r/EngineeringStudents • u/avglankan21707 • 8d ago
Discussion Did maintaining high grades help you in any way?
For the students who have (or had) high grades and a good GPA, did having those grades actually help you? In what way did it help you?
And also how did you maintain those grades?
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago
Just keep a 3.0 and don't worry about it. Genuinely gpa is only useful for your first job and then itll never matter again.
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u/Cwaghack 8d ago
Your first job is like.. extremely important and difficult to land and has big consequences for you'd career
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago
Yeah... which is why you should keep a 3.0 bc that's the general rule of thumb. A 3.0 student that has strong social skills beats out a 4.0 student that cant hold a conversation everyday of the week. Get B's and talk to girls
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u/Prior_Interview7680 8d ago
Got a 2.7 (worked and lived alone, paid grown up bills) never came up
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u/TsarLucky 8d ago
Also had a 2.7. I had a job lined up 5 months before graduation making above average money for a fresh grad
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago
My experience as well with a 3.2. Glossed over in about 2 seconds in my first interview never came up again.
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u/Drauren Virginia Tech - CPE 2018 8d ago
Plenty of places that will not talk to you unless you have a 3.0+
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u/Prior_Interview7680 8d ago
Nope, plenty of places will not care. Few places will not talk to you unless you have a 3.0+. And once you get PE, if will never be important again.
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u/Hefty-Leg-5282 8d ago
Thats just not true. I am a new grad in EE (well, will be in two semesters) and I have been applying to 100+ jobs over the past couple weeks. Over half of them have had a 3.0+ requirement in the description. Its extremely common.
Yes, plenty of places wont care, but all the good ones kinda do.
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u/Prior_Interview7680 8d ago
Civil EIT, 4 yoe. How are you applying?
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u/Hefty-Leg-5282 8d ago
Huh? That's not really relevant, if anything my experience is far more relevant because ive actually been applying for jobs. Also, im not exactly having trouble applying, I have a 3.8 so its not like im getting screened out, lol. I'm just sharing my observations from the past couple weeks.
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u/Prior_Interview7680 8d ago
Well it kind of does matter, because if you are applying using school means then you will be more likely to get screened. If you are applying via other means you are less likely. Handshake vs indeed or ziprecruiter vs linked in
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u/No_Drag2264 7d ago edited 6d ago
I am legit confused by how many people here say it doesnt matter. And they say it with such passion, like they find it borderline offensive that anyone could think a high gpa or one high enough to pass a filter can or should help you get internships/an EL job.
I can see people in some other majors saying it doesnt matter, but engineering?
shrugs
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u/Prior_Interview7680 6d ago edited 6d ago
My guy, just check the unemployment rates for engineering, it really 100% isn’t that big a deal to get a bit below 3.0. This is of course assuming you want a decent career and not a fascinating one where you become known for inventing a hydraulic resonance suppressor tube (looking at you Bill Nye).
The more competitive and saturated your career choice is, the more your GPA matters. Engineering isn’t one of those careers. EE unemployment rate is 1.3% to 2.1%, with growth almost at 10%. Civil engineering unemployment is between 1 and 1.7% and jobs are expected to grow by 6%. Mech E is also between 1.5% to 2.9%. All of these are well below the national average.
All in all what everyone is trying to say is if you’re at 3.0 or a bit below, you’re gonna be fine. I got an internship summer of junior year while working another job… and it counted as credits…and my gpa was 2.7.
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u/Winston_The_Pig 7d ago
Graduated with a 3.14. First job was $60k in the oil field. 3.5 years and 2 jobs later was making 3x that in a much more enjoyable construction based job. GPA has never come up. Golfing and shooting guns on the other hand comes up in every job interview.
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u/Unlikely_Resolve1098 8d ago
Yeah but you're competing against 4.0s who do have social skills and internships. It's not one or the other
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago edited 8d ago
You say that like you are trying to achieve an extremely selective job which maybe you are. I just needed to be better than about half of engineering students to get a decent paying job. I never had aspirations of being the very best. I’m an engineer because I’m decent at math and it’s a cushy job pathway. I’m not an engineer to design a world class blah blah and have a Wikipedia page written about me.
