@roethlisburger
Will a 3.3 hurt job an engineer’s job prospects?
D2 is a Lehigh engineering student and the avg. engineering GPA is only about 2.85, so a 3.3 is well above average. I think that there are many other engineering schools where GPA’s are on the lowish side and a 3.3 is a solid effort.
@Much2learn, IMO, no, a 3.3 GPA in engineering from a good school would not hurt engineering job prospects. They may not even hurt engineering grad school prospects as grad schools know the rigor of various schools in their discipline pretty well. Outside of engineering, others (like med and law schools) may not know or care.
Probably to a minor extent, for the relatively few employers using cutoff GPAs higher than that. NACE surveys find that 70% of employers hiring out of colleges use GPA as an initial screen before offering interviews, and that 60% of those have a 3.0 cutoff. What can make seeking a job out of college significantly more difficult is a GPA starting with a 2.
@Data10, well, in this case, it seems that a 3.3 engineering GPA from this top 20 school is roughly equivalent to a 3.9 engineering GPA from a 50-75 school. I do not find that hard to believe. When looking at OS finals, there was a marked difference in difficulty between those at an Ivy/equivalent/top CS school and an average flagship (and a massive difference between the OS final at an average flagship and a directional I looked at). For what it’s worth the Ivy was top 10 but not known for CS, the top CS school was 50-75 but top 15 in grad CS, and the regular flagship was also 50-75 and not in the top 25 for CS.
BTW, considering that pretty nobody at SJSU actually got in to Stanford (you probably could count the number who did but chose SJSU on one hand), I daresay that pulling a 3.0 at SJSU is easier than pulling a 3.0 in the same major at Stanford.
^ Oh, and in difficulty, the questions on MIT’s OS final was roughly the same as at the Ivy and top CS public, but MIT’s final featured roughly 50% more problems in the same amount of time allowed. MIT also showed their grade distribution for that OS class, and it was skewed towards the top,with more than half getting A’s.
At another average flagship (where, sadly, I did not find the OS final questions), the OS grade distribution was centered around a B-. The final was curved with something like 2-3 students getting around 90 or higher and the vast majority lower than 80 (with lots in the '70’s and '60’s).
BTW, I think that most profs at a decent RU or higher would like to give tests that are at the difficulty level of an elite (overall or in their field) as most at a decent RU or higher got a bachelor/PhD from a elite uni (overall or in their field) so they are use to taking tests or grading tests (as TAs) of that difficulty, but there is a strong cultural norm in the US to keeping the median above a C in any class and also to keeping average test scores above 50 even with a curve, which means they would have to deal with more moaning from students about how a class/test is too hard or unfair if they did give out tests as difficult as they were use to (with the rules they were use to), and no prof wants to spend time on that.
BTW, to the OP, your first D can take heart from the fact that she’ll probably have a stronger alumni network and brand name to draw upon later in life even if her GPA is lower (and 3.3 is a respectable engineering GPA from an elite/tough school).
@ucbalumnus “60% of those have a 3.0 cutoff”
Yes, I have seen many engineering jobs that require a 3.0 GPA.
It seems to me that it would be a smart strategy for companies to recruit students with 2.9x GPA’s at high-quality schools that have lower avg. grades. They could get good employees for a better price.
@PurpleTitan
“a strong cultural norm in the US to keeping the median above a C in any class and also to keeping average test scores above 50 even with a curve.”
It is even more than a cultural norm. As @ucbalumnus is pointing out, engineers with below a 3.0 are at a significant disadvantage in finding employment, even at schools where a 2.9 is above average.
Science and engineering profs are tough graders. D2’s Orgo professor last semester told the students at the beginning that he curves to a C+, so over 1/2 of the class would get a C+ or worse. D2 eeked out a B-. She has never been so proud of a grade as she was of earning that B-. lol
Yes I remember my roommate at Lehigh taking organic. I thought her head was going to explode!
The OP mentioned that one student at one school got a 3.3 during freshman year; and a different student at a different school got a 3.9. This does not mean the two GPAs are equivalent at the different schools. It’s probably more indicative of differences between the two students.
