Valid or nah?
I mean, they do… but they don’t always get good jobs.
Totally valid, but as @boneh3ad‌ said, how valid will that degree be. Engineering is much different than medicine where if you have the degree, competence is assumed. A low engineering GPA will be greeted by far fewer opportunities than a higher one because so many engineering companies have firm GPA cut offs to even be granted an interview. Keep your grades up.
Yup! It’s true. Don’t sweat. Learn the material, if the test scores well, then great. If not, then so what.
Just graduate!
All of the senior engineers I know say the same thing. It basically goes along the lines of “I tried getting A’s and B’s in freshman and sophomore year but once I now in junior year I have work and officer positions and super tough positions so the only thing I care about is passing and getting the degree”.
With all of the grade forgiveness and withdrawals students are allowed at most universities and ability to take intro courses at community college, you could probably afford to fail several courses outright and still get the degree.
While you could, you would likely spend costly extra semesters repeating the failed courses, or not graduate at all if you run out of money. C grades may get degrees, but D or F grades are bad news.
Reputedly, many employers have cutoff GPAs around 3.0 when deciding which soon-to-graduate students to interview. A 3.3 GPA student is likely to have an easier time getting interviews for the first job than a 2.3 GPA student.
“C”'s will indeed get you a degree at most colleges. But most large companies and some small companies have hard cutoffs at 3.0 to interview and to hire. And the other part is that 3.0 might be a cutoff, but the majority of candidates you will be competing against will have something like a 3.3 or better.
So, you say it doesn’t matter after your first job!!! Well, my wife, with over 25 years of experience, was changing jobs and had to submit her college transcript as part of her application. They were checking for a degree sure, but they told her they were also checking her GPA; just to make sure they were getting a quality person.
If you are getting such low grades, why are you not learning the material? This will be your career and if you want to be good at it, you better know your stuff.
College Confidential seems to prize Engineering Degrees more than they are prized IRL. I think you can graduate with below a 3.0, sure. But then you will want to back that up with an MBA or some other diversion. Engineering is all about efficiency and productivity; and competence, knowledge, thoroughness, and persistence are measured and valued throughout your career, week-by-week, month-by-month. If you are looking for an analytical/quantitative basis for doing something else, sure, “'C’s get degrees”.
Cs wouldn’t get my engineering degree because if my GPA falls below 3.5, my scholarship is in jeopardy.
Applying a GPA screen to all candidates may have the effect of age discrimination against older candidates, due to grade inflation over the years (the older candidates are likely to have graduated in a decade when typical respectable GPAs were lower than they are now).
Women’s studies majors get degrees too. Does that mean that they are the most useful ones out there?
Yes, “Cs Get Degrees”, but sometimes you have to accept a “D for Diploma”
Yes, I hear it most often from those two or three semesters from graduating. Heard my professor mention it in class when joking with a student who was retaking their class.
Perhaps the area around me is different from the norm, but while I do recognize that employers have GPA cutoffs, the majority of the local companies do not have GPA cutoffs. Many of them say it doesn’t matter much to them. I guess it just varies on what company you’re going for.
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Well generally, the smaller and more local the company is, the less picky they are likely to be (and likely can afford to be).
C’s get degrees worked for both of my engineer friends who graduated in 2014 and they both have jobs. One of them without internship experience landed a job relating to his senior project of an herb extractor.
Extraordinarily high GPAs will impress recruiters however! With a 3.98 and the skills to back it up, recruiters I’ve talked to said I should have no problem getting a job.
This should have been your first clue that the company she was applying to was probably below her intelligence level. Every time I get a new gig they ask me if I have a degree in my field. Well, I do - a computer science degree from 1984. Most of the stuff I learned on or about is in a museum, history book, or landfill. Them asking about a degree lets me know that this gig is going to be a breeze.
If you mean literally getting a degree, then yes, C’s will get you a degree.
As for whether the degree will be worth anything, I think it depends a lot on the major and how many C’s you’re getting. At least for my major at my school (chemical engineering at a large public school), most grads still get jobs with GPA’s as low as 2.5 (in major).
A degree is a degree. I do not think the degree itself will diminish because of the person’s GPA. The person’s competence is reflected in their GPA, but the degree itself.
@boneh3ad‌ So…they don’t always get bad jobs, either?
The “better” jobs tend to be open to those with higher GPAs. There are plenty of companies that require engineers, though, but if you have a low GPA you are more likely to end up with an unsexy job.
Of course, after that first job, most future jobs will be based on previous job experience, not your GPA. If you have a lower GPA and start at Unsexy, Inc and do a great job there, maybe you can later move up to that coveted job at The Sexy Corporation whose GPA cutoff for new hires would previously have excluded you.
The bottom line is that having a good GPA makes it more likely that your first job will be a “good” one.
I wholeheartedly disagree with this statement, as do most companies’ hiring practices. With little to no prior work experience in the field, the GPA is the only (if imperfect) measure of competence that can be used to compare every student. Students with higher GPAs tend to grasp the material better and tend to be harder workers, which most companies would obviously tend to prefer.
On the other hand, someone who adheres to “Cs get degrees” and has a 2.0 when they graduate indicates they passed their courses on average with some minimally acceptable level of competence. Most companies, given the choice, would much rather have someone who is likely to excel. It’s better for their bottom line.
You’re sitting in a seat in the latest jetliner. The pilot comes on and says that there is some severe turbulence ahead and everybody take their seats and tighten your seat belt. Do you feel more comfortable knowing that the plane was designed by someone who barely passed their structures class or someone who aced it?
Obviously an absurd example, but you get the point.
Mistakes cost a company money and the better the engineers, the fewer mistakes.
Can’t remember who the Mercury astronaut was; but there was once a story that he was sitting atop the rocket waiting out some kind of hold to fix a problem and all he could think about was that the rocket, essentially a semi-controlled bomb, was designed and built by the lowest bidder.