<p>Even if you are able to pull off a 3.7 for the last three semesters, the problem is that you’ll interview next Fall with a 2.0 (assuming a 3.7 this semester). With that GPA and no work experience, you won’t get any interviews, let alone job offers. </p>
<p>What you need more than anything is a job this summer. Call up recruiters and offer to work unpaid, if necessary (I usually really, really recommend against that, but in your case, it may be the only option).</p>
<p>If that doesn’t work, stick it out, and hope for the best.</p>
<p>What type of job are you looking for? Where do you want to work? Are you willing to relocate, even to another country, to get work? (Keep in mind that others with much better academic credentials are having to do that because of the tough economy.)</p>
<p>At this point I think you should just try to do the best that you can. If you can get an internship, do so. If you can become a part of a campus research group that provides lab experience for undergrads, do so. Try to do a killer senior project that employers will be excited about (especially if they can use it directly).</p>
<p>BTW if you are looking for software engineering jobs, you can gain lots of experience and acclaim in the software industry by becoming a key contributor to an open source project. While this is no guarantee of a job, there are lots of people who have built careers on open source work, even without degrees.</p>
<p>It’s not over, yet. In fact, if you have good interviewing skills you MIGHT be able to actually use your situation to your advantage in some interviews IF YOU ACTUALLY START DOING WELL. You can say how you previously had trouble at school but now you have done a complete 180 and are more focused, mature, responsible, etc. You can highlight how you have changed over the past few years and have put your irresponsible youth behind you. This may appeal to some people, but nothing is certain. It would be much easier to just already have a 3.X GPA and some experience.</p>
<p>If you don’t make a drastic improvement you’re pretty much screwed. You really need to bring your GPA up to the 3.X levels, or as close as possible. Realize that you’re probably going to have to settle for whatever job you can get rather than what you think you might really want. You can always get a better job at a later point if you do well in your first.</p>
<p>Here’s a question you need to answer HONESTLY. Why are you doing so poorly? Are you sure you want to be an engineer? Can you really pull off nearly straight A’s for the next 3-4 semesters?</p>
<p>The problem is that he won’t get any interviews in which to impress people. Even with a 3.7 this semester, he’s interviewing in the Fall with a 2.0. At that GPA, 75% of companies will disqualify him based on their minimum GPA cut off, and the other 25% will pass him over because he has no work experience. Now, if he had two or three semesters of outstanding internships, that’s one thing, but no experience + low GPA = no interviews.</p>
<p>If he can pull of a string of 3.5+ GPAs, his best bet is probably to delay graduation by 1 semester:</p>
<p>1) Find a job this summer, paid or unpaid.</p>
<p>2) Go to school in Fall 2010 and interview for both full-time and internship positions. You likely won’t get any meaningful full-time interviews, but hopefully some people will be a little more willing to take you on as an intern.</p>
<p>3) If you get a great fulltime position, continue normally and graduate Spring 2011. However, in the more likely scenario that you only get an internship position, intern in Spring 2011 and Summer 2011.</p>
<p>4) Return to school in Fall 2011 with 3 semesters of internship experience, a 2.3 GPA (assuming a 3.7 every semester from here-on-out), and graduating in recruiter’s favorite semester: Fall. Even though you would be graduating a semester later, you wouldn’t be losing much salary because you would have an additional semester of internship income.</p>
<p>That really seems like the only option. There are two things that (generally) will land you an interview: education and experience. If one is really poor, you have to compensate by being great in the other.</p>
<p>He’s less likely to get interviews for which GPA is a screen. For example, if the HR departments (or whoever they have outsourced this function to) of the companies he’s applying to have been instructed to reject applications with GPAs below a certain threshold, he won’t get in that way. But that doesn’t mean he can’t get in at all. If he can do something that would impress a hiring manager who has enough clout within the company to overrule HR requirements, he can get a job. But he has to have as strong an interview as any other candidate, and do extra to impress the hiring manager and the rest of the team he wants to work with, such as doing a killer senior project and/or becoming a key contributor to an open source project.</p>
<p>I think he will get screened out of most interviews for the caliber of companies that recruit at Purdue. His best bet is to do well his last few semesters and then cold call companies for some internship. He basically just needs to do something to get experience period. I don’t think his GPA can really help him that much and he’s going to have to settle for a company that’s not fortune 500. At this point I think any interview he gets he should be thankful for. But definitely do your best to network, do well in school, etc these last few semesters.</p>
<p>For a manager to overrule HR requirements, there usually has to be a very good reason. Considering the number of highly qualified engineering students at Purdue with 3.0+ GPA’s, there usually isn’t much of an option.</p>
