<p>Here's the deal: I struggled throughout my classes in Electrical/Computer Engineering. I did the best I could. I took off a semester for an internship at IBM, and when I came back I struggled even more. Unfortunately, the way my schedule turned out, many easy "throwaway" classes are left over for my Senior year. I can honestly say that only one class this entire year will challenge me. </p>
<p>I didn't delude myself: I knew that the classes I took Junior year would kill my GPA, and they did. I'm sitting with a 3.2 GPA in Electrical Engineering looking for jobs. Now it seems like my Senior GPA won't even matter, even if it does bring my cumulative up (and I'm confident it will; I have straight As so far and I expect to have at least a 3.4 by the time I graduate). I have an interview coming up, and if I am judged negatively because of my GPA, I won't even have a chance to prove myself.</p>
<p>I have a couple of questions regarding this:</p>
<p>Do employers and recruiters keep in mind that the Senior GPA isn't included, what classes are left, etc.?</p>
<p>I have to say that I have quite a bit of experience on my resume. Roughly ten programming languages I've had experience with in different contexts, experience with a lot of different design software, co-op experience, involved with engineering-related activities, etc. I'm aware that employers look at this experience a lot, but I'm worried that a ton of it ISN'T really relevant to the job I'm applying to. I'm very interested in the job, but I have little experience with what it involves. Will it still help? Would an employer hire someone with a 3.8 GPA with hardly any experience over someone with a 3.2 GPA with a lot of irrelevant experience?</p>
<p>I think I might be stressing out too much, but I'd appreciate it if you could try to answer my questions. I'd also like to mention that my University is ABET-accredited, but a lot of universities are, so that probably doesn't help my case.</p>
<p>employers really won’t be all that scrutinous. if they see a GPA 3.5 vs GPA 3.2, they won’t be doing a simulation over their head simulating how these gpas would change by the time of graduation (especially when they are flying through hundreds of resume for preselect). that’s simply an over-kill. many of them don’t even look at your transcript until you’re actually hired. why would they worry about what classes are left? they usually ask what classes you have taken, not what classes you have left. </p>
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<p>is there any reason you don’t want to apply for SE position instead then? that really seems like a natural lead based on your exp.</p>
<p>You might mention it if you get an interview. Otherwise… I guess just deal with it. It was my understanding that a 3.0 in engineering isn’t terrible for industry.</p>
<p>“is there any reason you don’t want to apply for SE position instead then? that really seems like a natural lead based on your exp.”</p>
<p>I actually am applying for a software and hardware position; I guess not all my experience is irrelevant, it’s just that the majority of the things I’ve done in software and hardware are not directly applicable to this job.</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess you’re right; employers don’t really have the time or energy to hypothesize the various situations students are in. I guess it’s more of an intuitive thing based on overall impression. </p>
<p>GPA matters. The thing is, anything over a 3.0 in engineering is considered “good” to most companies. The exception is if you are trying to get into somewhere like Google.</p>
<p>No. Recruiters do not consider your future GPA nor any future internships or experience. An interview is about forecasting future performance based on past accomplishments (or current indicators depending on the consultant teaching you interview techniques). It is not about projecting far future performance based on potential near future outcomes.</p>
<p>Why would they consider the future? If students determined what would “likely” happen, every student in the country would “predict” their senior GPA to be a 4.0, that they’d be elected student body president, lead their college football team to a National Championship, then posit a unified field theory. If employers determined what would “likely” happen, do you want to be denied a job because someone thinks there’s a chance you could develop a cocaine habit?</p>
<p>Your current GPA is a signal of how you’ve currently performed. When students say “well it doesn’t reflect me, because I didn’t work hard the first year”, that says something about them, and how the GPA does reflect their work ethic. When a student says “I didn’t plan ahead and left all my easy classes for the last semester”, that says something about the student and their ability to plan in the long term.</p>
<p>Regardless, the only time your senior grades will matter is if you do really poorly in a class. Some employers will rescind an offer for a D in a major class that they consider important to their work, for instance. Your GPA will also matter for graduate school.</p>
<p>IQ correlates to work proficiency (well studied and common knowledge). SAT & IQ correlate well. Thus, because it’s pretty much illegal to give IQ tests for hiring, SAT is a decent proxy. I don’t believe they really do it for engineering though, because engineering GPA is a fairly decent IQ sort already. When gauging GPA across majors of varying difficulty, SAT score becomes fairly useful to normalize intellect.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t work for a company that asked for my SAT scores. If that means earning less, so be it. It’s the principle of the thing.</p>
<p>If other predictors of performance are insufficient, then new predictors should be used. Using a test designed for juniors in high school… it’s either stupid or wrong, and for my money, it’s both.</p>
<p>"An IQ test designed for 10 years olds can be correlative to future work productivity, as is the SAT. I’m not sure what the problem is. "</p>
<p>If there was no problem, why is IQ testing for a job not alright?</p>
<p>And the SAT is an imprecise tool. That’s why people can take it more than once and have their scores go up. At best, it’s a way to help normalize high school GPAs across schools; at worst, it’s blatantly misleading.</p>
<p>My problem with it is that… well, I guess it tends to make the rich richer, no? Do upper-class children not do better on it than lower-class people? I think if you look at the statistics then you’ll agree that it’s not really fair (perhaps on accident, but that doesn’t make a good SAT score any more of a bona fide occupational qualification [look that term up if you haven’t heard it before]).</p>
<p>Just because something correlates well with job performance… it doesn’t mean you should base hiring decisions on that, especially when it’s something that the person can’t go back and fix. If a person can’t get hired because they don’t have the right college degree, at least theoretically, they can go back to college and fix the problem. How do you fix a bad SAT score? You took the thing when you were a minor, before the age of consent. Maybe they shouldn’t hold that against you any more than they hold a criminal record as a minor against you.</p>
<p>FOR INSTANCE. Race is never a bona fide occupational qualification. Do some people think that white people do certain jobs better than black people? Sure they do. It’s racist and stupid, but that’s not to say that somebody couldn’t do a series of studies that backs that up (hidden factors can make stranger things happen). Gender can be a BFOQ only in certain circumstances… age, as well. IQ… well, you said yourself it’s illegal to base hiring decisions on IQ. In fact, I imagine the woman in the article could sue based on BFOQ laws. Something to look into, anyway.</p>
<p>If the SAT is good enough to get you into a college, and you do well in college, that’s what should be important.</p>
<p>"Arguing incessantly for either insinuates that you will score very low on one or the other. "</p>
<p>If you’re implying that thinking using SAT scores for hiring decisions is a bad idea means the person saying that has a low SAT score, you’re making an ad-hominem argument. You’ll have to do better than that.</p>
<p>Both personality and cognitive tests are used in hiring practices and neither are illegal. The reason they are both used is that there is substantial research showing that both forms of tests correlate well with job performance. I was merely implying that by discarding either completely you have ignored a basis that is equally relevant to that which you are arguing for. I am not saying that you or anybody else have done that here, only that to do that would be counterproductive to any point which you may be trying to make.</p>
<p>I’m certainly not saying that all forms of testing for job placement are bad; what I’m saying is that using the SAT for something so far removed from its intended use is unfair.</p>
<p>IQ has largely been replaced by the term cognitive ability. Although employers may not present an IQ test, tests that measure the same intelligence criteria are used and are legal provided that employers can show they are both valid and pertinent to the position at hand. An example of this would be the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal, among others.</p>