[jake1720]

For engineering majors, past your first job?

It's not terrible, but I did pretty bad this semester. Wondering if anyone knows how it really affects you. Otherwise I'm likable and hard working. Had other priorities that did not go so well (like trying to launch a business).

Some insight would be amazing.

[rungoodinc]

Sort of depends on what school you go to and the engineering industry in the surrounding area.

My friend got a 2.0 from UC Irvine in Electrical Engineering. He was on academic probation for the whole time and was literally kicked out of the school at one point before they reinstated him.

As soon as he graduated, he got a solid job at a well-known engineering firm. There is a big EE industry in Irvine, so that definitely helped.

As long as you graduate, you should get something decent.

To answer your question: in pretty much any industry, GPA means absolutely nothing past your first job.

[jake1720]

Thank god.

[Seadog]

+1. Obviously I'd say a higher GPA is *generally* more beneficial than a lower one, but as always it depends. I found especially for a first job, since you don't have a whole lot of value, bigger companies tend to focus on quantitative things like GPA. Especially if you have close minded HR gatekeepers whom to avoid making a real decision limit themselves to concepts like <3.0 = bad.

Smaller companies (or ever people at bigger ones if you get someone who knows GPA isn't the be all end all) I think tend to evaluate more on personality and if you're a good fit to the more family like atmosphere.

The danger of a higher GPA however is that you can come off as a bit of a robot and need to dispel this notion out the gate. I had a friend who thought GPA was the be all end all, would turn down outings 4 weeks before exams to study. Good guy and he knew his stuff, but he always came off as a bit one dimensional to me.

[jamaicabound]

I can't speak to most industries but unless your looking to get into a specialized business or post grad program where they require a specific GPA grades don't really matter. Thta or unless your going after some very specialized sought after job or internship. For run of hte mill degrees its pretty pointless.

I have a cousin who was very focused in college and to this day he says he wishes he would have let loose, had more fun, not cared as much about school. He's got a decent job with one of hte large insurance companies you always see comercials of but honestly he's no better off than the guys who got c's in college.

I think as with anything, moderation. Don't have your nose burried in a book all through college and also don't be the guy who parties and flunks out either.

[jake1720]

Engineering. Trying to keep a 3.0+.

Oddly enough I partied less and got worse grades.

[Fortis]

Depends what sort of schools you want to go to. Sure, you can get into an alright school with an alright GPA, but you better have awesome extra curriculars and strong SAT/ACT scores if you want to go to a good school that a prospective employer has heard of. It really depends on a multitude of factors: can mommy/daddy pay for college? do you want to go to college? what sort of college you want to go to? What major do you want to go into?

What is your GPA and what grade are you in?

The reason I bring up all these questions is because college (and the job market) are highly competitive right now, so I tell all my students to not fuck around unless they want to play life on hardmode.

Edit: didn't realize you're going into engineering, but I think you should still take high school seriously.

[PainPositive]

Past your first job you'll be fine. GPA won't matter after that.

What you should consider is staying out of trouble, not getting a DUI, not getting a girl impregnated, practicing game, keep working on starting some businesses, and working out.

Not fucking up and steadily improving are all you need to worry about.

Pain

[jake1720]

^^Thanks

Petroleum engineering. Probably going to get 3 C's and D this semester. Which is weird because I had a 3.5 average for the past 3 semesters... (Is that a good idea to tell a potential employer? I tried to start a business. TERRIBLE IDEA).

Hard classes + me trying to start a business = no go.

Job market is terrible right now because oil prices are low. Sounds right though. Everyone tells me after my first job it doesn't matter. Fuck anxiety (especially test anxiety).

When prices are up everyone is hiring like there's no end (in oil).

Thanks everyone. Sounds like kill it again next year and retake a class if necessary.

Last semester I was talking to investment banks during recruiting season, slaying hot girls, and getting a 3.0+

I hit a bump in the road. Does this happen every once in a while?

[PainPositive]

(05-05-2015 12:06 PM)jake1720 Wrote:  

^^On that. Actually lost a year due to gaming too much. Won't do that again.

Everything in moderation my friend. You sound like a smart guy you'll do fine.

