<p>First:
I think you missed something I said:
</p>
<p>Second:
And something else you missed:
Stanford ranks consistently in the top 5. You have an uncharacteristic experience.</p>
<p>Third:
Absolutely, but the question was focused on the impact of GPA and employability.</p>
<p>
No, and here’s why: It is not just the sum of your grades that matters, it is the shape of them as well - you have to show that you have skills that they want. If all your A’s are in “easy fluffy classes” then your GPA aside you are not going to get a great job. If my company is hiring an RF/Microwave engineer (a “best job” at my company), then you better have learned a lot in Basic and Advanced Electromagnetics and RF/Microwave Components and Circuits, and one of the first places we look is at the grades for those courses.</p>
<p>I would also advise that it is often harder than you think to get A’s and B’s in “easy fluffy courses” so you better try hard at everything and see what happens.</p>
<p>
At most schools, about 50% of engineers will manage 3.0+. It is not “so hard”. Plus, if your engineering GPA is substantially lower then there will be concerns - a 3.0 cGPA and a 2.6 mGPA is going to give you troubles.</p>
<p>I think we need to catagorize “best jobs” as “best STARTING jobs”. It is very possible that for that “more senior” position, the candidate can come from outside of the company.</p>
<p>In the software world, it is heavy about “what you know” and the 2.7 GPA student may have started with a smaller firm and lower salary but acquired skills in the “current flavor of the month” technology. Well, that former 2.7 GPA student can now apply at that bigger company because now it’s all about experience and GPA is not factored in.</p>
<p>
Absolutely, and for a few years after that - 5 years out, if your selling point is your GPA then it means something has gone very very wrong.</p>
<p>Different companies do things differently. I hired many an engineer for my company and ALWAYS asked for a copy of one’s college transcript for college applicants and those with only a few years of experience. I considered it a necessary part of my due diligence as a hiring manager. I wasn’t interested in what grades you got in your “fluff” classes. I would calculate your GPA for your STEM/engineering classes and use that for my evaluation. Anything less than a 3.0 and I figured you didn’t learn enough (or care enough??) to be a useful engineer for me.</p>
<p>I always had enough resumes with good GPAs that those that didn’t pass the 3.0 minimum went into the round file.</p>
<p>I more basic question is; if you really didn’t want to or couldn’t learn it college, why would you want to do it as a career? The money in engineering can be good, but the good money generally goes to those who do well in their field.</p>
<p>
Note that I wrote “many in this thread.” It was not only a response to your post. </p>
<p>
I also disagree with you about engineering companies treating top 9 USNWR very differently from non-top 9 USNWR. In my post, I mentioned the application form for some companies did not even have a box for listing GPA. That is not a unique policy for grads from colleges ranking high on USNWR. Instead it relates to placing little emphasis on GPA for general hiring. If you look at actual engineering hiring at companies graduating students often find desirable, it generally has a stronger correlation with distance than USNWR ranking. For example, Washington is the most represented college among engineers on LinkedIn at Microsoft. San Jose State is #2 for Apple (#1 for all jobs, not just engineer). That said, I would say that the name of the college does often help new grads pass the first round with the getting your foot in the door via resume. It also can be good for networking, particularly if grads from that college are involved in the hiring.</p>
<p>
If you quote my post, I am going to assume that I am one of the many.</p>
<p>
There is no sudden transition, but there is a different treatment with many, even most companies.</p>
<p>
It also relates to the fact that most people place their GPA on their resume, almost all employers ask for transcripts, and it is commonly asked in interviews if not known. My GPA (and several specific grades) came up in every stage of the hiring process.</p>
<p>Employers need to get an idea of who you are and how you work. You can get some of that from an interview, but most employers are reluctant to hire someone off of one good day when they are hiring for the long haul. Your GPA is an indicator of a lot of things companies care about, and most will want to see it.</p>
<p>
Absolutely… but you also need to look at where different new hires get assigned. My really large company hires a lot of engineers from a lot of local (and comparatively low-ranked) universities, but you find them clustered in certain departments, and not the ones with lots of money or pressure. Conversely, national recruiting usually focuses on a few specific departments, and not coincidentally, those are the departments with all the money… and pressure.</p>
<p>My son just went through the interviewing process for a paid summer engineering internship. At the internship that he most wanted (a large, global aerospace corporation), he was told that they initially screened applicants solely by GPA. Then, out of those applicants, they chose the ones that they wanted to interview. GPA definitely matters while in school - the higher the better.</p>
<p>i have also heard managers from two different companies that they like their candidates to be in 2.8-3.6 gpa range</p>
<p>
Yes, but it does not mean every word in the post only relates to your post and none of the other “many”.
This was not my experience. I interviewed at about a dozen companies and only had 1 transcript request. That 1 company that had the transcript quest was the only 1 that brought up GPA during interviews.
If you search for specific job titles on LinkedIn, the results show the same pattern with distance having stronger correlation than USNWR ranking at the vast majority of tech companies. Sure it’s possible that persons with the same job title are assigned to different groups – those who attended brand name colleges get assigned to the A team, and those who didn’t have a high enough USNWR ranking get assigned to the B team, but that is not consistent with comments from persons involved in hiring on this site or how things are done at companies I have worked for. When I started working in a full time job after college, I shared the same office with persons who went to lower ranked state schools. We all had the same job title and did the same type of work, even though our colleges had vastly different USNWR rankings. School name has had little to do with our more recent hires. Instead we’ve hired based on whether skills and experience met our needs for the position, and if available, how they performed during internships. After getting past the resume, the most important factor was how the engineers doing the interviews felt about the candidate. In many cases, if just one of the interviewing engineers did not like the candidate, he would not get a job offer (“like” usually related to how well the candidate answered tech questions related to their job tasks and/or skills listed on resume).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Where I’m going for work they asked for my transcript but I’m fairly confident they didn’t actually look at it. This particular company officially doesn’t require a certain GPA (though requires that you tell them what it is) and has technical interviews and tests to gauge candidates so maybe that’s why? </p>
<p>I would, however, follow up with that if you’re getting terrible grades in all of your engineering classes, you’re probably getting terrible grades across the board. Engineering is definitely more work than Liberal Arts classes, but provided you do the work I think it’s probably easier to ensure a decent grade in most Engineering classes (there are exceptions) than Liberal Arts. Or at the very least, is no less certain.</p>