<p>I want to graduate from Princeton in 3 years, but I fear that the one fewer year might make disadvantage me in terms of ECs. I'd like to know what is considered a good or impressive resume. be P/VP of something at least?</p>
<p>how important is a good resume? would employers understand if my ECs are slightly less impressive because I graduate in 3 years?</p>
<p>Honestly, I think employers care more about your GPA and internships/work experience. You’re not applying for college again - employers want to know that you’re ready for the real world, not that you can go to a book club meeting once a week. </p>
<p>Being VP/P is good, don’t get me wrong, it shows dedication, but I just don’t think you’re going to be screwed over if you don’t join 150 clubs.</p>
<p>If you want to go to graduate school,your college ECs are basically useless.</p>
<p>This post makes me smile. It’s an example of someone who just doesn’t get it.</p>
<p>Google Cal Newport. He isn’t God, but what he says is usually true.</p>
<p>hm, basically ECs take a slight backseat once you’re in college? their importance is not as much as in high school, you mean.</p>
<p>what, then, might good ECs be important for? i.e. Rhodes? I always heard that ECs were still important.</p>
<p>is aerialblue referring to my post?</p>
<p>I have never heard EC’s were important for anything other than undergrad admissions. Being well-rounded isn’t quite as important now. Graduate admissions want somebody who excels in their particular major. Professional school admissions is more numbers based than undergrad. Employers want somebody who can perform the tasks for the job. For them, experience trumps all. </p>
<p>The only exception would be if your EC is directly related to your post-undergrad goals.</p>
<p>This is hilarious. Obviously most of you have no idea of what real EC’s do for you. If you are the President of a book club that has 3 members including yourself, and all you do is pick the new book to read every month, then yes, EC’s are meaningless.</p>
<p>If you’re the President of an organization of fifty members, wrote up a strategic plan redefining the long-term goals of an organization, instituted new marketing and recruiting practices, and the organization does substantive work – it’s directly applicable to any business job.</p>
<p>If you want to go to med or law school, just get a high GPA and MCAT/LSAT score. If you want to get a PhD, do lots of research, write papers, present at academic conferences, and try to get published in a journal. If you want to do anything else (get a job, eventually get an MBA, basically take the many routes that the majority of students take) you need experience. Waiting tables for four years is not going to get you a great business job. Having extensive leadership experience in organizations that are applicable to the real world will definitely give you great things to talk about and write about on your resume. Additionally, how do you think people get great internships? Good luck interviewing with <em>insert top company here</em> if all you can talk about is your GPA and GMAT prep.</p>
<p>The other thing that you’re missing is that college isn’t about padding your resume. Organizational involvement/leadership isn’t about getting yourself into position for a job. You get involved because you want to learn and gain experience, as you learn you are able to better determine where you want to go with your life, as you meet people you network and build connections. After your years as an involved student, the skills that you pick up and the connections that you make will be invaluable.</p>
<p>If you go through college taking classes, getting a 4.0, and studying for whichever test you plan to take, you will be so far behind the top students, it will be laughable.</p>
<p>OMG how do I write a work study resume. I just want to be an lab office (not research!) assistant or something, where first year skills (AP credit?) are basically what I have, but I don’t know whether ECs (or even current societies I have joined) matter or not.</p>
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<p>Yes, but food service has such high turnover rates … if you’re ambitious, usually by the first year you will hold a managerial position … if you can stay there long enough.
I know a friend who became a general manager of a fast food restaurant by the time he was a second-year.</p>
<p>Food service is more challenging than you think, and even simply working as crew you see all sorts of theoretical economics come into play (price discrimination, production curves, tons of multitasking production tasks). It’s not just flipping burgers, and even then, you have to know how many burgers to flip, especially if your firm does not tolerate serving food that is more than 7 minutes old. You have to have a grasp of “mental curves” for rates, differential equations and so forth – yes, you don’t directly do diff. equations in order to serve customers, but in order to maximise production and minimise wastage you already see these concepts come into play. (The first conflict for example, is serving fresh food versus serving quick food without making customers wait … and it takes great skill to achieve both.) You wouldn’t believe how many times I was pumping out fries that I was imagining tangent lines in my head, on imaginary production curves. :)</p>
<p>Well, in the very least, food service experience allows you to have vivid real live examples when you do your economics exams … yay for advanced standing credit! ;)</p>
<p>At least for engineering major, internship is much more impressive if you have extra time.</p>
<p>OP - why do you want to graduate in 3 years? Is it a money issue? Don’t try to get out of college as fast as possible. You could use that other year to take a lot of cool classes, and spread out the ones for your major, or pick up a minor or second major, and hang out more with your friends.</p>
<p>at least BusinessGuy understands what is going on…</p>
<p>interviewer: do you have experience in a group or organization working toward a goal? possibly in a leadership role?
interviewee: no, but I got this really good gpa, see? Why would I need to demonstrate my ability to work with other people?</p>
<p>… you will most definitely get all the jobs like that.</p>
<p>Are EC’s as important at getting internships as for full-time employment? If they are, are high school EC experiences appropriate to talk about for sophomore internships?</p>
<p>Why do you want to graduate in 3 years and what do you want to do after college?</p>
<p>thanks everyone for all the help! especially abcdefgh88, ken285 and of course BusinessGuy. The fact that I’m asking this on an online forum shows that I’m obviously clueless - i don’t know why you guys need to repeatedly point that out. but still, I hopefully won’t be clueless anymore after this :)</p>
<p>i am thinking of graduating in 3 years only if i’m gonna get a graduate degree that takes 2 years or more. i’ve explained this many times in other threads and it’s getting exhausting, so let’s just say that in short, the reasons are mainly financial and age-related. </p>
<p>so let’s say I want to find employment with generic large corporation A or consulting firm B or i-bank C. you know, just in general. do you guys mean that leadership experience and roles are still somewhat important in getting that job we want? and not leadership in some small book club, but in a large organization in college? would GPA count for slightly more, and ECs count for slightly less, than in undergrad admissions? because that’s the idea i get from reading the careers threads, especially i-banking.</p>
<p>lastly, </p>
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</p>
<p>how?</p>
<p>general guideline: GPA will get you into an interview, but it won’t get you a job. They interview to find out what else you bring to the table besides what is on the paper. If GPA was all that mattered, there would be no interviews.</p>