4 ms·

I agree. Thou a 3.0 and higher GPA demonstrates commitment to work. You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) to get a lower GPA

by ardit33 19y ago

I agree. Thou a 3.0 and higher GPA demonstrates commitment to work. You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) to get a lower GPA than that. I'd say, the perfect GPA is something around 3.5+ If you are 4.0 (or almost), there is a good chance you either didn't have enough fun, or didn't do other things in the side while at school. Not a very balanced person. even geniouses get A- or Bs once and a while. A person that gets only A = annal retentive personality.

omouse 19y ago
You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) Or really bored with the work assigned.
- ardit33 19y ago
  "Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work. In real life, even in startups, there are boring stuff that have to get done. I remember, on one of my math classes which was easy (let's say I took Calculus 3, and then this easy class to finish off my minor), I slept on most of it, yet I managed to show up in tests and (to my suprise) got a B. The girl that I had been helping on her homework all semester got an A. Bascially my B showed my laziness for petty work, and not necesary intelligence. So, GPA is 2/3 a display of your commitment to work (somebody that finishes off a given task), and 1/3 intelligence (some people, no matter how commited they are, are not smart enough to get all A's).
  - rms 19y ago
    >In real life, even in startups, there are boring stuff that have to get done. Sure, but the payoff for the boring stuff in startups is much bigger. The boring stuff in startups needs to be done so you can make millions of dollars. The boring stuff in college needs to be done so you can get a job paying tens of thousands of dollars a year.
  - kingnothing 19y ago
    "Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work. Who wants to commit to boring work? I don't.
  - jey 19y ago
    ""Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work." Ever read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus? If not, you should Google it.
    - omouse 19y ago
      For the unenlightened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
  - omouse 19y ago
    lack of commitment to work It is impossible to commit to work when you see something more interesting that could be worked on that would teach you much more. The existing work becomes tedious and dissatisfying. You begin to resent the existing work because it cuts into your time. Example: I'd like to learn all about Scheme and Common Lisp. The courses I'm taking teach Perl, PHP, and C++. Can you spot the difference?
    - deleted 19y ago
      [deleted]
  - bokonist 19y ago
    Your college years should have two practical benefits. You should be learning a lot, and you should prove to your future employer ( or investor) that you can get stuff done. The default way to do this is to get great grades, which covers both bases. But other paths are often much more worthwhile. You can start an organization or become the leader of one. You can do a startup. You can film your documentary, produce an album, or write for newspaper - the imagination is the limit. Make sure that you finish the project. Otherwise, you can't prove to others and yourself that you can actually bear down and gut something out. I got a 3.2 GPA because I wouldn't do school work I didn't thought was necessary. If I didn't need to do problem sets to learn the material and ace the tests, I would just skip them and take the hit to my grades. Instead I spent time working on software projects that actually launched. This proved that I could get things done and resulted in great job offers.
  - jimbokun 19y ago
    "and then this easy class to finish off my minor), I slept on most of it, yet I managed to show up in tests and (to my suprise) got a B." The classes I think are easy are the ones that scare me. I've had a couple experiences where I thought a class was not going to be challenging and ended up with a worse grade than classes where the material was harder.
aswanson 19y ago
I didn't get good grades until grad school. Undergrad was too useless to me and I didn't get interested in any of the material presented before senior year. But electrical engineering is a useless major anyway. An artifact of the 20th century.
- falsestprophet 19y ago
  Please explain. I have a few friends studying it and they seem to think they are going to make 80k starting.
  - aswanson 19y ago
    Electrical engineering is interesting from an applied physics/mathematical standpoint. From the point of view of day-to-day work, a large segment of it has been reduced to providing a life support system for the microprocessor, which, you guessed it, runs software. Almost every EE I know is a programmer. Analog electronics, one of my early interests, has been pretty much reduced to power supply design and maybe some mixed-signal modem design. On the low end, there are advances in materials that enable Moore's law, but this is more applied physics than EE. Control theory jobs are almost nonexistent outside academia. A lot of the higher level mathematics is cool: I personally liked dsp and stochastic systems but it got repetitive. Most CS programs offer similar math anyway. I wanted to go deeper into how the math was developed. In short, the traditional electrical engineering field is being heavily encroached by software and the high end math isn't interesting enough. Which is why, if I had to do it all over, I would have done math, CS, physics, a lot of chem, and maybe an EE course or two. Boucher is right, it is a very difficult major, but boot camp is difficult too. I just wish it were more relevant to what is going on.
  - rms 19y ago
    Well, engineering is never useless if you goal is to get a high starting salary engineering for the man.
  - aswanson 19y ago
    Sorry, I didn't address the 80k hopefuls. I would say that given the economic trends (ee is easier to outsource than software and is being replaced by it) that the long-term growth prospects don't look good salary wise. The 80 k entry salaries are dubious unless they plan on using their school name to get a non-ee high paying job (read consulting, hedge fund, finance, etc). 60 is probably more realistic in my area (mid-Atlantic east coast) at the high-end entry level. In the most inflated market (the valley), seems like 100k is reasonable after 3-5 years experience (non consulting). A lot of them want advanced degrees. Of course, most of the jobs are software: http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/7/f/7f413b489344c22e2b49a54e4ee175ff@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=entry+level http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&#3...
falsestprophet 19y ago
"Thou a 3.0 and higher GPA demonstrates commitment to work. You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) to get a lower GPA than that." Or you studied engineering at Georgia Tech or Berkley or, well, anywhere else. And 'thou' definitely doesn't mean what you think it means. Your GPA doesn't mean much in the world, but your TOEFL score does.
comatose_kid 19y ago
No way....a 4.0 just tells you that a person did really well with their course load, not that they were Ted Kaczynski wannabes. I still remember the smartest person I ever met (I would be willing to bet that he'd do pretty well on any math test - Putnam included - you gave him). This fellow had the highest GPA in electrical engineering and also had the second highest GPA in economics. Simultaneously. And on the side, he was an active skydiver and practiced jui-jitsu 2x a week. And over the course of the 4 years we spent in undergrad, I don't think I ever saw him study (I'm not exaggerating). So it is possible to be off the charts intelligent and not be anal retentive or unbalanced.