[Menace]

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

[jake1720]

(05-05-2015 12:14 PM)Menace Wrote:  

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

Will do. Bad semester. Getting my shit together.\n
It's really only this semester. Every other semester is not bad.

[Buster]

Engineering is all about solving problems, bad semester? No biggie if you solve it.... STEM degrees are still in demand but capability and breadth are very highly valued. As a retired chief engineer of a leading aerospace company, I looked for guys that "got it", many get out of college and are good with the books but take years to be useful in a dynamic environment. I had a couple of 3.8 engineers that couldn't go fast when times got tough, I asked them to find something else they were good at....

See if you can get an internship over the summer so you can show up in the job market with some experience in your field or at least a steady job with solid references. The most important thing a young engineer can learn is that an old school mechanic will know more about the workplace than his green ass... The beauty is if you game the old guys, they will take you under their wing and show you the ropes, but expect them to send you after a sky hook.

[Ibagemyoutagem]

the best engineer are very task oriented with low people skills. If you can't make a solid gpa in engineering it shows a lack of task orientation and completion of a degree just shows you can stick to a task and finish through.

[rungoodinc]

It depends on how good your school is, but Engineering is a pretty transferable degree in general. Major consulting/banking/finance firms prefer Engineers over finance or econ majors for sure, but it's a lot better if your school has a brand name in this kind of situation.

Also, Engineering + MBA down the road is a sick combo. A lot of engineers have a stable salary but they are sort of capped at where they are (usually because they don't have good people skills).

[TripleG]

(05-05-2015 12:14 PM)Menace Wrote:  

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

Huh? Since when is an undergrad GPA < 3.0 bad? Sure, if one pursues an easy major (for example liberal arts) then it may be bad but if one go's for STEM then there are MANY exceptions.

If one has a technical major from an elite engineering school (Virginia Tech in my case) getting an above 3.0 GPA is tough as heck especially if one wants to enjoy the college experience of not just studying but "partying" as well. I am throwing the partying term loosely as in my case it meant playing video-games with my dorm mates on weekends and drinking natty light beers (this was before I discovered girls). I was a nerd my first two years of college but literally half the required classes for engineers and computer science majors in my school were meant to get you to flunk out of a major and switch to an easier one. I had many friends who studied like crazy and still could not get good grades in those classes. I think my multivariable calculus class freshman year had a 40% failure rate...and this class was full of kids who were top 15% in their high schools.

Point is if one get's a low GPA but go's to an elite school and pursues a tough major it can be forgiven. I finished college with "only" a 2.5GPA and sure, I did not "pass" the cut off for any companies I interviewed with (many wanted a 3.5+ gpa) but as soon as I finished college I went ahead and did temp jobs while pursuing some of the hardest industry certifications from Cisco and MS then interviewed with defense contracting companies and not a single one asked about my GPA, they only cared about the school and my major (relevance to the job that I was applying for).

There are so many examples of kids who flunk out of college or finish college only after multiple transfers yet still succeed in life as entrepreneurs or CEO's. Only thing a high GPA can show is that you are a hard worker (or at least spend some minimum time doing the right type of studying), possess decently high IQ, have good time management skills, and know how to listen (no ADD). However, I have seen so many "book smart" kids, especially females who had high GPA's yet did not even know how to balance their check book properly. The greatest companies in the world would agree with me. For example, Microsoft doesn't care muchabout GPA's and gives most college students (with STEM majors) a chance to interview with them as long as they do well on their assessment test. Ditto for Amazon.

While on the topic of IT companies, I had a friend who finished computer engineering with a 2.4 GPA (he had many hobbies in college including djing and filmmaking and didn't study too much) but several companies saw his coding examples and gave him a chance. 10 years later, he is now a PhD candidate at GMU as well as lead software developer for a big 3 accounting company (making 150k+). Point is you should stress less about your GPA (I would give any 2.5+ student from a good school a chance to do tech interview and prove me wrong) and more about the type of major you are pursuing and the placement rate for recent grads within it.

[jake1720]

(05-05-2015 11:22 PM)TripleG Wrote:  

(05-05-2015 12:14 PM)Menace Wrote:  

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

Huh? Since when is an undergrad GPA < 3.0 bad? Sure, if one pursues an easy major (for example liberal arts) then it may be bad but if one go's for STEM then there are MANY exceptions.

