Do grades in college really matter ? - Page 3

looks take you further in life.. and i don't mean the thread count on your peeping sleeve, as no amount of lipstick on any pig will do. i'm talking body fat ratio, jaw structure, and girth.

What?

Not much. GPA is just a filter basically. And major counts too. I'd rather see a 3.5 in a quantitative subject than a 4.0 in most humanities.

I hate discussions on questions as broad and open-ended as "do grades really matter," because everyone who attempts an answer seems to have a different definition of "matter." Inevitably you get people who tell you they do matter, and people who counter that they're not all-important -- but the first camp wasn't necessarily arguing that they were all-important. And then you get people jumping in and talking about how grades aren't an indicator of success, yada yada yada. And then you get people talking about whether grades should matter, which is a huge deviation from the original question in and of itself. In the end, everyone basically has a very different argument to make about a very different interpretation of the question. With that preamble out of the way, let me define what I'm talking about when I say that yes, grades do matter. By "matter" I am not talking about whether I think they should. I am not talking about whether they are or are not a guarantee/promise of future success. I am talking strictly about the fact that yes, you will be evaluated as a job or grad school applicant based on your grades when you're fresh out of college. Obviously, the extent to which grades are taken into consideration varies a great deal. Certain industries -- especially banking, but also consulting and some tech firms -- use grades as a mandatory minimum entry requirement. In other words, grades won't get you in the door -- but you won't get in the door at all if you don't have the grades. They're necessary, but not sufficient. If you're an exceptional candidate who doesn't have the grades, you might be SOL in these industries until you take a year or two to prove yourself at a lesser firm or in a related field or function. That's just how it is. It's unfortunate, but it's true. There are thousands of applicants for every job opening, and little time to read through all of the resumes carefully. So an initial culling -- sometimes strictly by computer algorithm, btw -- is often done to weed out the low GPAs and other non-qualifieds right off the bat. For grad school, your grades will matter. If you're applying right out of college, they matter a great deal. If you're applying after a few years of work experience, they matter somewhat less, but they still come into play (or come back to haunt you, as I liked to think of my grades). And then, on the very fringes, you find companies who hold grades in high consideration regardless of the stage of life you're in -- be it 6 weeks or 6 years out of undergrad. Google comes to mind in this case. Friends who've applied to Google have told me that Google asks for your undergraduate GPA and even your high school SAT score for quite a few jobs. Talk about something you never expected to deal with again, but yeah, the freaking SAT. Thankfully I kicked that sucker's ass, so if I ever decide to apply to Google, at least I've got one element goin' for me. Probably not much else they want, though.

Agreed. But, for those who work before applying graduate school, the quality of their grades will almost definitely have an effect on the prestige of their work experience (excluding the rare outliers). So, GPA matters two-fold for such an applicant: (1) to evaluate academic credential and (2) in determining the esteem of their intermediary work experience/resume.

This is also the case for every major consulting firm (e.g., McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Booz Allen, et cetera).

It obviously matter, because people fret over it.

from a top school? no different. Actually...if they were from a school with no/low grade inflation, I would make sure to ask the 3.9 and 4 kids a lot of teamwork and social questions in the interview (if they were applicable to the position) because the people at my school with those kinds of GPAs worked way too hard and often had some odd social bits. If they from harvard...well then even a 4.0 wouldn't be high enough with that grade inflation

As for whether or not it really matters, it depends on shit you can't control. Graduating last june, I think that I would have done a lot better with a slightly higher GPA due to the world falling apart and everybody struggling to find work. If I had graduated a few years in either direction, I would probably have felt great about my GPA and said it didn't matter. As it was, I feel like I got GPA filtered (and filtered in other ways) out of lots of jobs at shitty companies that I would have hated to work for. Somehow I got lucky and got an offer after the first round of interviews at a company far better than the ones that had summarily filtered me away--it took a bit longer than I would have liked to find, but in the end I was happy. If my GPA had pushed me into the next cutoff point, I might have found a job faster--but I might not be as happy as I am now (and I would have been less happy studying in school).

Grade is the ultimate assessment of intelligence, and it's especially true when you have kids. My Dad was a straight As student in college and grad school so he always gives me shit for not living up to my potential. If you do poorly in school, I don't think you'll have much chance raising smart kids unless you go into artistic endeavors such as glass blowing or belly dancing for a living.

everyone i know that tells you theyre pretty smart are never that smart.

This.


Speaking only from experience in admitting students to graduate school, by-and-large, the answer is no, though a 3.9 or 4.0 from a good university looks pretty impressive. Good letters of reference that state that you are a student who goes above and beyond and a mature statement of interests are what will make you for that next step.

Internships or work experience > 4.0 GPA w/o exp

I'm baffled that prospective students think that they are going to sneak it by me that their work experience is completely irrelevant.

i cant beleive people fool themselves into thinking they dont matter.

would you hire someone who had bad grades, indicating they were either stupid or had poor work ethic?

what is also important is being able to interview well (ie having some social skills, being able to talk about interests outside your degree etc). I remember i had an interview will Shell and their question was 'Talk to us about space travel'. Having good grades go the interview, having read a lot of stuff outside my core discipline helped me answer the question.

Oh, it just takes a little editing of the ol' resume, change some job responsibilities, fudge the title... ^^To the above poster: How many jobs have you applied for which they actually wanted to know your GPA? I can think of just two, both were for university academics. Outside of that I have never been asked.