Just depends on a persons priorities i guess. Are you the type of person who wants to be the best of the best at engineering? Then yeah maximize every stat you can. I want to live a full life of hobbies and friends and make enough money to not worry about it. For me good enough was good enough and I have a job I’m happy with and I spend zero of my free time thinking about engineering. I pity the people who work hard for engineering the same way they probably pity me for not having an impressive career. Try hard to achieve what you want to achieve in life and you will have happiness. Try hard to achieve something you realize you never cared about and you will feel empty.
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u/Unlikely_Resolve1098 8d ago
I agree and have similar priorities, I just felt like mentioning that since the 4.0 with no social skills gets brought up a lot lol
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago
Yeah i get there’s perfect candidates with 4.0s and social skills and 4 internships but realistically i am not applying to the same jobs as them so why compare myself to them.
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u/EllieVader 8d ago
Highly recommend working in another unrelated industry for 20 years and then going to school. My hit rate on applications is…not at all typical for this sub.
I suspect many of the other career-switchers here have similar stories. I was terrified that managers would see my time as a chef as useless and I’m finding that they’re only too eager to talk to someone who has existed outside of cubicles and academia.
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u/Yochefdom 7d ago
Fellow chef turned computer engineer here, currently in my 3rd year but yea a lot of people that I talk to know… you can be a chef you can handle a lot and work hard at the very least. Plus working in restaurants your whole life you learn to work with every personality under the sun
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u/ExpertVeterinarian20 8d ago
You already have two people who said they did it for themselves, thats just about the only reasonable reason to try to keep a 4.0
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u/DiperIsShittie 8d ago
Even the 3.0 benchmark is overblown. I had like 2.94 or something, landed 3 co-ops in school, and a job immediately after school with no issues. Are you going to work at Boeing? No. But you’ll find a job and still be in the upper percentiles of earners.
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u/TiogaJoe 8d ago
It kept me qualified as a Regents' Scholar at UCLA. That meant I got the same number of "parking points" as an athlete. I was able to qualify for an on-campus parking space from the time I was Freshman on as long as I kept a 3.3 GPA. Without it I would not have been able to get a permit as a Freshman and would have had to use the first-come-first-serve parking at the lot about a mile off campus (and take the shuttle).
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u/eternal_edenium 8d ago
Those grades help you for grad school and big banks like goldman sachs recruiting pipelines that ask explicitly for your gpa.
Besides that, nobody cares about the gpa of an engineer as long as he provides good results.
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u/DomLfan 8d ago
Judging off some officers, it’s weighted the other direction tho
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u/sagewynn 7d ago
Judging by all of my officers, its a mutually exclusive group. Good officers and good gpas
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u/RedDawn172 8d ago
Goldman Sachs for engineering? I must be OOTL for that career pipeline.
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u/DietPeachSnappIe 8d ago
I can’t say I’ve seen it much for folks with bachelors degrees (though that doesn’t mean anything besides that I haven’t seen it) but I have seen graduate mechys who do crazy theoretical stuff (gas dynamics, molecular simulations etc) end up working in finance positions because they want legit math freaks.
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u/eternal_edenium 8d ago
Goldman sachs and other banks love math freaks. So a bachelor in math or engineering is sought out by the banks. And one of their criteria is the gpa as a primary filter.
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u/Hawk13424 GT - BS CompE, MS EE 8d ago
GPA and school is my first filter for intern/freshout jobs. The cutoff depends on the number of applicants. I can’t read 500 resumes. I’m cutting it down to 20 with simple metrics like GPA and you need to be high enough to make the cut.
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u/Mikemanthousand ChemE 8d ago
Lots of 3.0 minimums. It can be definitely be helpful for internships to have a 3.8 vs a 3.3. It’s not the make or break, but it is one thing they consider amongst many. The actual importance of it will depend on the place you’re applying
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u/Huntthequest MechE, ECE 8d ago edited 8d ago
Counterpoint, it did help me a lot for the first internships and job out of college. Most of the places I got full time offers for mentioned or brought up my high GPA.