For example, my mother and her brother both had similar combined stats in HS. Both went to a top 10 USNWR ranked college, and both majored in STEM subjects, with a strong theoretical emphasis. My mother graduated with top honors, while her brother dropped out for reasons relating to poor grades. This doesn’t mean a near 4.0 at my mother’s college is equivalent to a near failing grade at her brother’s college. Instead it more relates to differences between the two students. There are also numerous other relevant factors. For example, freshman year is more likely to have “weeder” classes with low grade distributions, as well as more likely to have students adjusting to the new school and related habits for success.
As you mentioned in another post, there was also marked differences in grade distribution. It may be harder to get a 70% on a particular test, but that 70% may be an ‘A’ on the more difficult exam; and a ‘B’ or ‘C’ on the easier exam. I also would expect engineering classes to have less of a difference than most other STEM fields due to ABET standardization.
You can replace SJSU with other schools. For example, Stanford and Berkeley have a good amount of overlap in applications; and a minority of students do choose Berkeley over Stanford (many of this group does not bother applying to Stanford as a backup, so they don’t show up as cross admits). In 2011 GradeInflation found a mean grade of 3.3 at Berkeley — between the 2.9 at SJSU and 3.6 at Stanford. It’s not obvious to me at which of these 3 schools it would be easiest to make a 3.0 GPA resume cutoff. Instead I’d expect it to depend on the student (and major).
The standard resume advice is to not list GPA on resume, when GPA is below 3.0; so in many cases employers wouldn’t know that students had a 2.9x GPA at the time of resume screen. Instead employers would have the option to keep reading when they get a resume that does not list GPA, and if they what they see, invite him/her in for an interview. Many engineering employers do this, especially at smaller companies, or if there was other means of filtering, such as meeting rep at college career fair recruiting instead of emailing resume to jobs@company.com.
When I applied for engineering jobs during my final year of college, I didn’t list a GPA on my resume. My GPA wasn’t bad. I just didn’t know it was common to list GPA at that time. I still was invited to interview at the majority of companies to which I handed out my resume, including potential employers investing the cost of plane tickets, hotel, and car rental; if out of the area.
@Data10:
“This does not mean the two GPAs are equivalent at the different schools. It’s probably more indicative of differences between the two students”
You may think that but the OP does not think so and I daresay she knows her D’s better than you do.
At this point, it seems to me that you just really really want to believe that a 3.3 in engineering at one school is not roughly equal to 3.9 in engineering at another school as you pretty much just came out with that assumption that it is due to differences in the students out of thin air.
“I also would expect engineering classes to have less of a difference than most other STEM fields due to ABET standardization.”
ABET set a minimum on subjects covered. It does not set a maximum on the difficulty, so there is no reason to not think that 2 ABET engineering schools could have very different rigor.
“It’s not obvious to me at which of these 3 schools it would be easiest to make a 3.0 GPA resume cutoff”
Introducing Cal is obfuscation. No, it’s not obvious whether a 3.0 is tougher to get at Cal or Stanford. There’s significant overlap there stats-wise.But I daresay that doesn’t mean it’s not easy to say whether getting a 3.0 is tougher at SJSU or Stanford/Cal. You can probably count on one hand the number of kids who turn down Cal for SJSU as well. BTW, if you look at Stanford’s cross-admit data, the number who turn down Stanford for Cal is also minute.
Thanks for all the reply’s! We have one more middle schooler who is also thinking he wants to be an engineer. So this is giving us lots to consider as he makes his way in high school and ultimately applies to college. Both of my d’s love the schools they picked and are attending… good fit for both. However, it does seem like Malcolm Gladwell’s theories on schools are relevant. Maybe it is better to be on the higher end of the engineering students at a less prestigious school then at the middle or lower end at the higher ranked school.
Cheetah- define “better”.
Some kids thrive being at the top of the pack. Other kids don’t care and love being challenged by their classmates (in addition to their professors). Some kids experience extreme anxiety at getting a B or C on a quiz; other kids see it as motivation to work smarter and harder and out-think the competition.
