<p>How important is GPA in getting a job after college. Do companies even look at your transcript. I'm a Junior in Computer Engineering and my grades have been sliding over the past year. My GPA is currently below a 3.0. I feel as if I know a lot of the material necessary for an engineering job, but I don't apply myself in school. I miss a lot of homework assignments and I haven't cared at all about my grades.</p>
<p>So if my skills are good can this overcome a low GPA? Will companies even look at my transcript?</p>
<p>If you know your stuff but your GPA is low because you don’t apply yourself, that is a red flag to a company that indicates that you won’t apply yourself at work either.</p>
<p>Get your GPA up. You have a couple semesters left, so get it up.</p>
<p>A lot of 3.0s ‘get the idea’, but when they have to figure out all the intricacies and nuances that go along with the math, that’s where they struggle. But you have to know the math to build something useful. Of course, the less you dabble in these things, the fewer intricacies crop up. Hence, you don’t realize what you don’t know. Similarly, in CS, you can’t just know how the program is supposed to work, you have to be able to write the code as well!</p>
<p>In CS, you have to get the project to work on time and on budget. Or at least close. You may have to know the theory too. A lot of students that want to program slide in the theory courses in their junior year.</p>
<p>A high GPA means that you know the easy stuff and the hard stuff and that you take care of the details and the stuff that noone likes to do.</p>
<p>I agree, which sadly means that many engineering students who earn mediocre grades at highly ranked schools would have been better off had they gone to easier schools where they might have surpassed that GPA threshold.</p>
<p>Part of the GPA is time management and execution and if you didn’t have that down at a top school, then you will probably have the same problem at an easier school. GPA will be higher but time management still comes through.</p>
<p>Sure, time management may still be an issue. But at least you’ll surmount the GPA screen that many employers place before you. So you still have a chance - and, let’s face it, a lot of employers aren’t particularly careful about who they hire once you pass their screens.</p>
<p>kind of disagree, regardless of intelligence you should be able to get around 3.0 if you apply yourself. I’m no genius, far from it, and here at Purdue I’ll have above a 3.0 out of my first semester easily. Really you just have to be willing to apply yourself and stay away from Harry’s (For the Purdue people) and the partying scene during exam week.</p>
<p>I wanted to know about this…how do companies differentiate between the rigor of various schools? Do they have computers filter out applications based on GPA? Or do they do it like colleges do with high schools and have profiles of universities to go along with the gpas of students from them? Can companies legally request a transcript from my college without my consent?</p>
<p>Companies will ask you for a transcript if they want one.</p>
<p>Some companies only recruit from top schools. Some companies try to recruit locally. Some don’t care. The GPA above 3.0 is a relative indicator of how good you are at time management and organizational skills. A good chunk of any job is showing up and taking care of the little things. Getting above a 3.0 is a rough indicator that you have your act together in taking care of the big things and the little things.</p>
<p>If you don’t have the best of GPAs, sometimes work experience can help. If you have relevant experience in your field, then this might compensate somewhat for a lower GPA. Having a job means that someone else took a chance on you. It also may mean that you have specific industry skills that those with just a degree wouldn’t have.</p>
<p>In most companies, HR will set a threshold limit below which students cannot be hired (they still can be hired, but the approval has to come from the higher-ups). This threshold is constant for all schools, usually.</p>
<p>Once that threshold is set, the company will have “target schools” that they attend. Those target schools generally have one of two types of career services arrangements: the most common is that the company goes to the engineering career services department and request resumes for students with a GPA of X.XX or above in XYZ majors. The other method (which top schools use) has the employers post the jobs on a Monster-like (usually Monster-run) internal job posting site, where the employer can select who is eligible to apply (based on major and GPA). When the school has the former method, it’s very common to request different GPA requirements based on the school (e.g. lower threshold for better schools - but still above the HR set limit). In the latter method, you generally just list the HR requirement (so someone can’t search multiple schools’ sites and see your bias).</p>
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<p>No. You have to release the transcript to the employers, but they almost always make that a condition of hire. Sometimes they won’t ask for it until a week before you start, and if your GPA (or major) doesn’t match your resume, that’s automatically an excuse to rescind your offer (similar to failing a drug test, or having a criminal background - both of those are also usually done a week or two before you start).</p>
