6 ms·

Beautiful. If I were teaching the class, you'd get the A and I'd remember when it was time to write recommendations. But I remember some professors who might

• bborud 12y ago
  Identifying professors that would fail someone for this is actually worth a failing grade. (Though at the age when you are most likely to be a student at a university it probably would seem better to conform and get a good grade)
  • obstinate 12y ago
    What aspect of identifying them would make it worth it? I can see some potential fringe benefits -- don't take future classes from that prof, etc. But it's hard to imagine that those fringe benefits would actually be worth the drop in GPA, which does matter.
    • MichaelGG 12y ago
      What does GPA matter for? Except special circumstances, like scholarships or visas tied to GPA? I stopped 7th grade and truly dropped out at 10th, so I'm biased. I've just never heard of GPA actually mattering.
      • obstinate 12y ago
        Many companies, including the one I work for, use college GPA as a filter. The theory is: you miss some good folks by filtering out people below 3.5, but you save a lot of effort on a group that has a much higher proportion of bad candidates. If there are enough good candidates above 3.5, this can be a worthwhile trade. Of course, there are ways around this (become famous in the industry, work somewhere else first and do well there, etc.). But most resumes, especially of new grads or people who have only been in the industry for a couple of years, will be run through this filter.
        • EvanAnderson 12y ago
          Not caring about your GPA sounds like a great way to filter out companies that use bogus criteria as a way to filter prospective employees.
          • obstinate 12y ago
            That's an option, but you're going to end up filtering out a lot of the best companies to work for if you go that route. I have personal knowledge that it's a factor at least at Google and Microsoft. As I understand it, Facebook and Twitter use it as well. All depends on what you value. Personally, it seems like getting a high GPA isn't very difficult, so why not do well in school to keep your opportunities as open as possible? Doesn't seem worthwhile to do poorly for doing poorly's sake. That's just me though. Everyone has their own priorities.
            • Retric 12y ago
              YMMV but those are all terrible companies to work for. Consider this they collectively employ ~ 100,000 people and have produced basically zero innovation in the last 3 years. PS: Though they also have fairly wide side doors so many of their current employes have not gone thorough their screening process.
              • obstinate 12y ago
                OK. But employee surveys consistently show that people working at these companies are highly satisfied. That doesn't mean you'd be satisfied there, but I don't see how you can say that they are not good companies to work for.
                • dunmalg 12y ago
                  You have to consider what those surveys measure, i.e. people who WORK there, not people who HAVE worked there. Thing to remember about top-tier tech companies is that anyone who CAN get a job with them can also pretty easily get a job somewhere else. This means that people who are unsatisfied don't stay very long.
      • GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
        • rasz_pl 12y ago
          Michael Dell, Bill Gates
          • lmm 12y ago
            Gates knew his family was rich enough that he could go back and finish his degree if the business didn't pan out. If you've got that financial cushion and you've got something better to do with your time then sure, drop out. But dropping the GPA "just because" is probably not your best option.
          • GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
            There's a big difference between being a college drop-out and being a high school drop-out.
            • fubarred 12y ago
              The latter realized the futility of it sooner than the former.
              • MichaelGG 12y ago
                Eh, a compsci degree would have helped me in some cases. I ended up studying algorithms and such by myself anyways. OTOH, I've interviewed people with degrees in cs and they couldn't even explain binary search, let alone implement it. I dropped out cause my teachers were atrocious. My algebra teacher couldn't explain why absolute value was a function, just that it was and we must learn it, period. Another teacher said "computers just use binary". When I pointed out I often saw hex, instead of pointing out why base 16 is a good fit for writing binary numbers, she just stammered that computers were just binary. Still my fault for giving up, but I had enough reason at the time.
      • fubarred 12y ago
        It only matters to people that enjoy taking tests and those that can't be bothered to understand what being successful at a job requires.