5 ms·

Be sure to get the 4.0 GPA too - it's very nice to have for surprisingly long. Absolutely don't "challenge yourself". You can do that when you're not being grad

by juped 6y ago

Be sure to get the 4.0 GPA too - it's very nice to have for surprisingly long. Absolutely don't "challenge yourself". You can do that when you're not being graded on it.

nostrebored 6y ago
I think this very much depends on where you're going. I did not have a stellar GPA in school, but I did take the most challenging courses available to me and it's paid dividends for years. I still work on projects where my college exposure allows me to have a deeper understanding. Working with customers operating at scale, my (in retrospect, amazing) exposure to HPC and distributed computing has been so valuable. But these were the most challenging courses at a top 5 CS school, with some of the brightest researchers alive teaching course material. At another school that calculus is probably closer to what you're saying.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
I haven't been asked what my GPA was since I got my first graduate job (which was a follow on from my internship), which is very convenient because I graduated with a shocking GPA.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Ditto. The only people who cared about it were the Grad School applications, and the occasional (and ever-rarer) entry-level job application. After 2 years in the field no one gives a damn. The degree is basically just a box for HR to check off.
topkai22 6y ago
Assuming that's remotely feasible. My alma mater only had 7 students graduate with a 4.0 ... In 60 years of existence. I went to a top tier school and struggled with various parts of the curriculum (CHEM52, I'm looking at you). I convinced myself that I wasn't smart/good enough for various futures I'd previously envisioned, like academia or research. My confidence was shot and it affected where I applied for jobs out of college. I ended up taking a contract position at Microsoft. I thrived, got my confidence back, and got hired full-time. Two years after graduation an acquitance from my college reached out to me- he was coming to Microsoft Research for the summer, could I help him find a place to rent? We reconnected and got talking- It turned out his undergrad GPA was lower then mine! I never did find why he was more confident than me, but he had no problem thinking he was still qualified for a PhD program and was clearly doing well enough there to get picked up by prestigious research lab. I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out, I have no reason to go back and change any decisions. In fact, many of the most valuable experience I had were unrelated to the classroom- student government, interactions with the board of trustees, putting together funding for various small projects. And I've had a great career since college. The only thing I wish I could change was how I felt about myself- I wish I'd been able to tell 20-year old me "you are doing fine! It'll be awesome in the end!" and have 20-year me believe me. All of the above is a long way of saying- don't worry too much about your grades. Don't blow them off, but in the end they aren't as important as we often make them out to be.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  I wonder what those 4.0 former students are doing now.
  - topkai22 6y ago
    I think one of them ended up teaching at the college :)
screye 6y ago
ehh, I don't know about that. I haven't heard of GPA being useful for anything in tech apart from doing a PhD, which require you to have both a high GPA and to challenge yourself.

by juped 6y ago

Be sure to get the 4.0 GPA too - it's very nice to have for surprisingly long. Absolutely don't "challenge yourself". You can do that when you're not being graded on it.

nostrebored 6y ago

I think this very much depends on where you're going. I did not have a stellar GPA in school, but I did take the most challenging courses available to me and it's paid dividends for years. I still work on projects where my college exposure allows me to have a deeper understanding. Working with customers operating at scale, my (in retrospect, amazing) exposure to HPC and distributed computing has been so valuable. But these were the most challenging courses at a top 5 CS school, with some of the brightest researchers alive teaching course material. At another school that calculus is probably closer to what you're saying.

toomanybeersies 6y ago

I haven't been asked what my GPA was since I got my first graduate job (which was a follow on from my internship), which is very convenient because I graduated with a shocking GPA.

blaser-waffle 6y ago
Ditto. The only people who cared about it were the Grad School applications, and the occasional (and ever-rarer) entry-level job application. After 2 years in the field no one gives a damn. The degree is basically just a box for HR to check off.

topkai22 6y ago

Assuming that's remotely feasible. My alma mater only had 7 students graduate with a 4.0 ... In 60 years of existence. I went to a top tier school and struggled with various parts of the curriculum (CHEM52, I'm looking at you). I convinced myself that I wasn't smart/good enough for various futures I'd previously envisioned, like academia or research. My confidence was shot and it affected where I applied for jobs out of college. I ended up taking a contract position at Microsoft. I thrived, got my confidence back, and got hired full-time. Two years after graduation an acquitance from my college reached out to me- he was coming to Microsoft Research for the summer, could I help him find a place to rent? We reconnected and got talking- It turned out his undergrad GPA was lower then mine! I never did find why he was more confident than me, but he had no problem thinking he was still qualified for a PhD program and was clearly doing well enough there to get picked up by prestigious research lab. I'm pretty happy with the way my life has turned out, I have no reason to go back and change any decisions. In fact, many of the most valuable experience I had were unrelated to the classroom- student government, interactions with the board of trustees, putting together funding for various small projects. And I've had a great career since college. The only thing I wish I could change was how I felt about myself- I wish I'd been able to tell 20-year old me "you are doing fine! It'll be awesome in the end!" and have 20-year me believe me. All of the above is a long way of saying- don't worry too much about your grades. Don't blow them off, but in the end they aren't as important as we often make them out to be.

TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
I wonder what those 4.0 former students are doing now.
- topkai22 6y ago
  I think one of them ended up teaching at the college :)

screye 6y ago

ehh, I don't know about that. I haven't heard of GPA being useful for anything in tech apart from doing a PhD, which require you to have both a high GPA and to challenge yourself.