Stay in College or Graduate?

Career Opportunities & Internships
1

A little background:

I am in my 4th year in college at a state school majoring in Mechanical Engineering and minoring in Physics. I have taken and passed the EIT. I have a lot of club experience with FSAE, ASME, etc… I can potentially graduate in Spring 2017.

However, there is one thing holding me back. I have a Cumulative GPA of 2.675. This GPA is both the fault of myself and outside circumstances that required me to work multiple jobs averaging 48 hours a week minimum, since the beginning of my 3rd semester in college, just to make ends meet.

After this semester I will have 2 more left and the best case scenario is that I can raise my GPA to a 3.0. Also good news is that mine and my families financial troubles will be alleviated after this semester is finished off; so for the rest of my time in college I can focus on being in college and getting grades.

My 2.675 GPA is in no way indicative of me as a person, a student, or an Engineer. It is an indicator of a long drawn-out financial struggle that I dealt with while trying to attend college and get my degree and get my career started.

Would it be wiser for me to graduate with a best case 3.0 GPA or stay in college another year and work on getting my GPA even higher? (Note that there is no guarantee the financial troubles will not return beyond the 2016-2017 school year.)

If I graduate with this lower GPA how will it affect jobs I can get, and the start of my career in general? Grad School possibilities? Is GPA more what companies use to let you get your foot in the door and once you have experience they go off that or will this lower GPA haunt me for my career?

2

The former.

Congratulations on doing so well with that job and school workload. (I think 2.675 GPA is good in the circumstances.) Hopefully the jobs you’ve done are relevant to your career.

I searched “engineer entry level GPA” on the jobs site Indeed.com just now and found “Minimum 3.0 GPA” was what all of the first ten relevant* advertised jobs said (*I excluded student internships and one that seeks an advanced degree). It looks like 3.0 is a standard threshold. If that’s the case, staying in school until you have got a 3.0 likely is worth it.

3

I agree with @jjwinkle. Many (but not all) entry level engineering jobs look for at least a 3.0 This is not to say you won’t get a job with a ~2.7, and if you do spend extra time on the degree raising your GPA, you should almost certainly try to do an internship or co-op, as these will help immensely with getting a job (and will also allow you to earn some money while getting relevant experience). After you’ve got some experience, the GPA won’t matter much.

If you want to go to grad school at some point, the GPA will hurt, but it wouldn’t necessarily be insurmountable. If your goal is a PhD, you’d almost certainly have to get a Master’s first. If your goal is a Master’s, you could probably get in somewhere, though it would help if you took and did well in upper-level (or graduate level) courses and had some quality research experience or relevant skills, depending on the particular area.