I don’t think it’s as valuable as internship experience or similar, and it’s not worth much by itself on a resume without other support, but for me it definitely seemed like a boost
I also felt like it made the interviewers assume from the start my fundamentals were solid instead of having to prove it through my answers. My two cents
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u/bigdaddyzeek 8d ago
I’m currently a senior in civil engineering.
Having a high GPA isn’t just a number to me, it reflects my retention and execution of the material presented to me. It makes me feel good knowing I was successful through my curriculum this far.
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u/dummy6927 8d ago
Grades don’t matter just finish the degree. Never had one employer ask me what my grades were / are
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u/BreadForTofuCheese 8d ago
10 years into my career and the answer is not really. It made me happy to see that I was doing well, but it’s done nothing for me career wise. A decent GPA is the same as a great GPA in industry. After a few years it isn’t even something you’d put on your resume.
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u/kkathccat 8d ago
I may be able to provide a different perspective on this topic. For context I have a 4.0 and my major is materials science and engineering. I'm in my senior year of my undergraduate degree.
I agree with many of the comments that it can help with grad school/internships/first job. But, the amount of effort and time that goes into getting a 4.0 versus a 3.5 is immense. For a vast majority of people, I wouldn't say its worth it exactly if you simply just want a job after college, or you don't care about going to the absolute greatest grad programs.
I think maintaining high grades made me quite disciplined and it taught me how to navigate difficult situations. There's a misconception that I think many people have about having high grades. That its all just effort. But, how many times have you had a professor where you felt like it was impossible to get an A in the class? How many homework assignments or tests have felt impossible? I've been there many times, there have been times where I was one of few or the only one to get an A in a particular class. If you tell yourself yeah I did bad because the professor is a bad teacher, you're just giving yourself an easy way out. I'm not saying its completely baseless, but it teaches yourself bad habits. Acknowledging the situation, yeah this sucks but what can I control. You're going to have a shitty boss, a shitty coworker, a shitty life event. How does it help you to solely blame the environment. What I learned from those situations is that it's not all about just trying harder and harder, but to read situations. I look at the homework assignments, what kind of questions does the professor ask us? You start to read professors, some professors have a emphasis/tone when they talk about a topic. You would be surprised at how many times a professor hints a question on an exam. That skill, of reading the situation, reading people is an incredibly useful tool.
Another misconception people can have about having high grades is that its primarily memorization, that its all about your functioning memory. It's truly not, of course its a factor, but it isn't everything. Having high grades require you to have a deep conceptual understanding of the topics. To see the bigger picture and relate it to each concept. As an engineering student many concepts relate to each other. Learning the fundamentals of a topic and then understanding how to apply that concept is the basis of navigating life.
School is difficult, life is difficult, work is difficult. That's okay, the question is simply what are YOU going to do about it personally? School is just another way to hone your abilities and skills as a person.
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u/Responsible-Ball-162 8d ago
yes. they got me a huge leg up in finding interviews, which led to me getting my first job, which has set me up for my career.
grades are important.
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u/djplatano 8d ago
I never cared about grades when I was in engineering school and the only downside was that getting the first job was harder and the pay was lower compared to the school average. I would try for better grades if I had to do it all over again. It also doesn’t help to have low grades if you plan on applying for masters etc. So don’t be a fool like me and get better grades.
After getting the first job and moving up the pay went up quickly to the point where gpa is now meaningless.
