It depends on the company. In surveys, 3.0 GPA is consistently the most common screen threshold. However, there are a minority of companies that use higher thresholds. For example, “elite” finance is notorious for high thresholds. Wall Street Oasis lists a number of banks as having 3.5+ thresholds and one using a 3.8 threshold. This may also be a soft threshold that depends on major, school, and other factors rather than a simple cutoff. “Elite” finance hiring is more the exception, rather than the rule. Most companies report placing far less emphasis on GPA after passing a basic screen.
NACE surveys suggest that most employers care about college GPA, but mostly to the extent of using a cutoff (most commonly 3.0) as a means to prioritize who gets interviews first.
“Elite” employers may differ, of course.
Back to the original article. It seems to me that the “un-grading experiment” isn’t really about helping students transition to college. It may start with college freshmen, but isn’t its ultimate goal to eliminate grading altogether?
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If the faculty don’t measure students, conversely they are also eliminating the tools others might use to measure them :-). This is brilliant!!
There is no indication that MIT or Caltech is heading in that direction.
I’ve said before that these two are in a different category because their first-year courses are far more demanding than most high school graduates are used to.
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Whose ultimate goal? I doubt that any 4-year college wants all their grads to be ineligible to apply to grad/professional schools or employers that may require or strongly prefer having a GPA.
Many supporters of “un-grading”?
I’d bet that these same supporters would advocate eliminating GPA consideration for grad/professional schools admissions (or for employment) too.
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When you frame it that way, that statement becomes a tautology 
Nope, I know plenty of unhooked IB analysts who didn’t have 3.9s, or even close to it. Not to mention non-IB banking jobs. I know you said probably but guessing isn’t helpful.
Big picture many students graduate college with below 3.0 GPAs, especially in more difficult majors like engineering. And many of those students gets jobs that are at least somewhat related to their major. With that said it would be interesting to see data as to whether sub 3.0 GPAs are more correlated with underemployment than 3.0+.
I’ve interviewed candidates applying to the public side of a bank, and I’ve not seen a resume with <3.8. There is such a flood of resumes, that it is hard to ignore a 3.8 and interview a 3.7. And there is no time to interview everyone. I just assumed banking might have higher thresholds. In fact the received wisdom on my son’s campus is that 3.85 is pushing it for IB.
I stand by what I said. I will say there are a lot of banks. (Fewer now than one month ago!)
I suppose the cohort that kids at my son’s school are looking at are about half a dozen BBs and 3-4 boutiques.
Really? I have done freelance work for myself for many years, but back when I worked for companies I was never asked for my GPA. I would guess that would be highly dependent on specific industries and I would hazard a guess that most employers don’t ask about GPA. I’ll ask my husband tomorrow. He’s been interviewing candidates for IT jobs last week.
I am not talking about people that are some number of years out of school. If it’s your first job, can you look at all the resumes that come your way without any first filter? I also had a friend tell me that he was asked for undergrad grades for a post MBA job. Go figure!
Here are the top 25 employers in the US in 2022:
The top of the list is Amazon. This is all kinds of jobs. Not just software jobs.
Each corporate job at Amazon receives 250 resumes:
2024 HR Statistics: Job Search, Hiring, Recruiting & Interviews)-,On%20average%2C%20each%20corporate%20job%20offer%20attracts%20250%20resumes.,only%20one%20will%20be%20successful.
It is necessary to filter.
This means more work for faculty, if written assessments take the place of grades. If a class is very large, it seems impractical, but for smaller humanities classes, I think this is a good experiment. Grades were originally a way to assess learning but have become an end in themselves and, yes, a source of stress.
I wrote a paper and handed it in with the pages all mixed up. The prof gave me an A but I am certain he didn’t read it. If he had had to write an evaluation of my work, it would have meant a lot more than that A.
You literally said “most employers would like to see a GPA”. That’s just not true. Most employers includes every industry, every mom-n-pop business, not just elite banking and Silicon Valley.
I would say that most of the job descriptions I reviewed with my son (engineer) required a 3.0 and some “preferred” a higher one.
Some of the technical sales jobs were 2.8 or 2.75.
For my daughter we’ve looked at some and I think some have it, but some don’t - but she’s a liberal art major.
So it might be dependent upon the industry. To be a claims adjuster might not require brilliance while being an engineer might - so to speak.
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I guess I am not talking about mom-and-pop businesses.
And I meant for new grads. Not experienced hires.
I would be surprised if any regular corporate job for a company that employs more than, say, a hundred people would look at a new grad without a GPA.
I haven’t heard of kids sending out resumes without a GPA. That is a reckless action. And I haven’t seen resumes without a GPA.
This edutopia article has a little history on College grading with a 100 point scale along with some concerns about how it has evolved to where we are now.
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