<p>But GPA requirement or not, he has to get into an interview room and impress a manager before anything happens. Without experience or a good GPA, what does he have? His resume is probably a quarter of a page long that’s stretched to half a page with spacing and junk like “Skills: Expert with Microsoft Office”. It’ll get deleted in 10 seconds.</p>
<p>What he needs is either to get his GPA up (which doesn’t seem possible at this point) or to get lots of experience and to produce high dollar results at those internship positions. Imagine having a line on the resume that he reduced operating cost as an oil refinery by $500,000 / yr by redesigning the control system design on some major equipment (and that’s just a ballpark, I’ve had interns save more than that). That’s the sort of thing that will get noticed on a resume. Leave off the GPA, and you’ll get an interview. Impress them with experience, and they won’t care about the GPA.</p>
<p>However, my GPA won’t be a 2.0 by fall… I have a 2.11 right now. After this semester I’m expecting to have a 2.6 cumulative. This fall I plan on retaking courses in addition to courses that I’m taking the first time - I can expect a 3.0 by the end of this fall semester along with some project experience.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, I’m retaking a fair amount of courses. 2 this semester, 1 in summer, 1 in fall. Bringing these F’s/D’s up to A’s gives a huge GPA boost.</p>
<p>I’m not completely sure, but I think if you have a D or an F you’re able to re-take and bring up the grade. You’d have to ask boiler for sure, but they might average the grades together of something to come up with the GPA.</p>
<p>Well that changes things. If you can get your GPA in the high 2’s, you’ll be fine with one internship this summer. But you have to be proactive and find a meaningful position that will allow you to demonstrate some competency in engineering.</p>
<p>Though, that Purdue policy is absurd and decreases my opinion of the school, but that is beside the point.</p>
<p>How is it possible to get an internship? If I apply for this summer my GPA right now is a 2.11. I won’t see that increase to 2.60 until the end of the semester. </p>
<p>Would I have to join organizations and stuff? I’m trying to look for things to do, like IEEE, or projects around campus. I was under the impression that my chances for an internship this summer are shot.</p>
<p>Nah. Companies often take on low GPA interns since there is less risk. If an intern is horrible, he’s gone in 3 months. If a new hire is horrible, you’re often looking at a year or two before you can fire him.</p>
<p>First, visit your career services department. They might know of openings for students with low GPAs (or at least companies more receptive). If nothing else, make sure your resume is on file and that you check job postings. Next, try professors. They probably get 3-5 emails a week from companies looking for students. They won’t forward those opportunities to you unless they know you’re looking.</p>
<p>Orgs like IEEE are helpful if you go to the presentations and meet the presenters. Also look for career fairs anywhere you can find them (NSBE, IEEE, the Engineering department, non-engineering departments, etc). You never know who is hiring, even if they’re at the biology career fair.</p>
<p>Finally, look for companies in an area you’d like to work, and try cold calling them asking for openings. Usually, if you call and ask for the head of HR or a hiring manager, you’ll go to voicemail. If that happens, an old head-hunter trick is to call the operator, ask for Payroll (former employees do that all the time), then when you get to payroll, say something along the lines of “Oh, man… I was trying to reach John Doe in engineering and they sent me to you. Can you forward me?” The phone system will show them that Payroll is calling, and everyone takes a call from payroll. Call and offer your services. Offer to work for free if they’ll put you to good use. </p>
<p>I don’t want to be too over dramatic about it, but when I interviewed, a resume for full time employment with no engineering work experience went right in the shredder, even if it had a 4.30 GPA from Stanford.</p>
<p>No. You can discuss them, but they’re not really experience. Employers want to know that you can thrive in a work environment, take direction from superiors, work in team settings where outcomes are not explicit (i.e. grades), and can adapt to different situations. Even in the most controlled senior design projects, you don’t full get all of those.</p>
<p>boiler165,
First of all, respect on turning things around. </p>
<p>If you have a school project that is big (a semester or year long project), I would put that on your resume as if it was a job. Don’t hide the fact that it was a school project but put it on their anyway. I had a year long project as part of my senior design where I worked on a large team of people (5+) and that project is very often a major focus of my interviews. There is only so much you can say about a two month internship where you did mostly busy work. A year long or semester long project where you worked with a team of people (the bigger the better) you can talk about for hours because it’s your project and you’re an expert in it. And it has mostly all the same benefits as working on a team at a “real job.” </p>
<p>If your senior design project had a sponsor (like a different professor or doctor or private company) then talk about them as if they were your employer and your goals are no longer a grade in the class but satisfying their needs & goals and designing around their requirements which is important.</p>
<p>Keep in mind there are no hard and fast rules about resumes, if it’s true and makes you look good throw it on there.</p>