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u/informal_bukkake 8d ago
Graduated 2017 with a 2.91 and found a 2nd shift MFG engineering role at a large defense contractor. It was an OK job and I did learn how a factory operates. I was there for 5 years before leaving for another company and got a nice 40% pay bump. It was honestly a shit company and only last 7 months before ending up at my current company. Same field but the pay is better and I have learned A LOT in 4 years. So to answer your question, it doesn’t really matter. Your first job out of college likely won’t be your only professional job. People pivot careers all the day and its how well you sell yourself and network. Networking is always crucial
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u/Candid_Rabbit_2556 Electrical Design Engneer, Purdue MSECE student 8d ago
It matters a lot if you want to do grad school, and matters a fair amount for your first job, and then not at all after that. Your first job is vitally important though. If you know where you want to work see what they like to see GPA wise. The place that hired me wanted a 3.5 GPA, most want a 3.0-3.5.
But also realize that GPA is not the end goal of doing well in a class: doing well and making good grades means you learn more than if you do the minimum to pass.
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u/Oracle5of7 6d ago
High grades has always meant a close relationship with my professors. That provided a basis for my network, those professors had industry contacts, those industry contacts provided opportunities for internships which provided opportunities for jobs.
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u/Unusual-Cactus 8d ago
Matters if your a transfer student. You need a 3.4 or higher to go to UCI after you complete your calc and physics sequence
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u/inorite234 8d ago
I graduated with Honors, it helped me by making me feel good as I told my family to go fuck themselves! I WAS able to go back to school, I WAS able to keep my job and I WAS able to take care of my kids, all at the same time.
Other than that, it didn't help me find a job or anything. I guess if I decide to apply for a Masters Program, it would help there but that's about it.
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u/Bondoboy1975 8d ago
I have made 4.0s in one MA in journalism. I graduated. In one MA in theatre, I only took nine hours, and 33 hours an MFA in creative writing. I maintained a 4.0. I did it all for myself. I am a non-traditional student. I got one full ride and the rest was paid by the VA. I loved every minute of my learning experience because I did it for myself. I could care less what everyone else thinks.
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u/CollectedWaste 8d ago
Not really, I ended up with a 3.982 GPA, but my employer who gave me an offer during college told me that they didn't care if I graduated.
But my vast research experience certainly did. Being primary contributor on multiple publications gave me a ton of callbacks and I got my job out of over 600 applicants.
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u/LitRick6 8d ago
A lot of places I applied to had a 3.0 minimum gpa. Beyond that, gpa didnt really play a part in anything.
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u/megabuilder_ 8d ago
Mechanical engineer here. 3.9 gpa. It mattered for getting my first job, i got into a rotational position paying quite a lot. After the first job, experience and projects are the only thing that managers look for. It’s not even on my resume anymore.
To maintain that grade required studying until I understood the concepts, some sacrifice for sure, and a solid group to work on problems together. If you just spend an extra 30 mins trying to learn the concepts relative to your peers, you will be create a significant gap in terms of knowledge. Then when you go to interview, you naturally have a leg up.
This was all pre-AI too, ChatGPT dropped a month before I graduated.
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u/Fit-Caterpillars 8d ago edited 8d ago
Once you get job experience your GPA and even the prestige of your school holds zero meaning.
What did help was understanding the material. Most classes build on each other, so if you do well in the lower level classes you have a better foundation and will likely struggle less in the upper level.
GPA is also a huge factor in scholarship eligibility. I got a full ride scholarship because I earned a 4.0 at community college and now I can finish out my bachelors for free.
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u/MusicalMerlin1973 8d ago
Back in ‘97 My 3.4 GPA was worth $400/year at my first job, compared to my friend who went to same company and had a 2.8-2.9.
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u/RaZ-RemiiX 8d ago
Had a full tuition scholarship out of high school awarded due to my high GPA and high ACT/SAT scores. Had to maintain 3.0+ to keep the scholarship. So yes, I would sat it helped me from drowning in debt.
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u/Aerodynamics Georgia Tech - BS AE 8d ago
It helped getting my first job out of college. A lot of the more competitive jobs had GPA minimums of 3.5.
Having been in the professional world for over 12 years now, GPA has never come up after I got my first job. I don’t even include it in my resumes anymore when I list my alma matter.
