I am going into my 6th semester in Industrial Engineering. Currently my cumulative GPA is a 3.11 and my major GPA is a 3.31 (was a 3.65 but a bad grade in one of my classes bought that down). I am currently in the process of trying to get a summer internship. I know all the internships want a GPA of at least 3.0, and since I have that, I thought it would be perfectly acceptable to put my GPA on my resume. However, from various professors I have talked to, they said that I shouldn’t list my GPA if it isn’t above a 3.5. So now I’m confused. If I don’t list my GPA, I feel that companies would believe that I have a sub-3.0 GPA and would probably not even consider me. However, if I do list it, its barely a 3.0 companies still wouldn’t consider me. A 3.11 isn’t exactly a GPA to brag about. I feel like I am in this gray area when it comes to my GPA. What should I do?
FWIW as someone who has evaluated resumes in the past, if a company has a minimum requirement, it’s set for a reason. They want someone with over a 3.0, but at that point other factors are going to contribute to the decision. Do they care if it’s a 3.1 or a 3.4, probably not. They’re not going to select the person who has a 3.4 just because they have a higher GPA at that point they’re going to be looking for how much knowledge you have in the area you will be working, how well you interview/people skills, activities you’ve been involved with and any leadership experience you have.
So, at least in my opinion, it really doesn’t matter and you should do what you are more comfortable with. As long as you have above a 3.0, they aren’t going to care nearly as much as the posters here will tell you they will and if you leave it off and they want to know what it is, they’ll just request a copy of your transcript.
Back in the day employers looking for interns would require transcripts as part of the application… But to answer your question, I would not list the GPA in your resume.
I think it’s a decent GPA and would include it. (Some of my engineering classmates would have loved to have that GPA). But I’m not a hiring manager, so factor in the input from the professor and ask around with other campus resources / classmates.
I have been a hiring manager and I would list it on your resume. Not always a clear cut decision to list it but here is my rationale. I would need to know as my company had a minimum GPA of 3.0 and I couldn’t hire anyone with a GPA lower than that. I would always ask to a transcript, so I was going find out anyways. Why waste your and my time if you didn’t have the 3.0. The biggest reason was that I would have lots of resumes to go thru and I would get lazy. I would assume that it was below 3.0 if you didn’t list it and just round file the resume. I would have enough candidates that did list an acceptable GPA.
Devil’s advocate here, but what are the chances of another manager passing over a resume with a high GPA listed because he/she thought it was pretentious?
Depends on the professor. I find that lots of professors who have spent their whole careers in academia can be clueless about how things work in the business world.
I would never pass up a high GPA. Those people could be your next superstar engineer. HOWEVER, I have interviewed some high GPA people who I concluded would not fit at all in a group work setting. I did not hire them.
One of the best ways to view GPA is as a gate. You need to have established that you have learned a certain amount of material and are capable of learning more. If it meets a companies minimum then you pass that gate and go on to the next step. There is so much more than just one’s GPA to becoming a good engineer.
I’ve never come across an employer that would disqualify an applicant because a GPA was too high, although I’m sure there are a few managers who would.
Early in my career I worked at a company that wouldn’t interview grads from places like Stanford or MIT. Management thought people like that were too ambitious and wouldn’t stay very long.
If people don’t want to hire people with high GPAs or someone from Stanford or MIT … why would you want an interview there … and why would you want to work there ? Working with people who don’t like smart people, when you are a smart person (and I mean smart as in yes, doing well in college and high school and pleasing prestigious college application boards) … will not be fun.
There are places where your academic talents are needed and wanted … and there are places where they either don’t want to pay you better or don’t want you to have options or don’t want you to leave or don’t want you to be smarter than them. Again … you are a poor long term fit …
I vote for putting the GPA on there so you can pass through the human resources review and actually make it to a hiring manager. You meet their minimum requirements plus a bit, a few more As. If they wanted a 3.5 minimum,. they would have put it on there.
Put your GPA on any resume you send to an employer that has a cut-off GPA below your GPA. For employers for which you do not know of any cut-off GPA, you may want to put it there anyway, since your GPA is higher than the apparently-most-common cut-off GPA of 3.0.
You may want to list it as “GPA after [term]: [GPA]” and have it exactly match the GPA shown on your transcript after that term, to avoid any possibility of being seen as lying about your GPA. Perhaps optionally add your in-major GPA if it is significantly higher than your overall GPA.
It seems that the companies that have done extensive research into hiring by school have come to the conclusion that neither a pedigree-only (hire from Stanford, MIT, and friends, state schools need not apply) or an anti-pedigree (never hire from these schools) is particularly effective for getting the kind of workforce that makes a company healthy.
Maybe it’s a difference in how they’re taught, or in the type of people that would choose to go to each type of school. Maybe they’re not really all that different and that both restrictions severely constrict your hiring pool and force you to compromise on more significant decisions in hiring that are more predictive of how good a worker is. Maybe it’s cultural in that a culture that values prestige above quality or anti-intellectualism limits itself when merit is what really matters in the long run. Maybe it’s noise in a process that is not easily tracked or quantified (What defines a “good” hire anyways? Performance is context-sensitive). Can’t say I know the answer here.
At the risk of deceased equine beating, put your GPA in any applicacation/resume. Mostly because this is your first job, and your education is your primary selling point. As others have stated, your application may get tossed aside if yo leave it off since recruiting talent is a process that requires effort by the hiring manager. Don’t make more work for them by making them ask for info you will have to give them at some point.
Yeah, just leave it on. Worst case scenario, it won’t draw any attention, and it may tick a checkmark on the resume review.
But don’t be one of those people who keeps pointing to their GPA (in the resume, or later on in the application process). I know a couple people who did that. It didn’t work well.
Leave it on. If they are going to discard you based on GPA they would almost certainly do so later on anyway, and leaving it off just gives them a reason to discard you unnecessarily.