I’d love to hear what others involved in recruiting/hiring new college grads in any field think about this question. Why of why not? I was surprised to hear someone say recently that they don’t hire students with 4.0s and prefer to hire B/B+ students. That’s not my experience, but I’m in an elitist field and my DD is going into another elitist field.
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Members of a forum on college admissions tend to be more focused on college attended, college GPA, and other college factors than the general population. In employer surveys, employers as a whole say they place little emphasis on college GPA beyond an initial screen, which is often >= 3.0. For example, the employer survey at https://chronicle-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/5/items/biz/pdf/Employers%20Survey.pdf found that employers as whole said college GPA and college reputation where the 2 least evaluated influential factors when evaluating resumes of new grads for hiring decisions. Instead internships and relevant work experience were most important. A similar pattern occurred in all surveyed industries and among all types of employer subgroups.
There are a few rare exceptions, such as a particularly employer who thinks college GPA is really important only hires candidates with a ~4.0 GPA; Or one who has negative stereotypes about 4.0 GPAs (doesn’t take risks, bookworms, unpleasant to work with, etc.) and never hires them . But these are the exceptions, not the rule. I’d expect most employers will not care whether you have a 4.0 or something slightly below 4.0. However, once your GPA gets low enough to not pass initial screens, then it may become more relevant.
I’m think that kind of silliness would be believed by someone who would jump to to an assumption that a 4.0 means the student didn’t challenge themself enough in choosing classes. For me, I wouldn’t want to work with someone who didn’t believe someone could achieve that much and still be seeking challenges. Or perhaps they think that that GPA means the student is a “grind” and had no fun. Either viewpoint is based on huge leaps of potentially unwarranted assumption. Basically, lazy thinking.
I was part of the hiring committee at my former job for many years. We were dealing in employees who needed certification and sometimes also licensure to do the job. We looked at this first.
When screening applications, we looked at the college transcript but mostly to see if a student had a lower mark in an important course. If the overall GPA was in the B range, we wanted to know why…sometimes it mattered and sometimes it didn’t.
If someone had a 4.0 GPA, it actually saved us time because we knew that person had gotten sufficiently good grades!
However, I will add that once a person had relevant experience, we were far more interested in that than college grades.
A 4.0 GPA would not be a disadvantage.
I just asked DH who hires engineers, and he said that is ridiculous to think a 4.0 GPA would be a disadvantage.
I was turned down for at least one job after college for similar reasons. In the UK it’s typical to do a numerical and verbal reasoning test as part of the initial screening and the recruiter told me my score was too high to move on to the next round because “you wouldn’t be happy in this job”.
The implication was that I’d move onto something better pretty quickly so the company’s recruitment and training costs would go to waste.
My daughter graduated college 3 years ago with a 4.0. She put it proudly on the top of her resume (still has it on her resume but it has moved to the bottom). She got the impression from the interviews that she had, that it impressed people and was in no way a disadvantage.
Getting a 4.0 is not an easy feat and requires hard work and some luck. Your DD should be proud if she ends up with a 4.0 and she shouldn’t want to work for anybody who holds it against her in the hiring process.
My DD won’t graduate with a 4.0, but likely just below that. But I did feel the need to stick up for 4.0 students and other high GPA students. I just don’t understand the logic that causes a recruiter/hiring manager to think a 4.0 is a disadvantage. If you want to know whether the student is a grinder and did nothing but study, the resume tells you that and an interview will tell you if they have the needed soft skills.
This is nonsense. [Major telecom company] routinely hired dozens of engineers from [large public university]. Starting salary was based on your GPA.
My company (engineering) had a definite minimum GPA. A 4.0 was not considered a detriment and was a plus.
But we also placed a very high emphasis on the “plays well with others” quality in a person. Not a scientific study, but several of the 4.0 applicants I interviewed failed horribly the team aspect.
So, as long as you are a team player, a 4.0 is a definite plus.
I suppose this could an exception to the general thought that the concept is nonsense. There have long been stories about certain professions that reject candidates who are “too smart” because they won’t fit in, would quickly find a better job, etc. I suspect those types of jobs aren’t typically those discussed on CC.
If you apply for a position that doesn’t require a HS diploma with a 4.0 from a top school, I can see this happening. I can’t see it happening with any employer that is recruiting at a school.
Not expressly hiring 4.0 GPA’s - that is such a negative and biased thinking.
I work in tech field and am in the hiring committee for recruiting the new grads (in addition to traditional interviews also do campus/conferences/events recruiting) - good GPA is never a negative. Yes we do give more preference to students with relevant internships after-which its projects/courses completed. GPA is a basic screen with implicit thresholds (i.e anyone with say 3.5+ is seen as competitive; but 3.0-3.5 are not ruled out either).
Even in the tech recruitment (where there are lots of jobs) there are many implicit/explicit biases - that include bias against better grades and higher academic qualifications (like having advanced degrees like PhD is sometimes looked down - its a fact that I experienced early in my career). Any bias or pre-conceived notion should be called out.
