Low GPA Freshman Year but Improved

I got a low GPA my freshman year of college. My first semester I got a 2.31 and second semester a 3.06, making the cumulative GPA 2.69. Mostly, I did get a bunch of A’s and B’s but I failed Calculus the first semester and the second semester I got a C. I had to retake it cause it was required to declare my major as Finance. I’m not exactly strong at math and taking that class distracted me from my other classes because I had to spend so much time studying for it and still kept failing the exams. But this semester, I didn’t have to take calculus and took 18 hours to try to make up for this bad GPA and got a 3.72 (3 A’s, 2 A-'s, 1 B), which raised my overall GPA to a 3.06 overall. If I get a GPA similar to this in upcoming semesters or even higher, what impact would the bad freshman grades make on job and internship searches and grad school? I don’t have an absolutely horrible GPA anymore since it’s over a 3.0 but my mom’s been scaring me by telling me about my cousin who only got an internship at KPMG with a 3.5+ GPA. Not only that, I’m founding an investment club next semester at my college and I think that would make a great impact on my resume as well since I’d be an officer and a founding member. But I don’t think I could graduate with more than a 3.5 or 3.6 even if I get a 4.0 every semester from now since most of my classes use a +/- system to grade so even getting a 91 or 92 would lower my GPA.

bump

Those bad grades will hurt. A lot of companies do have a strong 3.5 cutoff for internships, so you’re in a tough spot.

With that being said it’s in the past so there’s nothing you can do about it, and you have the potential to show a lot of grit in the face of adversity. Mark Cuban says that the purpose of college is to bounce back from adversity, so if you can market your failures freshman year as adversity that you are now greatly improving upon and really sell the value of this investment club you will still have opportunities available to you. It’s just going to take a lot more initiative to get an interview because your resume looks less impressive.

Way to turn it around! No way to know for sure if you get the prized internship, but that doesn’t mean you won’t find a decent job out of school.