<p>Here’s my understanding of what companies and graduate schools care about.
Not necessarily in order
GPA/Class Percentile
Internships/WorkExperience/Being in clubs where you build and race cars
Prestige of University</p>
<p>Basically my college choices come down to 3 things
How much I’m paying per year ( Financial Aid included)
At what university will I be the happiest
What university will provide me with the best career opportunities ( This includes prestige, connections, quality of education etc. )</p>
<p>Which brings me to my question, If companies care about GPA over class percentile, I will definitely value grade inflation positively in the application process. If companies care about class percentile over GPA, I will mostly disregard grade inflation in the application process. </p>
<p>So I hear for a many engineering companies, you have to have a 3.0 to even apply. Harvey Mudd and MIT are both top tier engineering schools but the average GPA is 3.2. This means that i 25-40% of the students don’t meet this mark. Does that mean that percent is pretty much screwed?</p>
<p>I am not even sure that most colleges publish a class percentile. Seriously, no one cares about it. They want to see a decent GPA from a reputable school (reputable as in they know the GPA means something).</p>
<p>Also, don’t lump graduate schools and companies into the same pile in terms of what they are looking for in an employee or graduate student. Graduate schools care much more about professor recommendations and research experience than they do about clubs and internships, for example.</p>
<p>"Harvey Mudd and MIT are both top tier engineering schools but the average GPA is 3.2. This means that i 25-40% of the students don’t meet this mark. Does that mean that percent is pretty much screwed? "</p>
<p>No. First of all, the hard 3.0 requirement is not always that hard for graduates of “top” schools. Second, there are a lot of companies out there that have no such limit and will hire people with less than a 3.0.</p>
<p>A while back I posted that in my experience, your job search and your GPA will typically have the following relationship:</p>
<p>3.50+: Can work anywhere, and will be actively pursued for the “best” jobs out there
3.20-3.49: Can work anywhere, but will need to work to get the “best” jobs
3.00-3.19: Can work anywhere, but will generally be shut out of the “best” jobs
2.80-2.99: Will struggle to find work at large companies, can generally find work at smaller employers
2.50-2.79: Will struggle to find professional work, and such work will generally be low-paying and/or unpleasant, with limited prospects for advancement
2.00-2.49: Probably will not find professional employment in engineering</p>
<p>Where “best” generally means best paying and therefore most competitive… which can vary wildly between industries and even companies.</p>
<p>Job prospects may also depend on the economic and industry conditions. Employers may be more willing to look at new graduates with lower GPAs when there is very low unemployment in the industry; the opposite is likely the case when there is very high unemployment in the industry.</p>
<p>2.low GPA graduates may need connections or an entrepreneurial idea that does not require outside funding in order to get a worthwhile first job.</p>
<p>I have found that GPA tends to get you interviews but experience and social skills get you the internships. And experience above all else. Once I got the first internship, I got 6 offers from my first 10 interviews and had to cancel the next 10 interviews.</p>
<p>My school didn’t even tell us what class percentile we were. I wouldn’t be surprised if not many other schools did. I wouldn’t worry about it very much at all. GPA is generally included in your resume (and will definitely be asked for by grad schools), but I would be really surprised (and wouldn’t even know the answer) is someone asked for my class percentile in college.</p>
After your first job, work experience becomes far more important than GPA or where you went to school. For your first job, the importance of GPA varies on a number of factors, most notable the company, the position, and your experience. When I was applying for my first job after college, I did not list my GPA on resume. Nevertheless, most companies I gave my resume to during my college’s engineering career fair offered me an interview. Out of town companies were willing to make a significant investment without knowing GPA including paying for airfare, hotel, and car rental, including companies that new grads tend to think of as most desirable (I wouldn’t have the same feelings about those companies today). One went so far as to send me plane tickets even though I did not give them my resume and had previously told them I was not interested in interviewing. While my resume did not include GPA, it did list several relevant part-time jobs, including a company I started, as well as many relevant skills and multiple engineering degrees.</p>
<p>Some companies also did not ask about GPA during my interviews. At the other extreme, one company asked for a full transcript showing grades in each class, and during the interviews at that company, someone asked about a lower grade in a digital design lab. All companies asked questions about the work experience listed on my resume during the interviews.</p>
<p>I’ve seen many threads asking about the importance of grades or internships, but there are many other areas that are also important for being hired that are rarely discussed. For example, if you don’t do well in the interviews, you are going to have trouble getting hired, regardless of your grades or where you went to college/interned. While being to answer technical questions during interviews is definitely important, it is far from the only interview consideration a team uses when choosing who they’d like to spend years working with.</p>
<p>It depends. One anecdotal case doesn’t really answer your question. I have worked for companies that didn’t look at resumes below a 3.5. And certainly wouldn’t consider an interview (even over the phone) if the GPA was missing from the resume. So, it depends on what you want to do, who is reading the resume, the type of work, etc. </p>
<p>Your 3 criteria are good. But, #3 should not be based on the average GPA for engineering graduates. Instead, look at a list of grad schools undergrads from the school attend, or the companies that interview and hire from the school. Inquire about internships or undergrad research. </p>
<p>I have never not had a recruiter take at least glance at gpa, some do it for talking points, others won’t give you the time of day unless it’s over a minimum. Nobody has ever only looked at the gpa and said “you’re hired.” In fact one of the biggest revelations I had this year was that gpa doesn’t get you jobs, specific skill sets (I.e. real experience programming in x language), talking about results from unique (read not everyone in major doing it) projects/research topics you’re involved with, and of course relevant work experience are all what land you an interview.</p>
<p>GPA helps open the door. Charisma and experience get you the job.</p>
<p>It’s worth noting that all the charisma in the world won’t get you the job if your resume gets thrown in the trash after the hiring manager reads you have a 2.5 GPA.</p>