Gladwell exists to sell books, not to help YOUR kids fulfill their potential. I have hired engineers earlier in my career and can tell you that there really and truly are companies which would rather hire the 3.0 from Cornell (grade deflation in engineering) than the 3.9 from “random college you’ve never heard of but which has an engineering program which is ABET accredited”. And kids with a 2.9 in mechanical engineering from Cal Tech do not end up folding sweaters at the Gap-- Fox News would have done a special on that by now. And kids with a 2.8 in Civil Engineering from MIT do not end up working the grill at McDonald’s trying to get promoted to shift supervisor.
@blossom your post definitely made me smile.
I am not concerned about finding “a job in engineering” and definitely not concerned about her working the grill at a fast food restaurant after spending 200k+ on education. I think it is the other opportunities that may or may not be available because of a lower GPA. However, grad school is holistic so perhaps it all balances out if that if what you want to do.
Employers are holistic, too.
There are epic case studies on what happens in engineering situations when people don’t communicate appropriately, can’t write, allow group-think to take over logical fact-finding, etc. You can look up some of the post-mortem’s on the O-Ring failure that led to the Challenger disaster as a tragic case. There have been commercial aviation disasters when a “fail safe” protocol required a human being (the pilot) saying to another human being (the co-pilot) “Did you check the flap?” There have been large scale systems failures because the engineers have been too docile to challenge authority, and of course- all of the data on “Why people die in hospitals” which engineers study to learn how human beings screw up technology which is supposed to be impossible to screw up (hint- if you unplug a machine it won’t work. If you amputate the wrong leg because nobody had a pen to write “this leg” before the anesthesia started, that’s a bad outcome. Why was there no pen? If you administer the wrong dose of morphine because the dosage is measured in metrics but the patient only knows his weight in lbs that’s a bad thing, why aren’t the dosage containers designed with both kilos and pounds translated?
There are umpteen employers of engineers who won’t care about the GPA of an engineering student who has strong communication skills, can work in a team, and can write. There are also others who will care- and it is what it is.
Employers and American Masters/PhD programs tend to be holistic (a top PhD program may still be very difficult to enter).
Med schools, top law schools, and top UK masters programs will likely require a high GPA as a prerequisite.
Only one person in this thread has said that a 3.3 in engineering at the freshman kid’s school is equivalent to a 3.9 at the other kid’s school, and it wasn’t the OP. Instead the OP listed her two kids GPA as an example showing that the first kid was struggling to get A’s and the 2nd kid was not. The OP implied one contributing factor was applying a curve in the freshman kid’s classes and grade deflation. Do you really believe that two siblings are expected to get identical GPAs in college?
Ignoring all of that, the lower GPA kid was a freshmen. Freshmen typically do not take any engineering subject classes, only some general math/science foundation classes. Do you believe that you can determine what engineering GPA is equivalent to another by looking at the GPA of only one student, who has not taken any engineering classes?
I wrote “less difference” not no difference. You were using a typically non-ABET field in your example, which typically has different restrictions.
I added Cal because you seemed to have a problem with the SJSU example because there was not enough overlap in students. I’d expect most students who prefer Cal over Stanford do not apply to Stanford, so they do not show up in cross-admits. In any case, the specific names of colleges in the example are not important. The point is that colleges/classes with a larger portion of stellar students tend to give students a larger portion of stellar grades, which can change the original claim that “it is easier to get higher GPA when one goes to a lower ranked school.”
I am an engineering major who has taken classes at many colleges – Stanford, UCSD, RPI, SUNYA, Wyoming, etc. Stanford classes were on average more rigorous and at a faster pace (UCSD may have been similar, but sample size was too small); but there were many exceptions, particularly among freshman math/science classes since students can choose from a variety of rigor and speed levels. I often chose the most rigorous/accelerated level. Most Stanford students did not. However, it was not as obvious at which college it would be easier to get a 3.0 since 3.0 is near the bottom of the class in most Stanford classes, and above average at many of the others (or was when I attended). Instead I’d expect it to depend on the student and major.
@Data10:
“Only one person in this thread has said that a 3.3 in engineering at the freshman kid’s school is equivalent to a 3.9 at the other kid’s school, and it wasn’t the OP.”
Not true. This is what the OP said:
“D at lower ranked school studies extremely hard and definitely is above the curve, but my other D would probably be in the same situation had she picked the lower ranked school.”