As a follow up I asked my daughter about her current job interviews (with over 3 years of experience under her belt). None of them have commented on or asked about her 4.0 GPA. Your GPA matters most when you look for your first post-college job.
Addressing the “you won’t be happy in this job” comment. I think fit and the correct experience level and responsibility level are important when you are looking for a job (not directly out of college). It is difficult to judge job levels in today’s ads as many don’t list required years of experience or salary (two good indicators of whether the job level is right for you.) If you are overqualified for a job, it won’t be a good fit.
However, some people who are overqualified may not consider such a job “beneath” him/her. But employers may assume that and pre-emptively reject such an applicant. This can be more of an issue at higher levels of experience, and the phenomenon can resemble age discrimination.
To be honest we have chosen not to interview people with 4.0s AND all highly technical ECs for the B + to A- student that worked to put themselves through school, or had ECs that showed excellent interpersonal skills. We are in aerospace but our job requires a high level of communication and not a lot of theoretical engineering work. We have found more long-term success on average with these students. We have hired 4.0’s in the past who felt the job wasn’t technical enough, etc, even though presented properly. The goal is to go with the students with the greatest historical success ration. Are all 4.0s like this - of course not.
In reality there can be all sorts of bias out there based upon pretty much anything pending the recruiter. It happens. People are human. When they’ve had good results they look for more of the same and ditto with bad. One bad employee or grad student can ruin it for many coming behind just as a stellar one can buy some credit for others behind them.
However, I can’t imagine ever telling a student not to try for a 4.0 based upon any potential future bias. That would be equivalent to telling a high school student not to get an A so they can “fit in.” It helps no one in the long run.
If they are a 4.0 student they likely won’t be happy anywhere with a bias against them. If they aren’t a 4.0 student they aren’t likely to be inspired to “get there” just because someone suggests it as a positive and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t be as content in a job where perfection is considered the norm - esp if those there are naturally able to be competitive and they have to really work giving up whatever else of choice to keep up.
I suspect there’s more bias for a 4.0 than against and I even more highly suspect most folks see anything from a 3.7 or 3.8-4.0 pretty much the same.
In the end an interview often matters a lot more than GPA. Most places want to see “people skills” and those don’t show up on a transcript.
@RichInPitt Frankly I don’t even remember what the job was 25 years later, but this was 2 years post college (I’d done both undergrad and a PhD there) when I was looking to move back to be with my fiancee who was finishing her PhD. The company wasn’t explicitly recruiting at my college, but they were in the same town and certainly were interested in graduates from my university otherwise I wouldn’t have interviewed with them. It was in no way “a position that doesn’t require a HS diploma”.
Maybe it is an “exception to the general thought that the concept is nonsense” but I don’t think they should have been surprised looking at my resume (not Ronan Farrow or Pete Buttigieg level but still fairly unique at that stage of my career), so we probably shouldn’t even have got to that point.
GPA is often an initial screen for new graduate applicants to get to the interview. The most common cutoff is 3.0 based on NACE surveys; 4.0 should clear any cutoffs. But once at the interview, whatever happens there is what matters.
I don’t think there is much stereotyping of college students with a 4.0 GPA. I have seen stereotyping of high-school students with a 4.0 GPA on this forum–and that is often easier to achieve.
When we are hiring faculty members, we look at their publications and research plans. While we request transcripts to verify degree completion, to the best of my knowledge, we have never looked at undergraduate or graduate GPA–so it would be neutral in this case. Other fields may vary in their hiring patterns.
The first job I had out of college would not even look at someone with a 4.0, it would not surprise me if they actually had a filter to eliminate those at or close to a 4.0 in the beginning.
This is a company that is the market leader in their industry, known world-wide, and essentially a household name. Every employee in the company starts at the same bottom rung and all promotion comes from within; from the CEO down everyone started with the company at square one. The business is very relationship dependent and outgoing people are business critical. The people I worked with could almost all be described as “party people”. The bulk of the new hires, each cycle, were college athletes, those from the greek system, and others that had activities on their resume that would point to an outgoing personality.
It worked very well for the company and let me tell you the holiday party and other celebrations were beyond belief. I have not been at that company for 25 years but still talk about the events they hosted for their employees; they were unreal and led to much of the employee satisfaction and retention in an industry known for being a grind.
@iaparent The idea that your ex company allowed GPA to factor in says, to me, that someone who made that decision had their own personal gripe/bias/jealousy. I know plenty of 4.0 (or close to it) students who still fit in very well with the rest of what you said the company looked for - leadership, friendliness, outgoing, etc. Those who don’t wouldn’t pass that part regardless of GPA. GPA simply doesn’t correlate with people skills or outgoing personalities.
I wasn’t a 4.0 student myself, but knowing any company would put such a bias in would turn me 100% off from wanting to work there.