Will I have a chance at grad school/a competitive job? (or: is GPA everything?)

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>Hi, first post here. I am posting here because I am very worried about how I will be viewed by grad schools and employers. Part of the reason I am so worried is because I just got my grades back for this recent quarter and I'm very disappointed. Oh, and for reference, I'm a CS major at UCSD. </p>

<p>I went into the final of my algorithms class with an A and just completely lost it on the final and failed it, and dropped my grade to a B-. I hate exams because i spend the first half hour trying to convince myself that everything I think I know is true. </p>

<p>I got a C+ in my compilers course because it was impossible to implement the code gen part of the compiler in 5 weeks by myself. My partner was completely useless the entire quarter and I practically coded the entire thing on my own. I got a 90% on the first project, which was just the parser part, and I got a 93% on the midterm, and a 90% on the final, but a 40% on the code gen part.</p>

<p>The only reason I'm giving this information is to let you know that it's not that I'm dumb/don't work hard enough, it's that sometimes stupid things happen, but maybe I am making excuses and grad schools/employers won't care. I'm especially ****ed about this quarter in particular because there I could have done way better if I didn't have such a worthless partner and if I didn't mess up so badly on the final. </p>

<p>I'm about to start my senior year at UCSD (but I'll be taking another year because I've been working since senior year of high school and didn't want to overload myself) and I have a cumulative GPA of 2.98 and an upper division GPA of 3.44. As far as standardized test take ability, I got a 1900 on the SAT, but that was without any preparation because I thought it was stupid. I'll actually study for the GRE. </p>

<p>As far as work experience, for two years I worked at an electrical company as a regression tester. For the past year I've been working at a defense contractor working with optical/sensory/communication devices and will likely work there for an additional year. I wanted to try applying for Google, but honestly, I don't think I'm good enough. </p>

<p>Sorry if it seems like I'm rambling, I'm just kind of stressed out. What are people's thoughts? Am I not competitive enough?</p>

<p>I'm not sure if this is the right sub-forum. It seemed like it was, but I guess a mod will move it if it isn't..</p>

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<p>Jeez, you are way too hard on yourself. I don’t think you’ll have any problems finding a job.</p>

<p>As for partners, been there, done that, seeing son do it, too.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, it seems like these tech majors rely heavily on students working in teams, which is frustrating when you’re trying to get a good grade and you have a slacker partner who won’t pull his weight.</p>

<p>But I can see why they do focus on team projects a lot, though, because in the real world, you’re going to have to take up a lot of slack for the idiots you work with who don’t know how to or don’t want to do their job.</p>

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<p>What about graduate school? I figured out that my current major gpa of a 3.4 hasn’t factored in this quarter’s classes, so it’s going to drop to like a 3.15 or something. If I get all As in the rest of my upper division courses, I can get a major GPA of 3.6, but that doesn’t seem that high. Will I be able to get into any decent grad schools with that? </p>

<p>And I know I can get a job somewhere, but I’m just concerned about whether or not I could get a competitive job, like at a big name company or something.</p>