College GPA, demanding courses: what's best for post-college opportunities?

Parent Cafe
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<p>D1, a college freshman, is wondering just how important it is for her to have as high a GPA as possible, as compared with taking lots of challenging classes. For those of you with students graduating or graduated, or who hire or advise recent grads, what are your thoughts? How much does GPA matter in terms of taking the next step after college? Is there some sort of cutoff GPA which is used as a first sorting of resumes when going through the hiring process, or does this only apply in certain industries? Do employers/grad schools/fellowship interviewers look favorably on a student who’s pushed themselves academically, even at the cost of lower grades, or is holistic review just something used by UG adcoms?</p>

<p>Some background: if she had her druthers, she’d take every single class she was interested in and get B’s. If they were challenging classes, all the better. She took a demanding schedule first semester and pulled an A- average. For second semester, she’s planning on taking five classes, saying that she knows she should drop one but that she finds them all interesting. However, she also very much wants to be employed when she graduates, so she is concerned with making sure she is employable. </p>

<p>No major declared yet. Current contenders are econ, computer science, and biology. She doesn’t have a detailed notion of what she’ll do after graduation. She’s not interested in med school or law school, though grad school is a possibility. She’d love to have an opportunity to have an internship at (or work at) places ranging from Google to the White House to NPR to Pixar. Of course, all of this is subject to change. :)</p>

<p>Thanks for any advice/guidance/lessons learned/etc.</p>

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<p>Academic subject graduate school will care about course selection and rigor in the major subject, as well as grades. Undergraduate research experience is important here. So is reputation of the school in the major subject, as viewed by the graduate department (i.e. the success rate of previous students from that undergraduate school in that graduate department).</p>

<p>Employers may have a minimum GPA threshold to bring a candidate for an interview, but once invited to an interview, it is performance in the interview that determines whether an offer is made. GPA may be one of the initial quick screens before more detailed inspection of resumes to determine whom to interview. Internship experience in the summers or co-op jobs can be a major positive factor in getting to an interview as a new graduate. School reputation can make a big difference in some employers (e.g. investment banks), less so in others.</p>

<p>She should take a look at career surveys (Berkeley, Virginia Tech, and Cal Poly SLO have detailed ones) for various majors to get an idea of the job and career prospects of each. Biology does not have very good job and career prospects.</p>