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I want to echo gdp's advice above. What I wish someone had told me as a freshman: Grades don't really matter, no one will care about them. 1) Future employers
by gms 17y ago
I want to echo gdp's advice above. What I wish someone had told me as a freshman:
Grades don't really matter, no one will care about them.
1) Future employers (investors too?) will care about code you wrote outside of class, whether open source or your own projects.
2) Grad schools will care about great recommendations, which you do not get by getting good grades. You get those by doing research with the professor outside of the class.
I'm not saying it's ok if you fail; just that there are different priorities to be balanced. Missing out on that A in order to improve on 1) or 2) above is a trade off that will serve you better.
- pwnix_rising 17y agoIf he wants to go to graduate school, grades matter as a necessary but not sufficient condition. However, if he's a promising student, he'll have no problem getting the requisite grades (3.5+ in-major) while working on independent projects and doing research. He might also decide he wants to go to law or business school, in which case undergraduate GPA is a significant selection criterion.
- gms 17y agoThanks for correcting about law/business school; I had overlooked that. Medical school too I think.