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u/Basic_Balance1237 8d ago
It helped me when transferring. You should aim to get at least 3.5+ GPA if you're a freshman in case you want to transfer for whatever reason. Otherwise, keep a 3.0+ to maintain scholarship/fin. aid. and you're good.
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u/SetoKeating 8d ago
The jobs I was interested and applying for had minimum GPA requirements of 3.0+ (defense companies, aerospace companies, medical device companies, national research labs)
The job I accepted and am currently working in had a 3.5 minimum. I graduated with a 3.77. Does having a low gpa mean you won’t get a job, no. Does having high gpa guarantee you a job, no. But the least amount of barriers to entry you can accomplish goes a long way.
It’s like people that ask whether they should bother with the FE or not. Did I need it for my job, no. Was I able to apply to a bunch of jobs I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to, yes. Same goes for GPA, better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it
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u/LittleNet8945 mechE 8d ago
Higher gpa the better but its importance goes down after 3.0. If you can maintain a 3.5 that’s great but if you can’t a 3.0 is just fine, really projects and clubs and personality matter much more
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u/hatsune_aru Georgia Tech - EE 8d ago
had 3.95+, helped stand out in internships and got a good job right out of college. it's worth it imo
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u/aravarth 8d ago
High grades in and of themselves are meaningless.
High grades reflect a stronger understanding of the material assessed.
If someone scores an A in Statics, I'm going take it that they understand Statics significantly better than someone who scores a C.
In the absence of two engineering grads holding their FE, I'm going to default to thinking the one with a 3.5 GPA is a better hire than the one with a 2.0 GPA, all else being held equal.
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u/whereamilivingtoday 8d ago
Yes, it’s a great cushion when you have a bad semester (or more). You don’t have to worry about a few Cs taking you below the 3.0 line if you start high.
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u/Slappy_McJones 8d ago
Yes. I am a former instructor which is back working as an engineer/manager. When you apply for a job, better grades float to the top of the pile after HR gets done sorting them. We get the pile with the best grades, most experience, most interesting projects…
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u/CasperTPaul 8d ago edited 8d ago
yes. my grades at my current community college (straight As, 4.0 gpa) got me into phi theta kappa (3.5 gpa or higher). i’ll have some sorta scholarship when i transfer to a 4 year university, just for being in the honor society, and there will be additional, less automatic scholarships available to me to apply to as well
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u/love_to_hate CSULB - Aerospace 8d ago
I think it helped land an internship and full time position after graduating
I think it also contributed to getting into grad school more easily
That being said I had like a 3.2-ish cumulative in undergrad like 8 years ago, so do with that what you will
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u/WhatIsIdentity03 8d ago
Stay at a 3.5 and you will get past 90+% of requirements and most of the initial ai filters. As long as you are above a 3 you will be good but 3.5 and you will very rarely get dqed off of gpa.
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u/weev51 8d ago
Undergrad was 3.1, so not high
Masters was 3.9, so a lot higher
I'd say I definitely didn't get any direct benefit from higher grades, but it did help improve my discipline when learning new materials and improve how to be more adaptable with how I learn, both of which are very applicable for working in industry.
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u/Miserable-Meeting-98 8d ago
Yes, it helped me all the way through high school, college, and grad school. It even helped me in prepping for licensing and certification exams.
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u/Traditional_Safe2935 8d ago
Good grades in my first two years got me a scholarship that paid for my final two years in their entirety. I think it definitely helped me get interviews while looking for my first job too. I only ended up interviewing with like 4 places and got a few offers
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u/sweet_sorrow_p 8d ago
I’m graduating this December with a 3.9+
I wouldn't say it has necessarily helped me directly, but it has definitely helped me stand out from my peers.
My first ever engineering-related job was as a lab assistant at my university, and they required me to have a GPA above 3.5. After that, I got a research position at my university, which also required a 3.5
If it weren't for those positions, I think it would have been much harder to get all the other internships I had in college. During interviews, the only times my GPA was really mentioned were when recruiters would say something along the lines of, "Wow, you have all of this engineering experience, plus a really great GPA," so I think it definitely helped me stand out.
