<p>Since Stern has a curve, does this mean that alot of kids will be below a 3.0 gpa? And even if this is not the case, what kind of jobs do the people in the bottom 25% of the class land?</p>
<p>Bottom tier people generally do back office work (operations generally) at banks or hedge funds; or they work at fortune 500 companies . A few go to prop trading shops. I don't know too many upperclassmen, anyone got more information on this?</p>
<p>i read that employers dont look at your gpa. they really don't care about your grades. i would think all stern graduates would land similar jobs</p>
<p>Hey now, don't hate on ops! I'm in it now - after my summer internship, I realized that I really didn't want to work 12+ hour days. That said, finance/ops at my co is probably way better than at most other companies.. although I knew some kids who went to the finance dept at Google, and I'm sure that's pretty amazing too.</p>
<p>There actually doesn't seem to be any particular correlation I can think of between GPA and type of job - some kids I knew with lower GPAs were really hard workers that'd had a lot of finance experience, so things ended up working out for them. I'd say that people probably end up in smaller, less well-known/prestigious companies, but the types of jobs are kind of the same.</p>
<p>Also, Master, it's a complete and utter lie that companies don't look at your grades. For most places, a 3.0+ (I guess 3.5+ if it's a top tier co) is pretty much a prerequisite unless you make up for it elsewhere in your resume. Let's put it this way - if you've had no experience in the industry you're trying to get a job in, how are employers supposed to tell from your resume that you're smart enough to handle the work? Most people are going to resort to looking at your GPA/SAT (and yes, some companies do explicitly ask for your SAT scores even 4 years after you've taken it)</p>
<p>So, uh, yeah, the moral of the story is to try to do well in your classes.</p>
<p>"i read that employers dont look at your gpa. they really don't care about your grades. i would think all stern graduates would land similar jobs"</p>
<p>I hope you were joking when you said that...</p>
<p>This year all the major banks are having 300+ resumes for 30 or less first round interview spots..GPA matters. People with 3.5's have a handful of interviews at best(I have 2, aside from the company I work at now), many with below 3.7 have ZERO. The people with 3.8+ mostly have a dozen + interviews....GPA matters in landing interviews, but after that, not so much. Of course its possible to network your way in, but its much harder than it seems.</p>
<p>People in the 3.5 range generally take middle markets or boutique. A few gets into a top-tier, or lateral into one after summer internship season. Some get no banking jobs...Recruiting is definitely MUCH harder than I thought.</p>
<p>correlation doesnt imply causation. people with lower gpas probably dont work as hard as those with high gpas and therefore are lacking in other areas. all i know is that i read a book titled "Major in Success: Make College Easier, Fire up Your Dreams, and Get a Very Cool Job" that said gpa doesnt matter that much. the book did say that gpa should be above 3.0, but any differences above 3.0 matter little to employers. i dont think gpa is an important factor in choosing employees. how important is book smarts compared to good social skills in the business world? we already have calculators and computers. a company needs someone who can talk and socialize to lock the deal.</p>
<p>Master, the book might be right about getting a job in general, but finance recruiting for undergraduates is a slightly different beast. Maybe GPA shouldn't be as much of a factor in recruiting employees (like you said, other qualities can really be more important for some jobs), but just because it's true in theory doesn't mean you should believe it's true in real life because you will be sorely disappointed.</p>
<p>The truth is, if you're working for a top firm looking through resumes, you're probably not spending a lot of time on each one - doubly true if you're a first, second-year employee looking at them (and this does happen in quite a few companies). You probably skim, check out the university & gpa, see what companies they've worked for, maybe have a look and see if they have some really cool activities or interests, and move on. How can you tell if someone can "talk and socialize"? You really can't. I mean, maybe you can be like 'hey, this person was president of a club', but you can't tell from a piece of paper. </p>
<p>What you can guess at is their intelligence and work ethic, and that makes it easy to narrow the field down to people you want to interview. Then, you can pick out the people with the most social skills (and you'll know that they're at least likely to be smart).</p>
<p>[Basically an expansion on what mattistotle is saying, although I think recruiting this year is especially bad - I've heard banks aren't recruiting for entire departments...]</p>
<p>[Also, another thing to consider - a lot of people that are interviewing you at top companies probably did graduate with a high GPA from their respective universities, so they're probably naturally biased towards people who were like them in college.]</p>