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Ask HN: How much has your college GPA played a role in your career?
- TaylorGood 9y agoHad a career prior, so my 1.whatever GPA didn’t matter. I pretty much stopped going to class within a month of starting and dropped out before first finals. Everything since has been relationships. Key for me was to define my skill set and evolve accordingly.
- joshdance 9y agoVery little. I don't think I have ever been asked about it. Usually focus is on skills, experience, and fit.
- mathattack 9y agoMedium. I had a 3.2 in Computer Science which was just enough to let other things shine when I was getting out of undergrad in a lukewarm economy. Later it was enough to not hinder my getting into a name brand grad school, which was a big benefit. (Signaling and networking more than anything else) I was never asked about GPA outside those cases. I suspect if I got a 2.0 I may not have learned enough along the way.
- dchuk 9y agoNever. Never finished college, left with 1.5 semesters to go (kinda asked to leave really because of poor attendance) and just got straight into working. Connected with good people who cared more about ability than credentials and never looked back.
- throwaway413 9y agoThe same as my GPA. 0
- cm2012 9y agoDidn't graduate, make 250k a year at 26.
- bsvalley 9y agoGPA? Zero impact. Building things aside played a huge role though. It's the main reason why I'm where I'm at today. I'd say aim for average score, spend your extra hours building things aside. Your real GPA is the positive impact you have on people.
- ilovecars2 9y agoNot on the U.S GPA grade, but I have two top grade degrees in the U.K. - one Undergraduate (1:1) and one Masters (Distinction) - known as Grad school in the U.S. It comes up quite often in interviews and I think it gives me a strong foundation to get roles that I might not be as qualified for as someone else who doesn’t have the academic qualifications. I believe the reason for this is that the academic qualifications demonstrate that I can adapt to a wide range of disciplines whilst also being able to understand those disciplines on a deep level.
- Kevin_S 9y agoVery little, 3.1 GPA and I'm in accounting, where GPA actually is important for internships and first jobs. Got a job with Deloitte in consulting. Now an incoming PhD student. GPA means nothing if you have an ounce of personal skills.
- potta_coffee 9y agoI didn't get my CS degree so none. But I also don't have an amazing career, there may be a connection.
- AnimalMuppet 9y agoIt might have helped me get my first job. After that, I don't think anybody cared. (But it was on my resume for decades, just in case...)
- nicholas73 9y agoNot having a good GPA does set you back temporarily, in the form of less access to graduate schools or an initial job. Which in turn lessen chances of some traditional advancements, like fast track management, doctors and lawyers, or finance careers. Everyone else, zippo.
- bowlich 9y agoZero. I've never listed it on a resume and no one has ever asked.
- askafriend 9y agoI didn't finish graduating. I left school with 8 or so credits remaining (I already had a job lined up) and something like a 3.0 GPA. Hasn't affected me in the slightest. To be fair, I also had multiple top tier internships through college and led a bunch of events on campus. I disregarded GPA entirely while in school and focused on what I felt was impactful and important (internships, community, etc). It doesn’t mean I slacked off in school though - I definitely learned the same material and put a lot of effort into doing so. I just took the tests and assessments less seriously and applied the 80/20 rule aggressively. Today I have a fantastic career at a Unicorn startup while multiple top tier companies contact me every quarter trying to poach me away. My parents were initially very skeptical and were pushing me to finish school but now that they’ve seen the results, they don’t care anymore either. The real lesson here is that GPA matters initially because companies have nothing else to frame your experience with. If you give them something else, then you’ll find that they’re more than willing to overlook GPA. If you don’t give them something to anchor your skill on AND your GPA is bad, it will be rough finding a job initially. Once you’ve had quality experience under your belt, GPA should cease to become a factor.
- pruthvishetty 9y agoZero in the U.S. Maybe a bit in India.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- psyc 9y agoExactly zero. I've been asked about my non-existent formal education about 3 times in 20 years.
- jackgolding 9y agoNone, no one has ever asked for a transcript when I apply for jobs.
- imauld 9y agoAbsolutely nothing. I can tell you however when we see candidates that list their GPA it's kind of a turn off. Even coming out of school you should have some more interesting stuff to put on there.
- muzani 9y agoI had a GPA of roughly 2.4, from a top Australian university. Australian scale is very different, where good students would get about 3.0, and 4.0 would be extremely rare, about A+ levels. My country had a good dose of grade inflation, so no matter how good the university was, the number itself meant that I didn't get pass the grade filter most organizations had. Interestingly, bosses with ivy league level credentials would recognize the university and offer me jobs. So I got into a good starting job, rather than working for some corpotation like IBM or Sony like my friends. That starting job gave me a lot of room to learn and it was a small enough company that I managed to get to know the company's clients well. But if I had a strong GPA, it's possible I could be VP of some moderate sized tech company by 30 instead of being a top rate consultant.
- asicsp 9y agomakes a noticeable impact here in India, we had CGPA (out of 10).. many companies coming for placements have a cut-off to even be allowed to sit for tests.. some allow to bypass the test if you've got higher CGPA.. I topped my class and got the job I wanted.. however looking back, I could see issues with this - I was good at memorizing stuff and motivated enough to get good grades even for subjects I didn't like.. there's just too many subjects and students that the college life was mostly about mugging up and not oriented towards practical aspects of engineering.. even implementing open-book tests would help to improve our way of thinking.. and during my time, most students got placed in IT despite studying ECE/EEE/Mech/etc
- cimmanom 9y agoBasically none. Perhaps it would have been harder to get that first job out of college with a resume listing a GPA below 3.0/4 (in the US, where grade inflation is rampant; I had a 3.7 IIRC). A point or two makes no difference whatsoever; and especially if you're going into a field other than what you directly studied, it's at best a weak signal that suggests (in the absence of work history) that either you have a good work ethic or you're good at determining minimum viable output. It's also a weak signal because the factors like whether one had to work to pay for college introduce a lot of noise. After that first job I never even listed it.
- dyeje 9y agoIt only matters for your first job because it's your only credential. If you keep it above a 3.0 you should be fine. If you're below that then just make a couple portfolio projects to impress interviewers.
- tdhz77 9y agoI second this. Blog, Github and highlight your small projects. That is worth more than a high gpa. I don't hire 4.0 students because I like to have a good social atmosphere.
- dsacco 9y ago> I don't hire 4.0 students because I like to have a good social atmosphere. That seems both judgemental and poorly considered as a hiring heuristic. I could flip this on you to make an equally invalid assessment of people: I don’t hire people who have a lot of GitHub projects because it means they have no social life. That doesn’t seem very fair, does it?
- Raed667 9y agoNothing. I was a quite good student but no one asked about college in interviews. I tried to bring it up but no one seemed to care. (France)