<p>Alright, lets get down and dirty with what we’re all really in college for: to land that great first job. I’ll be at Wash U next year and I’m wondering how GPA affects people’s job prospects out of the school. I’ll probably double major in engineering and business. Business will be challenging and engineering even more so, and I figure I’ll be in the middle of the class at Wash U so should I place more emphasis on getting good grades or taking harder classes? Now I know you want to say “good grades in hard classes” and that “every class at Wash U is hard” but lets be realistic here. Say I want to work at an investment firm in St. Louis (or intern there before I graduate), what should I be doing, and how much does GPA affect my chances? And what about grad school (MBA, specifically)? How do students fare in both job placement and grad school chances?</p>
<p>I would guess that as a double major between two different schools, you won’t have a huge amount of flexibility in choosing what classes to take between easier or harder, given that you will need to fulfill the requirements for each school/major.</p>
<p>Rather than worrying about picking “easy” classes, my advice would be to not take too full of a schedule, especially your first semester. Hard classes will be more manageable if you aren’t taking too many of them at the same time. Also think twice about if you want to use AP credits to get out of freshman level classes and go right into higher level classes, as it is sometimes better to go ahead and (re-)take the freshman level class, especially if it is in a field where you will continue to take additional higher level classes, to make sure you have a solid foundation. WashU limits you to 15 AP credits, and if you bypass a class because of AP that is required for your major, you may have to replace it with a higher level class in the major.</p>
<p>Is it a misconception to believe though that intro classes are curved lower than higher level classes therefore it might be wise to place out of them with AP credit?</p>
<p>If you want to double major in engineering and business, you won’t choose many classes on your own. GPA? The average WashU Freshman GPA is somewhere around 3.45 (might be a bit lower, but absolutely higher than 3.40).</p>
<p>Someone that takes easy classes for good grades really doesn’t belong at Wash U.</p>
<p>Managing the number of dificult or work intensive classes you take per semester is something entirely different (and in fact the smart thing to do).</p>
<p>I thought the university’s policy is that if a class is required for your major, you can’t place out of it, period. It might be different for a few majors though; I am not complete sure.</p>
<p>Placing out of 131, even with a 5 on the AP AB test seems like a really, really bad idea to me. (You do have to take a test to place out of it I believe, it’s not solely based on AP score). </p>
<p>For my other experiences, placing out of intro econ classes (both micro and macro) is no problem. I had a 5 on both, jumped into 401 and 402 my freshmen year (the intermediate micro classes) and had no issues. Of course it was years ago when you actually got the 3 units credit each, now you have to make them up with other classes. Whether you want to take them or not now goes back to good grades in easy classes vs taking more advanced classes issue. </p>
<p>And of course skipping Calc 1+2 is a definite if you can.</p>
<p>it all depends on your major. For calc though, you don’t really have to "place out: of any class; you can take calc 3 from the start if you want to, and for engineers, that may be a wise choice. But as far as GPA goes, don’t worry so much; from what I heard, there’s students at washu getting intp good grad schools even though their GPAs are considerably lower. A main reason anyone would even come to washu is for quality education, but that would definitely come at the cost of lower GPA; the average engineering GPA is usually even lower than the school’s overall average. Yes it would be nice to get a 4.0 but don’t count on it; everyone at washu and nearly all prestigious schools know that every students selected is going to be smart, and to avoid grade inflation, they must try to make sure that only a small percentage of students get As; but note that not that few students go to grad school.</p>