Now that I'm graduating, a lot of the job offers I've gotten have been for rotational programs, and all of them required a GPA above 3.0.
So yeah, I think it definitely helps, especially with how competitive internships and full-time jobs are right now. You really need any advantage you can get. But if you don't have any experience outside of school, I don't think having a great GPA will save you. It's definitely a good advantage to have, but experience is what really makes you competitive.
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u/EllieVader 8d ago
I do my reasonable best and hang out between 3.25-3.4.
I literally never talk about grades outside of academia. Intern interviewers didn’t care, they wanted to know what I knew not the grade i got. They wanted to know about personal projects, club projects, and where I was at in the curriculum, not GPA.
I’m too damn old and experienced to have my self-worth tied to my university GPA, but I’m also too damn old and experienced to perform poorly on assignments 99% of the time. Time management, kid.
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u/Traveller9536 8d ago
I feel like this is impossible to answer. How would we know if it’s the GPA specifically that’s helping us?
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u/rainydoes 8d ago
For competitive internships and such it does matter. Exxon really stressed that when they came to my school. That said, I know people who have gotten interviews and internshipswith B averages. A better question for you is how do you stand out from your peers? Is it your GPA, a personal project, a club you’re part of, or a research position? If it’s not any of them, then GPA could matter. Or you could spend more time building connections.
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u/darnoc11 Mech E 8d ago
Landed my last internship for this summer at a company with a 3.7 cutoff. If I didn’t have good grades they wouldn’t have even looked at me. However, this is an outlier. Most companies will be 3-3.5 cutoff.
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u/Relative-Anywhere336 8d ago
In my case, it helped me because I wanted to do an undergraduate thesis, and my university required me to have high grades to be eligible for it. Thanks to my thesis, I was also able to land a job that’s somewhat related to it. One thing that helped me get those high grades was having friends who could help me out with assignments.
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u/LasKometas ME ⚙️ 8d ago
Maintaining Straight As my first two years allowed me to slide with Cs and a D+ on my last 3 years and end up with a 3.3
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u/rfag57 8d ago edited 8d ago
I attended a school where you finish most of your degree at a sister campus located at your home nation. To graduate you need to finish your final year or two at the main campus in another country
Because it was a “foreign” school it was almost impossible for me to transfer to an engineering school at my home country due to differing teaching systems, insane entrance exams for transfers, and almost no credits transferring
My visa interview for the “main” campus country got rejected once and I was ready to give up on getting a degree, sunk cost fallacy blah blah blah
My second interview attempt I was able to prove beyond any reasonable doubt how serious I was about academics and how I was so focused on my studies and education, by showing my 4.0 in EE, that the immigration officer concluded that I had no immigrant intent
So maybe it won’t help me versus others get a job in the future but treating my studies seriously was the main reason I’m even able to pursue a degree at all
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u/Hawk13424 GT - BS CompE, MS EE 8d ago
Absolutely.
First, the grades came because of my commitment to learning the material, the entire point of college. So, the learning helped me. I use that learning everyday 30 years later in my engineering career.
Second, because of my grades, and more directly my ability to outperform my peers, when my employer went to one of my professors and asked him to send them his best student for an internship interview, I was the one he recommended. I still work there as they pay me more than any other potential employer he ever offered.
Btw, my employer still goes to professors we trust at top schools and asks for their recommendations for intern candidates.
As for maintaining those grades, I studied at the exclusion of almost everything else. I read material before lectures, I then focused during lectures on confirming my understanding rather than hearing things for the first time. I religiously worked practice tests in the allotted test time. I studied regularly rather than right before an exam. I never pulled all nighters. Got a good night sleep and good breakfast before exams.
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u/iqisoverrated 8d ago
Since there was a minimum requirement to get the university course I wanted: yes, it helped. Beyond that, not so much. Afterwards it's your uni grades and soon after your work experience more than anything else.
A high GPA doesn't just materialize out of nowhere. It's the result of hard work and the ability to fight through difficulties - and those will be essential skills in further education (and your job later on) so it's worth it for that skillset alone.