by ardit33 19y ago

omouse 19y ago

You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) Or really bored with the work assigned.

ardit33 19y ago
"Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work. In real life, even in startups, there are boring stuff that have to get done. I remember, on one of my math classes which was easy (let's say I took Calculus 3, and then this easy class to finish off my minor), I slept on most of it, yet I managed to show up in tests and (to my suprise) got a B. The girl that I had been helping on her homework all semester got an A. Bascially my B showed my laziness for petty work, and not necesary intelligence. So, GPA is 2/3 a display of your commitment to work (somebody that finishes off a given task), and 1/3 intelligence (some people, no matter how commited they are, are not smart enough to get all A's).
- rms 19y ago
  >In real life, even in startups, there are boring stuff that have to get done. Sure, but the payoff for the boring stuff in startups is much bigger. The boring stuff in startups needs to be done so you can make millions of dollars. The boring stuff in college needs to be done so you can get a job paying tens of thousands of dollars a year.
- kingnothing 19y ago
  "Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work. Who wants to commit to boring work? I don't.
- jey 19y ago
  ""Or really bored with the work assigned." == lack of commitment to work." Ever read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus? If not, you should Google it.
  - omouse 19y ago
    For the unenlightened: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
- omouse 19y ago
  lack of commitment to work It is impossible to commit to work when you see something more interesting that could be worked on that would teach you much more. The existing work becomes tedious and dissatisfying. You begin to resent the existing work because it cuts into your time. Example: I'd like to learn all about Scheme and Common Lisp. The courses I'm taking teach Perl, PHP, and C++. Can you spot the difference?
  - deleted 19y ago
    [deleted]
- bokonist 19y ago
  Your college years should have two practical benefits. You should be learning a lot, and you should prove to your future employer ( or investor) that you can get stuff done. The default way to do this is to get great grades, which covers both bases. But other paths are often much more worthwhile. You can start an organization or become the leader of one. You can do a startup. You can film your documentary, produce an album, or write for newspaper - the imagination is the limit. Make sure that you finish the project. Otherwise, you can't prove to others and yourself that you can actually bear down and gut something out. I got a 3.2 GPA because I wouldn't do school work I didn't thought was necessary. If I didn't need to do problem sets to learn the material and ace the tests, I would just skip them and take the hit to my grades. Instead I spent time working on software projects that actually launched. This proved that I could get things done and resulted in great job offers.
- jimbokun 19y ago
  "and then this easy class to finish off my minor), I slept on most of it, yet I managed to show up in tests and (to my suprise) got a B." The classes I think are easy are the ones that scare me. I've had a couple experiences where I thought a class was not going to be challenging and ended up with a worse grade than classes where the material was harder.