<p>Despite not being able to release a transcript, schools can, and often do, filter information sent to the recruiters based on GPA (see above). So the school can set their job posting site to not allow you to apply if your GPA is below 3.0. This is similar to a school releasing that you graduated “with honors” where “honors” is defined as a GPA above 3.5.</p>
<p>GP, I think you’ve said you’re involved in hiring, and I had a question that I think I know the answer to, but it’d be interesting to hear your take on.</p>
<p>I’m familiar with the idea of GPA cut-offs, and I can back up that pretty much every company I’ve interviewed with or worked for uses them just like you said. Once you get past that cut-off, though, how much does GPA matter? Let’s say you have three candidates, all from the same school, and you’re hiring for a position with a GPA cut-off of 3.0 (I’m fully aware that this is a contrived scenario.) You interview all three, and #1 has a GPA of 3.0 flat, relevant experience and you feel like he’d be a good fit. You’ve got another guy,#2, with a GPA of 3.6, relevant experience, and he doesn’t seem like as good a fit as the first guy but isn’t too bad. #3 has a 4.0, not very much experience, and seems like a worse fit than even #2 (although still not terrible.) Which guy, and again I know this would never be enough information to make a real life judgment off of, do you think is more likely to get hired?</p>
<p>What I’ve noticed in my experience with interviewing for internships and full time positions is that once you get to the interview, your GPA has already qualified you and no longer is important. What I mean by that is, if your GPA was going to be the reason someone else got a job over you, you wouldn’t be at the interview in the first place. There will still be technical questions to gauge your knowledge and a lot of questions about your experience, but I’ve never once had a question or comment about my GPA in an interview.</p>
<p>It will vary from recruiter to recruiter. If you walk in with a 4.0, that’s pretty impressive and predisposes the interviewer to want to hire you. You’ll probably also get no questions digging into your technical competency. On the other hand, a student with a 3.0 will need to impress a little more in the interview, all else being equal, and might get more technical questions. But how much the difference in GPA plays into the interview depends on the interviewer (there are some GPA snobs out there, much like there are school nobs that will only hire from 2 or 3 colleges).</p>
<p>In my experience, the majority of interviewers (at least those with at least 3+ years of work experience) don’t really put much stock into GPA. The usual opinion is that they can understand your level of competency better by talking to you and asking questions. They also look at peripherals, for instance if you had an internship did the company ask you back for a second internship or offer a job, what did you accomplish on your internship and how difficult was the task, etc.</p>
<p>But, in the interview, “fit” is the single most important factor in getting a job. A company doesn’t want to hire you, invest in training, then have you leave in two years for an MBA or another company (a rough estimate I used to tell people is that it takes 5 years for an engineer to “break even” after you’ve invested in training in the first two years).</p>
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<p>Most interviewers will not mention your GPA unless it’s outstanding (though there are some that relish the position of authority and enjoy demeaning others). If you have a terrible GPA (like a 2.2) and still get an interview, they might ask you to explain it, but for your run of the mill 3.2 student, it will never be mentioned.</p>
<p>I have been in I.T./Engineering over 20 years and my GPA only mattered for my INITIAL job out of school. I was slightly below a 3.0 as an undergraduate. Yes, I was still hired right out of school, but I did not have the “pick of the litter” and I probably benefited because employers were taking almost anyone with a strong software background (I was a math major).</p>
<p>Having said all of that, it would be MUCH BETTER if you got that GPA to a 3.0+.</p>
<p>You may want to attend grad school later on and getting into graduate engineering/CS programs is MUCH EASIER when you have that undergraduate GPA above 3.0.</p>
<ul>
<li>You may not have to take the GRE</li>
<li>You will not have to be given conditional/provisional admission (like I had to have)</li>
<li>You will not need as much professional experience (like I needed)</li>
</ul>
<p>Now I was able to attend and obtain a M.S. in Engineering, but I probably could have went to grad school immediately or very soon after undergrad (IF I had a 3.0 GPA) instead of having to put in 5-7 years of work experience first. That can (in some cases) have an effect on how soon you move up the ladder.</p>
<p>So…gun for that 3.0+ :-)</p>
<p>PS: Some of the better engineering grad schools won’t even give conditional/provisional admission. Either you are admitted or not.</p>