10 ms·

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

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.
        obstinate 12y ago
        So would you say that comparatively low attrition combined with high self-reported satisfaction indicates that a company is a good place to work?
      - baddox 12y ago
        You imply that innovation is the only thing an employee would want to participate in. I wouldn't have a problem working on a great team making great high quality products that are not innovative.
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      If you're not the sort of person overly concerned about GPA, then Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter may not be companies you want to work for anyway.
    - eru 12y ago
      > 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. Nah, even dropouts are welcome at Google. A high GPA is a point in your favour, but not the only thing that matters. (At least once you have some experience. I don't really know how we hire fresh graduates. But as far as I can tell we take everyone who has a pulse and can program.)
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Weird. When I interviewed at MS, education never came up at all. Just lots of algorithms questions, from ~9am to 7 in the evening. I was about 24 at the time. I wouldn't ditch GPA for no reason, but avoiding a bad professor and getting a good one seems far more valuable overall.
      - jacalata 12y ago
        I'm assuming you sent in some kind of paperwork before walking up and interviewing - did that perhaps include a resume with a GPA on it?
        shiftpgdn 12y ago
        Are you seriously putting your GPA on your resume?
        jacalata 12y ago
        Personally no, but I did when graduating college. I mostly found it ridiculous to pretend that if something didn't come up in the interview, it didn't come up in the hiring process at all, as though Microsoft practices the kind of open audition that my local bar ran last week.
        MichaelGG 12y ago
        No. I dropped out of school at 15.
        bborud 12y ago
        When I was asked to send my resume to Google I fired up Emacs, wrote one page of previous positions and what I worked on there, and one page on what my interests are. Both professional and spare time interests. I spent about 15 minutes writing that resume, read through it once and then emailed it to Alan Eustace. I don't remember if I even mentioned which university I had attended and whether or not I had finished a degree. Nor did I make a single mention of what programming languages I know or any of the tedious stuff people tend to use for bulking up their CV. (I was told that Jeff Dean, who was one of my interviewers, said that he couldn't wait to meet someone who writes software, races cars, welds and has just finished a course in logging timber using an good old-fashioned chainsaw)
    - bborud 12y ago
      Rather than focus on artificial metrics like GPA you should focus on who you want to become. If you model yourself after the kinds of people who would flunk a student for pulling a prank that both demonstrates a sense of humor and great command of the subject matter, you will lose in the long run. In that way it is useful to identify such people so you can stay away from them, and more importantly, so you can warn your fellow students about them. Who you look up to and learn from matters a lot. If you want a life in academia, you need to conform and be obedient. At least until you have established yourself as sufficiently brilliant to be able to behave more rationally. Personally I don't really understand why one would want a career in academia, but hey, for some people merit badges and titles are really important and I'm not judging. When you are young you think getting a degree and getting good grades matters more than it really does. It matters for those initial few years of your career, but once that phase is over it doesn't matter. And it matters more if you are unremarkable. What really matters is the people you get to know at university. That's a really big deal because you will run into these people for decades to come. And you will meet people you can learn from, with whom you can collaborate etc. As for companies like Google, Microsoft etc: there's myth and then there is reality. If you come in the front door, your alma mater and GPA will matter if you are a new graduate. If you spent your career worrying about becoming good at what you do and to collaborate with other people who are good at what they do, you won't be "coming in the front door". I never finished a degree, but I did get a job at Google. And yahoo before that. And so on. I got in the door because they knew I worked on things that were very relevant to them and that I probably wasn't a total fuckup. I still had to make it through the interviews though. And I did. Of course, it should be mentioned that the hiring process at Google at the time put undue emphasis on GPA and what your alma mater was. I saw lots of people get rejected due to the university they went to or even really minor blips in their academic record. I found this disturbing. At the time Google had lots of data showing that certain metrics are not predictors of later performance. Among them GPA and alma mater. But they needed some way of cutting the sheer influx of applications down to a managable size. If I had focused on getting a degree rather than work on interesting problems I doubt I would have gotten a job at Google. I would have been compared to a much, much larger population of unknowns and I doubt that I would have managed to stand out. Are you aware of how many people out there have good grades and good looking CVs? I do, because as an engineer at Google at the time I spent a lot of my time reading applications and interviewing candidates. What is important is who you become. You want to find something you love to do and something you have a talent for, and then become good at that.
  - baddox 12y ago
    Not necessarily. obstinate just pointed out that a GPA filter might actually be a reasonable practice for legit companies that would be good to work for.
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.

