<p>I am posting after a long time. I graduated with a EE degree from Purdue last year. My gpa is was not very good (around 2.7) and I had a lot of trouble finding a job. Right now I am working as a research assistant in a professor's lab. I am thinking of applying to grad schools in California particularly around silicon valley. My list right now includes San Jose State university and Santa Clara University. I believe I at least have a shot at those schools. </p>
<p>I wanted to know after grad school will employers look at your undergrad gpa, still? Also, is it worth going to a second or even third tier grad school in engineering?
Lastly, if anyone knows about how the recruitment is at those schools, it will be helpful. I am looking at the engineering management and/or EE degree.</p>
<p>Some do, but most don’t. The better your graduate GPA, the less questions you’ll get about your undergraduate education.</p>
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<p>Can you find a job now? Will you be able to find a job coming out of a second tier graduate school? If the answer to the first question is “no” and the second question is “yes”, then that degree is valuable, especially since MS degrees can be done in a year these days.</p>
<p>do you have an internship? it can be hard to find that first job without an internship so it may not be your GPA u know?</p>
<p>A decent grad school will allow you to get a high GPA and some internship experience so that you can find a job easily. But if you want to go into academia(research) or a prestigious r&d position you’d be better off with a grad degree from a top school, reason i say this is that at my school (Iowa State) almost all the faculty here aren’t even from ISU or a similarly ranked school, they’re from top schools like Michigan, Urbana, Cornell, Purdue, Stanford etc…etc…heck, i’d try to find some way to stay at Purdue for M.S…</p>
<p>I would try to gain some experience. The more experience you have, the less a grad school looks at your GPA.</p>
<p>For your SPECIFIC situation, I would stay at Purdue. Take some graduate courses as a non-degree student (about 2 or 3) but you will have to get A’s in them…then apply for regular admission to grad school at Purdue.</p>
<p>There are more PhD candidates then there are positions. Of the students that stay in academia: the top engineering schools trade their top students, and their lesser students (who are usually still stellar researchers) go to the mid first-tier schools. This forces the mid first tier students to drop to the lower first tier, and the lower first tier students to drop to the second tier. There’s the odd student that goes up the ladder with great research, but the majority of students go down the ladder in this fashion.</p>