If one has a technical major from an elite engineering school (Virginia Tech in my case) getting an above 3.0 GPA is tough as heck especially if one wants to enjoy the college experience of not just studying but "partying" as well. I am throwing the partying term loosely as in my case it meant playing video-games with my dorm mates on weekends and drinking natty light beers (this was before I discovered girls). I was a nerd my first two years of college but literally half the required classes for engineers and computer science majors in my school were meant to get you to flunk out of a major and switch to an easier one. I had many friends who studied like crazy and still could not get good grades in those classes. I think my multivariable calculus class freshman year had a 40% failure rate...and this class was full of kids who were top 15% in their high schools.

Point is if one get's a low GPA but go's to an elite school and pursues a tough major it can be forgiven. I finished college with "only" a 2.5GPA and sure, I did not "pass" the cut off for any companies I interviewed with (many wanted a 3.5+ gpa) but as soon as I finished college I went ahead and did temp jobs while pursuing some of the hardest industry certifications from Cisco and MS then interviewed with defense contracting companies and not a single one asked about my GPA, they only cared about the school and my major (relevance to the job that I was applying for).

There are so many examples of kids who flunk out of college or finish college only after multiple transfers yet still succeed in life as entrepreneurs or CEO's. Only thing a high GPA can show is that you are a hard worker (or at least spend some minimum time doing the right type of studying), possess decently high IQ, have good time management skills, and know how to listen (no ADD). However, I have seen so many "book smart" kids, especially females who had high GPA's yet did not even know how to balance their check book properly. The greatest companies in the world would agree with me. For example, Microsoft doesn't care muchabout GPA's and gives most college students (with STEM majors) a chance to interview with them as long as they do well on their assessment test. Ditto for Amazon.

While on the topic of IT companies, I had a friend who finished computer engineering with a 2.4 GPA (he had many hobbies in college including djing and filmmaking and didn't study too much) but several companies saw his coding examples and gave him a chance. 10 years later, he is now a PhD candidate at GMU as well as lead software developer for a big 3 accounting company (making 150k+). Point is you should stress less about your GPA (I would give any 2.5+ student from a good school a chance to do tech interview and prove me wrong) and more about the type of major you are pursuing and the placement rate for recent grads within it.

I went to mines for a bit and it was exactly like you described. Hitting a 3.0 was virtually impossible.

Hell beating a 2.5 was hard enough. I had some friends fail calc 2-3 times and were forced to transfer. A LOT of kids didn't make it through and dropped out of college.

I should stop worrying and just kick ass next year. The prof today said my GPA was still above the class average.

[Wreckingball]

If you're going to work outside Academia:
Experience > Grades

If your grade is not the best, make sure you have the following:
- International experience. Go abroad for a semester/year. Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Poland are nice places for an American to go and study, with good women on the mix. Naturaly, there are other countries
- Work experience. Spend some of your vacations working as a summer intern somewhere.
- Volunteering experience. Makes you look like you care about something other than yourself. Good for recruiters.


I have an Engineering major and work in IT, but my life at the moment is in the HR world.

[The Beast1]

Here's a question:

What if you have a lackluster GPA (a 3.3) in a joke of a degree program? Will it affect your chances in the future of going to grad school?

I don't plan on any graduate program unless my work pays for it, but in the event they do will my choices be limited because i "followed" my heart in my early twenties?

[rungoodinc]

(05-06-2015 10:42 AM)The Beast1 Wrote:  

Here's a question:

What if you have a lackluster GPA (a 3.3) in a joke of a degree program? Will it affect your chances in the future of going to grad school?

I don't plan on any graduate program unless my work pays for it, but in the event they do will my choices be limited because i "followed" my heart in my early twenties?

If you are good at tests, then you can get into a decent MBA program if you have solid work experience. When I say good, I mean top 5% percentile at the minimum.

I'd switch degree programs or try to boost your GPA if it's not too late. 3.5 looks a lot better than 3.3. If you already have a job lined up then who cares?

[Menace]

(05-05-2015 11:22 PM)TripleG Wrote:  

(05-05-2015 12:14 PM)Menace Wrote:  

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

Huh? Since when is an undergrad GPA < 3.0 bad? Sure, if one pursues an easy major (for example liberal arts) then it may be bad but if one go's for STEM then there are MANY exceptions.