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.
        obstinate 12y ago
        So would you say that comparatively low attrition combined with high self-reported satisfaction indicates that a company is a good place to work?
    - baddox 12y ago
      You imply that innovation is the only thing an employee would want to participate in. I wouldn't have a problem working on a great team making great high quality products that are not innovative.
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    If you're not the sort of person overly concerned about GPA, then Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter may not be companies you want to work for anyway.
  - eru 12y ago
    > 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. Nah, even dropouts are welcome at Google. A high GPA is a point in your favour, but not the only thing that matters. (At least once you have some experience. I don't really know how we hire fresh graduates. But as far as I can tell we take everyone who has a pulse and can program.)
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Weird. When I interviewed at MS, education never came up at all. Just lots of algorithms questions, from ~9am to 7 in the evening. I was about 24 at the time. I wouldn't ditch GPA for no reason, but avoiding a bad professor and getting a good one seems far more valuable overall.
    - jacalata 12y ago
      I'm assuming you sent in some kind of paperwork before walking up and interviewing - did that perhaps include a resume with a GPA on it?
      - shiftpgdn 12y ago
        Are you seriously putting your GPA on your resume?
        jacalata 12y ago
        Personally no, but I did when graduating college. I mostly found it ridiculous to pretend that if something didn't come up in the interview, it didn't come up in the hiring process at all, as though Microsoft practices the kind of open audition that my local bar ran last week.
      - MichaelGG 12y ago
        No. I dropped out of school at 15.
      - bborud 12y ago
        When I was asked to send my resume to Google I fired up Emacs, wrote one page of previous positions and what I worked on there, and one page on what my interests are. Both professional and spare time interests. I spent about 15 minutes writing that resume, read through it once and then emailed it to Alan Eustace. I don't remember if I even mentioned which university I had attended and whether or not I had finished a degree. Nor did I make a single mention of what programming languages I know or any of the tedious stuff people tend to use for bulking up their CV. (I was told that Jeff Dean, who was one of my interviewers, said that he couldn't wait to meet someone who writes software, races cars, welds and has just finished a course in logging timber using an good old-fashioned chainsaw)
  - bborud 12y ago
    Rather than focus on artificial metrics like GPA you should focus on who you want to become. If you model yourself after the kinds of people who would flunk a student for pulling a prank that both demonstrates a sense of humor and great command of the subject matter, you will lose in the long run. In that way it is useful to identify such people so you can stay away from them, and more importantly, so you can warn your fellow students about them. Who you look up to and learn from matters a lot. If you want a life in academia, you need to conform and be obedient. At least until you have established yourself as sufficiently brilliant to be able to behave more rationally. Personally I don't really understand why one would want a career in academia, but hey, for some people merit badges and titles are really important and I'm not judging. When you are young you think getting a degree and getting good grades matters more than it really does. It matters for those initial few years of your career, but once that phase is over it doesn't matter. And it matters more if you are unremarkable. What really matters is the people you get to know at university. That's a really big deal because you will run into these people for decades to come. And you will meet people you can learn from, with whom you can collaborate etc. As for companies like Google, Microsoft etc: there's myth and then there is reality. If you come in the front door, your alma mater and GPA will matter if you are a new graduate. If you spent your career worrying about becoming good at what you do and to collaborate with other people who are good at what they do, you won't be "coming in the front door". I never finished a degree, but I did get a job at Google. And yahoo before that. And so on. I got in the door because they knew I worked on things that were very relevant to them and that I probably wasn't a total fuckup. I still had to make it through the interviews though. And I did. Of course, it should be mentioned that the hiring process at Google at the time put undue emphasis on GPA and what your alma mater was. I saw lots of people get rejected due to the university they went to or even really minor blips in their academic record. I found this disturbing. At the time Google had lots of data showing that certain metrics are not predictors of later performance. Among them GPA and alma mater. But they needed some way of cutting the sheer influx of applications down to a managable size. If I had focused on getting a degree rather than work on interesting problems I doubt I would have gotten a job at Google. I would have been compared to a much, much larger population of unknowns and I doubt that I would have managed to stand out. Are you aware of how many people out there have good grades and good looking CVs? I do, because as an engineer at Google at the time I spent a lot of my time reading applications and interviewing candidates. What is important is who you become. You want to find something you love to do and something you have a talent for, and then become good at that.
- baddox 12y ago
  Not necessarily. obstinate just pointed out that a GPA filter might actually be a reasonable practice for legit companies that would be good to work for.

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.