<p>I know this issue has been obsessed about before, and that won't change anytime soon, but I wanted to get some perspective from the parents: how important was your college GPA?</p>
<p>I know this is an impossibly general question; it depends on an endless number factors, including your career path, level of education, etc. But on a personal level, how important do you think your GPA was in getting you to where you are today?</p>
<p>Did it open up some opportunities that you think you otherwise might not have had? Did it close any doors for you? Was it just one factor among many? Were you asked to explain or justify a bad GPA in an interview?</p>
<p>Your speculation and experience is appreciated, even if it doesn't put me at ease :). I just want a better idea of the relative worth in earning a high GPA.</p>
<p>A higher GPA will affect your starting level and salary if you take a job with the federal government according to college grads I have spoken to recently.</p>
<p>A high GPA affects your start, but after your first job, it is what you are doing at work that counts. After that almost no one goes back to what happened in college. Since it can affect your starting salary, it can be important to what you make later, too. You are also competing with others who may have a higher GPA and until you have work experience, that is the only measure they have for you. It is worth trying to get a good GPA for those reasons. But it is not the end of the world if it is not high, you just start differently. Your interviews would be different and so should your resume. You should guide them to your strengths and experiences other that the GPA.</p>
<p>I suppose my GPA might have helped me get into a good grad school (it was somewhere between a B+ and an A-) - more likely though it was my senior thesis and the fact that my two advisers for it wrote my recommendations. There were no grades in grad school - I got my jobs from my portfolio and now mostly word of mouth.</p>
<p>Just to make it crystal clear, as an architect, no one has ever, ever, ever asked to see my undergraduate or graduate grades. I realize though that things may be different in other professions.</p>
<p>I think my grades and the fact that they were high enough for me to be Phi Beta Kappa at a top school helped with early jobs and admittance to grad school.</p>
<p>As always, it depends. There's professional frats and honor societies that have a minimum GPA cutoff, for example. If you want to join one of those, your GPA may need to be as high as 3.3 or 3.5.</p>
<p>And then there are schools like Brown that don't even calculate GPA and where students can take as many classes as they want Pass/Fail. Of course, students are encouraged to get grades in classes that are in their major because of grad school-- especially for sciences, I would guess-- but I have heard a rumor of a student who was accepted to Harvard Med School taking EVERY class at Brown Pass/Fail (Satisfactory/No Credit). Naturally students have transcripts from Brown. Anecdote- my brother has been in a position of hiring and he said that when he sees a student graduated from Brown he knows that this is a motivated, interested, self-disciplined person and he doesn't need to know GPA. I guess it depends. Just do your best and rest assured that it is the best you can do.</p>
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We get reduced car insurance rates on S-2 as long as he remains "a good student." Much appreciated.
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<p>Yeah, but you can get an even bigger discount if your kid goes to a college more than 200 miles from home and doesn't bring a car.</p>
<p>My son, who goes to a college near home, has to provide transcripts each semester so that we can keep his Good Student Discount. But my daughter, who goes to a distant college, has never been asked for a transcript. We get an even better discount on her just because she's far away, and there are no restrictions on her driving the family's cars when she is home.</p>
<p>As for GPA, I had a really high one, which helped me to get into a master's degree program in a different field from my undergraduate major. I don't think recommendations helped much in my case because they were coming from professors in a different field. My GPA and GRE scores also got me a fellowship my first year in graduate school, which was nice because the department asked me to TA on top of it and paid me extra money, on top of my fellowship money, to do so. Thus, I had a higher income than most grad students do that year. But after that, I don't think grades mattered at all (although the fact that I went to a well-known university obviously did). I was never asked for a transcript when I applied for jobs, but interviewers have often made favorable comments on where my degrees came from.</p>
<p>As others have said, it depends on your profession on whether your transcripts are required. For my job (and many others) in academia, I have had to submit my undergrad and grad transcripts.</p>
<p>Also it was my experience that certain GPA cutoffs when applying for grad school may require you to do more to "prove yourself worthy" of admittance to grad school. For example, my GPA was 1/100 point shy of the cutoff and unlike those who had a higher GPA, I had to take the GREs, get many letters of recommendation, take classes as a special student to show I was up to snuff and then have provisional acceptance until after one semester of grad school.</p>