aswanson 19y ago

I didn't get good grades until grad school. Undergrad was too useless to me and I didn't get interested in any of the material presented before senior year. But electrical engineering is a useless major anyway. An artifact of the 20th century.

falsestprophet 19y ago
Please explain. I have a few friends studying it and they seem to think they are going to make 80k starting.
- aswanson 19y ago
  Electrical engineering is interesting from an applied physics/mathematical standpoint. From the point of view of day-to-day work, a large segment of it has been reduced to providing a life support system for the microprocessor, which, you guessed it, runs software. Almost every EE I know is a programmer. Analog electronics, one of my early interests, has been pretty much reduced to power supply design and maybe some mixed-signal modem design. On the low end, there are advances in materials that enable Moore's law, but this is more applied physics than EE. Control theory jobs are almost nonexistent outside academia. A lot of the higher level mathematics is cool: I personally liked dsp and stochastic systems but it got repetitive. Most CS programs offer similar math anyway. I wanted to go deeper into how the math was developed. In short, the traditional electrical engineering field is being heavily encroached by software and the high end math isn't interesting enough. Which is why, if I had to do it all over, I would have done math, CS, physics, a lot of chem, and maybe an EE course or two. Boucher is right, it is a very difficult major, but boot camp is difficult too. I just wish it were more relevant to what is going on.
- rms 19y ago
  Well, engineering is never useless if you goal is to get a high starting salary engineering for the man.
- aswanson 19y ago
  Sorry, I didn't address the 80k hopefuls. I would say that given the economic trends (ee is easier to outsource than software and is being replaced by it) that the long-term growth prospects don't look good salary wise. The 80 k entry salaries are dubious unless they plan on using their school name to get a non-ee high paying job (read consulting, hedge fund, finance, etc). 60 is probably more realistic in my area (mid-Atlantic east coast) at the high-end entry level. In the most inflated market (the valley), seems like 100k is reasonable after 3-5 years experience (non consulting). A lot of them want advanced degrees. Of course, most of the jobs are software: http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/7/f/7f413b489344c22e2b49a54e4ee175ff@endecaindex&source=19&FREE_TEXT=entry+level http://seeker.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&#3...

falsestprophet 19y ago

"Thou a 3.0 and higher GPA demonstrates commitment to work. You have to be either really stupid or lazy (or smoking too much pot) to get a lower GPA than that." Or you studied engineering at Georgia Tech or Berkley or, well, anywhere else. And 'thou' definitely doesn't mean what you think it means. Your GPA doesn't mean much in the world, but your TOEFL score does.

comatose_kid 19y ago

No way....a 4.0 just tells you that a person did really well with their course load, not that they were Ted Kaczynski wannabes. I still remember the smartest person I ever met (I would be willing to bet that he'd do pretty well on any math test - Putnam included - you gave him). This fellow had the highest GPA in electrical engineering and also had the second highest GPA in economics. Simultaneously. And on the side, he was an active skydiver and practiced jui-jitsu 2x a week. And over the course of the 4 years we spent in undergrad, I don't think I ever saw him study (I'm not exaggerating). So it is possible to be off the charts intelligent and not be anal retentive or unbalanced.