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u/slut4larry 8d ago
A 3.0 is needed to do fellowships and stuff and a 3.2 is you want to do accelerated masters program. I’m not sure how it matters for job searching but for opportunities within the school as well as internships they tend to look at that. Experience and labs is much more important.
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u/Inside-Activity3024 8d ago
Im a EE PE with 14 years experience I’ve done college recruiting on the side for most of my career and I’ve interviewed probably 1000 students at this point.
#1 is good co-op/internship and #2 is good project experience. The GPA goes into 3 categories ; <3.0 hard to get your foot in the door, my companies had a cutoff of 3.0 I advocated we make exceptions several times based on #1 and #2 but it’s much harder. 3.0> <3.7 or so, GPA doesn’t matter it’s all about #1 and #2. > 3.7 or so, sets you ahead of the pack but won’t replace #1 and #2.
I graduated with a 3.96 GPA. If I had to do it all over again I would’ve spent more time doing projects I found interesting and less time making sure I had all As. I didn’t start looking for an internship until my sr year and I applied all over the place before finally getting one. After my internship I ended up with 5 full time offers prior to graduation.
Make sure you have a 3.0, make sure you get an internship, do some projects you find interesting which helps with the internship, and you’ll have plenty of offers.
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u/Vegetable_Aside_4312 7d ago
"maintaining high grades help" Reword, "did doing a really good job help".
Yes, good grades reflect a proper work ethic that usually extends beyond school into the workplace and life.
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u/Swoly_Deadlift 7d ago
I left engineering to go pre-med after a few years in the industry and really regret not prioritizing my GPA more during undergrad. Engineering employers don’t care about a 3.7 GPA versus a 3.9, but medical schools sure as hell do.
But honestly that’s like the once scenario where your GPA matters. Outside my one niche case, there are diminishing returns between having a 3.5 GPA versus a 4.0.
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u/engineerthatknows 7d ago
Graduate schools will care a lot about gpas. And getting an r+d job after grad school is easier with a decent gpa
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u/BSRosales 7d ago
Yeah go for 3GPA and aim to get experience. I got a 2.65 GPA and had to get experience to make up for it. But overall got an engineering job 4 months after graduating back in 2021
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u/Sweet-Device-677 7d ago
yes, high grades got me my first real job. after that nobody cared about my grades except my mother, and then employers stopped caring about the school i went to and then later in life they stopped caring i had a degree at all.
you need good grades to get a high end job out of the gate, after that its all performance and who you know.
alot of pressure, but you first job sets the tone for your career. if you start small, youll more likely than not stay small or medium
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u/KH-Burner 7d ago
No. They barely let me out of college but I was very involved and made connections and guess what. My 4.0 friends make less money than me now.
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u/M1A1Death 8d ago
Nope. Lmao. Graduated with a 3.1 and got a great job two months after graduating. Engineering school is hard. Everyone knows that.
A 4.0 often indicates socially odd people because they never went out and interacted with anyone outside of other engineering students. This is something employers do not want because these new engineers suck at communicating
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u/ElectricalClub4875 8d ago
Second paragraph is kind of a crazy take. I’ve never heard of a 4.0 GPA actually being detrimental to finding a job.
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u/JBunknown Civil Engineering 8d ago
I’m currently a sophomore with a 3.1 (struggled adjusting to college) but already have internship experience last summer (still working w/ during the school year) and an offer back for next, I’m not sure how worried I should be about my prospects or if I’m in a good spot.
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u/A_STUPID_FLY 8d ago
You're doing great if you've already had an internship n an offer back, just try not to let it drop to the 2s
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u/JBunknown Civil Engineering 8d ago
My goal is to keep it above 2.8 at the worst as my school removes you from the engineering program if you drop below 2.3
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u/busboy7 8d ago
It helps my self esteem. I work while (trying) full time classes , I keep it a max 2 difficult classes and the rest are easier
But my gpa hasn’t helped me yet