve found works best.</p>
<p>
I don’t think most potential employers will be that happy if you start your relationship off by lying to them.</p>
<p>Seriously, I had a 3.85 GPA when I graduated, and knew people with GPAs up to 3.98. None of them had any real trouble getting internships, grad school offers, or jobs. They didn’t get EVERY internship, grad school offer, or job they applied for, but that isn’t really the goal, is it?</p>
<p>The worst case for someone with a high GPA is that they have some pre-conceived notions going in. Dispel them, and you look awesome. And if you can’t, ever, then you are apparently the cause of those stereotypes.</p>
<p>
It is an embellishment, like anything else on a resume. It’s not a straight up lie, because you really do have at least that high of a GPA - overstating it is more dishonest. You can complain about people that leave their GPA off, because that’s pretty much the same thing as understating.
The resume itself is inherently dishonest, what with the fact that by design you hide anything unflattering but true about yourself and you overinflate your value elsewhere. That’s just the name of the game. Not like employers are in any way particularly honest or loyal to you, if you want to consider this as a moral issue.</p>
<p>
I, too, like to start with a handicap when going into a job search.
First impressions are very meaningful - the fact that your GPA instantly gives you an awful first impression in many ways is not a good start. Right off the bat, you have to prove yourself in a way that you wouldn’t if you had a slightly lower GPA. Fair? No. Does this happen? Most definitely.
Not to mention that you might not even get invited to an interview if they see your GPA as being too high to be worth it.</p>
<p>
I’ve known plenty of people with high GPAs as well, all of whom eventually basically ended up where they wanted to. Most of them had better luck playing down their academic achievements than not. </p>
<p>LMAO, your HIGH ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT gives “an awful first impression.” This thread is absolutely ridiculous. </p>
<p>
You don’t have to go any further than reading the comments in this thread to know that people have preconceived biases about high academic achievement.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Which, using the rules of logic, says absolutely nothing about whether those biases lead to disqualification from jobs without even getting a chance to interview. bodangles is right; this thread is silly.</p>
<p>
Resumes are selective, and may be qualitatively biased, but there is a difference between offering opinion and distorting fact.</p>
<p>
If you had a 4.00 GPA but wanted to put “GPA > 3.5” I would think that silly, but honest - what you are saying is technically correct. If you put “GPA = 3.5” or “GPA: 3.5” then I would consider that factually a lie, and I would wonder about whether or not I could trust any numbers I would get from you. </p>
<p>
That is a terrible game to play, and doesn’t end well.</p>
<p>
I don’t, and I never considered my GPA to be a handicap. And it wasn’t. </p>
<p>
It doesn’t give an awful first impression. It raises a question, as do so many things on a resume. If I see that someone minored in music, I might wonder if they are just working until their band takes off but I am not going to automatically reject them just for having the minor.</p>
<p>
Of all the potential negatives, of all the questions you have to answer, a high GPA is the lowest possible bar to hurdle. Honestly, I would consider lying about a high GPA to be far more worrying than just having the high GPA.</p>
<p>
I just had to chime in and say that I thought this survey was hilarious. Hiring is holistic, so rankings like this are not usually going to be that worthwhile anyway, but also because the “top 3” there are things where it is hard to achieve that much distinction between your peers. I mean, when I was applying for EE jobs, at least 95% of my competition were EE majors, and probably 90% had at least one internship but less than a full year of meaningful pre-professional employment (about which you will get very little unbiased information). If you don’t consider things like GPA then differentiating between new graduates can be VERY difficult.</p>
<p>I think this matter is just a difference in philosophy, so there’s really nothing else to discuss. Let’s just agree to disagree.</p>
<p>
Experience includes more than just a binary choice of having an internship vs not having an internship. What did you do in the internship? How is it relevant to the position for which you are interviewing? What skills did you learn during the internship that are useful to the position? Does your resume list achievements during that internship that are useful to the position and show you were highly successful during the internship? Does the internship experience show that you have the qualities that the company values? These answers can lead to different candidates being far more qualified than one other based on experience, even though both had an internship without a full-time job.</p>
<p>I also currently work in EE. When my company reviews a resume, the most important factors in the decision are having a skill set that matches our needs for the position and having experience doing something similar to our needs.for the position. Highest degree achieved, field of degree, and number of years experience working can also be very important. In some cases they are used as a filter to block out candidates. Not all of the people in EE-related positions have EE degrees. Some have general engineering degrees or CS degrees. One has an economics degree. One doesn’t have a college degree at all. The discussed resume criteria gets you in the door for an interview (connections to employees at the company can also be helpful), not your GPA (I realize various other companies do have a GPA filter for new grad hires,). The actual hiring decision relates to how well you do in the interviews. If one of the many persons interviewing does not think you are a good choice for the position, it can be enough to not get an offer. A successful interview relates to how well you answer technical questions that at a high enough level to distinguish candidates from one another, how well we believe you’ll fit within the existing team environment + skillsets within that environment, and various other factors, including some specific to the person who interviews you. For example, a discussion of a candidate might include talk about an odd comment he said about one of his hobbies or long term goals . Like experience, different candidates with a similar background and GPA can have wildly different degrees of success during interviews. </p>