If one has a technical major from an elite engineering school (Virginia Tech in my case) getting an above 3.0 GPA is tough as heck especially if one wants to enjoy the college experience of not just studying but "partying" as well.

TripleG, no slight was intended. We all come from our own perspectives, myself included. I had a technical undergrad as well (one of the major sciences), and my GPA was far in excess of 3.0.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be successful with a 2.5 GPA at all, just that it is very competitive now. I mean you don't even need to go to college to be successful, but if you do, you should maximize your credentials. Ultimately, 4 years of education will appear on your resume as one or two lines and a number. I think it makes sense to make that number as high as possible.

[Merenguero]

I've always been surprised by how few people in the world understand how this is done. You have classes that you need to take for your major and classes that you need for distribution. There are often difficult classes that you need for your major that you have no choice but to take and to try to do your best in. As far as everything else goes, including distribution, do your research, talk to everyone, find the easiest possible classes, and take them. Never take a difficult class unless you have absolutely no choice. Every class you take should either be because it is required or because it is easy. That's it. I used to know people who weren't extremely intelligent and who weren't great students who would take classes like organic chemistry just for the hell of it, then wondered why their G.P.A.s were so low. Do your research and go the easy route. Complete the requirements, but there is no need to make a hero of yourself. I finished all required courses for my major and distribution in two years, then just hung around for two years taking the stupidest courses imaginable. I wasn't there to learn. I was there to get into law school, which is what I did.

[TripleG]

(05-06-2015 12:18 PM)Menace Wrote:  

(05-05-2015 11:22 PM)TripleG Wrote:  

(05-05-2015 12:14 PM)Menace Wrote:  

OP, why are your grades so bad? I mean do you not just get the subject(s) or what? I think I would throw out any resume with a GPA below 3.0, because it show's either you're stupid or you didn't take things seriously, none of which are good signs (regardless of whether they're true). Also, no one cares if you tried to start a business. I don't mean to be harsh, but you're competing with others who have much better credentials. Please get your shit together and focus. You're a man. You have 20+ more years to slay hot pussy at least.

Huh? Since when is an undergrad GPA < 3.0 bad? Sure, if one pursues an easy major (for example liberal arts) then it may be bad but if one go's for STEM then there are MANY exceptions.

If one has a technical major from an elite engineering school (Virginia Tech in my case) getting an above 3.0 GPA is tough as heck especially if one wants to enjoy the college experience of not just studying but "partying" as well.

TripleG, no slight was intended. We all come from our own perspectives, myself included. I had a technical undergrad as well (one of the major sciences), and my GPA was far in excess of 3.0.

I'm not saying it's impossible to be successful with a 2.5 GPA at all, just that it is very competitive now. I mean you don't even need to go to college to be successful, but if you do, you should maximize your credentials. Ultimately, 4 years of education will appear on your resume as one or two lines and a number. I think it makes sense to make that number as high as possible.

Good point Menace. To those still in school (and looking at it from a perspective of an employer) I would not put a GPA on one's CV if it is below 3.0 (for STEM fields) or below 3.5 (for Liberal Arts) unless absolutely required. If an employer asks for a GPA always make a point to differentiate your in-major GPA from your overall GPA. For example my 4th year (i spent 5 years doing dual degrees) I had a 3.8 GPA and that was what I always referred to in my on-campus interviews. It partially hid the fact that my sophmore & junior years were below average.

[Easy_C]

Answer: how important an engineering major GPA is depends on what you end up doing later.

Once you get your first job your experience and certifications will matter much more.

If you go back to school it can matter quite a bit. A good number of engineering majors end up going back to school to get an MBA once their companies want to put them into management, and if you have a sub 3.3 GPA your chances at getting into a top school will be dramatically reduced.....and MBA programs are typically the LEAST academically selective elite master's programs.

[eradicator]

You can probably re-take the class you got the D in over the summer. Then it doesn't even look like that bad of a semester, a couple of Cs won't kill you. I think if you can recover and concentrate on the studies the rest of the way, you are fine, especially since you had a 3.5 going into this last semester.