<p>I honestly do not remember my undergraduate GPA whatsoever. We told our first son that we hoped and expected that he would keep a minimum of a 3.0 (which is what he needs to keep his merit scholarship and to go on foreign study). All I remember was that I did just fine on my GREs , LSATs and GMATs and got into the two MBA programs where I eventually applied so my undergraduate GPA is a number that I no longer store in my over crowded brain space. Back in the 70s no one ever asked me what my GPA was in undergraduate nor did they ever ask for transcripts or "proof" that I did graduate....I suppose things could be different today. We "ask" our interns what their GPA is but we don't require verification from the schools (the interns don't know that however LOL). GPA is not a consideration for hiring, although I've noticed that quite often these days students put it on their resume...so it may have some influence with the recruiters subliminally. I will cousel my children NOT to put it on a resume and only answer if asked the direct question when interviewing.</p>
<p>GPA will definitely matter if you want to go to grad school or professional school (ie med or law).</p>
<p>Many grad programs won't even look at your application without a 3.0 or better. And to be competitive at really good schools, you'd probably need at least a 3.5. And most med and some law school admittance averages see GPAs much higher than that.</p>
<p>While many employers may not make an up-front big deal about gpa, you can be sure it will be a factor in the early rounds of decision-making....
when comparing your resume to those of others. If there are a number of candidates with great credentials and experiences, and there are only 2 interview slots, guess who will get the interviews? GPA can be, and often is, a tip factor.</p>
<p>I was responsible for hiring graduates at one time for a large Fortune 100 company in high tech and that was certainly my experience.</p>
<p>All that said, success is not determined by having a great gpa, but there's no doubt it makes it much easier to get your foot in the door--whatever form that door may take. JMHO.</p>
<p>The demand in my field was very high when I took my first real job and employers just wanted the skills - they didn’t bother looking at GPA. You could get a job with just a high-school diploma if your skills were good enough.</p>
<p>Of course it matters a lot for grad, law or med school. And as competitive as the job market is these days, it is certainly better to have a higher GPA to get your foot in the door. My own GPA was mediocre (3.0 to 3.25 range) from a couple UC schools with degrees in biophysics and electrical engineering. I was able to get hired but that was a long time ago. I don’t remember if anyone asked my GPA. Twenty-five years and a few positions later, I make a very good living at a very interesting job and it was a non-issue.</p>
<p>For hiring out of school, every company is different. Some places do have minimum acceptable GPAs, usually around the order of 3.5. Obviously, I wouldn’t have looked at places like that back when I was applying. But just like you look for “fit” in a college, you can look for positions that fit. .As far as my current place of employment - we hire a lot of new grads, and we don’t ask GPA. You can supply it as a positive if you want. What we do look at is what you have done “work wise” either in a summer job, internship, or even a senior project or thesis. The key is to be able to articulate why the skills you learned there would translate into something useful for my company. Don’t get me wrong- having a high GPA is never a negative factor, so do you best. Just don’t get too stressed out and blow it completely because of worry.</p>
<p>College GPA is generally very important for what you do after college. If you really want to enter competitive areas (grad schools and other competitive programs) then you need a very good GPA… that’s just how it works. If you are looking to enter the workforce right out of undergrad you still generally need a good GPA, although maybe not quite as good as some of the previous examples. </p>
<p>30 years down the line obviously nobody really cares anymore; however, where you’re at 30 years down the line is often determined by where you ended up right after college so there’s really no way around it… it is important. </p>
<p>Don’t mean to put the pressure on, but it is important now so just try to stay cool and do your best.</p>
<p>If I don’t average at least 3.8 this year, there’s no chance in hell I’ll get into any decent law school. Oh, and if I don’t get a 172 on the LSAT, again, there’s no chance in hell I’ll get into my top choice (Penn Law). If you’ll excuse me, I need to go throw up.</p>
<p>GPA was key to my getting into a top law school and was probably what kept my H out of medical school and some graduate programs that he might have wanted to attend besides the one that he got into.</p>
<p>But, fast forward 30 years, I’m a stay at home mom and my H has a great job in his field. In the short run, GPA can either open doors or restrict choices. In the long run, GPA turned out to be a non-issue.</p>