Is a perfect GPA necessary for success in industry?

[Ryker]

Because the B student spent time outside the classroom writing poetry.

See, now I think you're just being contrarian. Sure, maybe some B student did spend time outside the classroom writing poetry, but that doesn't imply that B students are better prepared for life (or whatever standard you're trying to measure them up to) than A students. It's great that it worked out so well for you, but now you're making it seems like by definition A students are worse than those with B's.

The A student could just be a good test taker...

Also your question seems silly itself btw, I am more articulate and write better than most of my fellow students in my engineering classes but quite a few score higher than me in exams.

You haven't answered his question, though.

And really, some of you are now making it seem as if it's the admission committee's task to try and come up with as many "excuses" for those A students performing well as they can, and then when they do, experience that "gotcha!" moment and adamantly refuse to let a "good test taker" into their school. This is getting ridiculous.

What boggles my mind most, though, is the fact that all of you are or striving to be scientists. If these inferences and conclusions are based on logic employed in science, then slap me silly and call me Sandy.

 

[turbo]

Or went out binge-drinking. Or was in bed with mono. Or simply got unlucky with exam schedules, and had to take three big ones on the same day. One B can make the difference between a 3.9 and a 4.0, and is well within the bounds of the "**** just happens" factor. By extension, the suggestion that the 4.0 student is more likely to have better/worse communication skills than the 3.9 student is only slightly less absurd than the notion of 4.0 students being better/worse accordion players.

I happened to have mono and bronchichitis back-to-back and missed more that a months worth of class-work, but did my best to catch up and ended up with better than a B. Not bad for a challenging engineering school with a 5-year pulp and paper scholarship in the works.

 

[flyingpig]

Let's see I got 100% in Calc II from last term even though I've made mistakes on the exams, but my professor handed out 100% to a few others who score well on it so that worries me because I feel that "100%s" tels them that it was a breeze course. So i think a 99% would've probably looked nicer

 

[cjl]

Let's see I got 100% in Calc II from last term even though I've made mistakes on the exams, but my professor handed out 100% to a few others who score well on it so that worries me because I feel that "100%s" tels them that it was a breeze course. So i think a 99% would've probably looked nicer

But the percentage doesn't even show up on the transcript, does it? I haven't checked mine recently, but I could've sworn it only had letters, not percents...

 

[Leveret]

Let's see I got 100% in Calc II from last term even though I've made mistakes on the exams, but my professor handed out 100% to a few others who score well on it so that worries me because I feel that "100%s" tels them that it was a breeze course. So i think a 99% would've probably looked nicer

Even if the actual percentage did show up on your transcript (which, in concurrence with cjl, I have never heard of), it seems very unlikely that a grad school or possible employer would know how many other people got 100%. Not only would the other 100%-scorers have to apply to the same place at the same time, but whoever was reading the transcripts would have to somehow know that you took the class at the same time, with the same professor, and then notice how many of you got 100%. And even then, there would be no way of knowing whether it was an easy class, or if several excellent students had just happened to apply to the same place. All-in-all, there are too many farfetched "if"s to bother worrying about such a scenario.

 

[twofish-quant]

Sure, maybe some B student did spend time outside the classroom writing poetry, but that doesn't imply that B students are better prepared for life (or whatever standard you're trying to measure them up to) than A students.

Writing poetry prepares you for life (i.e. it keeps you from going insane when you are looking for a job). If getting an A keeps you from writing poetry, that's a bad thing.

It's great that it worked out so well for you, but now you're making it seems like by definition A students are worse than those with B's.

There is a certain type of A student that ends up in worse shape in the business world than a certain type of B student. One of the things that you have to do if you have a 4.0 GPA is to convince people that you aren't that certain type of A student.

Whether some one better or worse depends on the type of environment. In academia, *by definition* and A student is better than a B student, but that doesn't necessarily carry over outside of academia.

I'm probably not the best person to talk first hand about what gets you liked by a graduate school admissions committee, but I can talk first hand about what can worry an employer.

What boggles my mind most, though, is the fact that all of you are or striving to be scientists. If these inferences and conclusions are based on logic employed in science, then slap me silly and call me Sandy.

My conclusions are based on personal experience which may or may not be different from yours.

Also life and business works with a different logic than science and engineering.

 

[viscousflow]

I said:

Also I've heard of perfect A students speaking of a pressure vector. High grades doesn't mean you know everything, it just means you know how to pass a test expertly.

Vanadium said

So you're arguing that grades are reliably and negatively correlated with achievement? Hmmm...

twofish-quant mentioned:

I'll let others talk about graduate admissions committees, but I do know first hand that employers are a little worried about people with GPA's that are too high, because it suggests that they might focus too much on classes and not on things that aren't graded.

One other difference is that most managers are people that don't have perfect GPA's so that having perfect GPA's is not something that gets you much respect in industry.

My point exactly. Passing a test for a perfect GPA and the real deal are two different things.

 

[twofish-quant]

If I get a resume with someone that has a 4.0 GPA, I'm not going to toss it in the trash, but one thing that I will ask in the interview is "tell me about a situation in which you failed and how did you deal with that" or "can you give me an example of a situation in which you tried something that you knew that you were unlikely to succeed in?"

If the response is "I've never failed and I don't plan to" then it's going to count very strongly against them when I write the interview report. If the response is "I didn't like my school because the classes were too easy, so I studied X, Y, Z to keep myself from getting bored, and I really messed on at X." that's a decent answer.

One other question that can be revealing is "what's your favorite color and why?" The reason that's a revealing question is that it's a random question with no real answer. What people will often do with job interviews is to study job hunting books left and right looking for the "right answer" to every question, and so you can often figure out something about someone by asking them a question with literally no right answer. If I ask "what's your favorite color and why?" and the interviewee looks very uncomfortable because that question was not on the script, that's a bad sign.

Also, the fact that personal characteristics are important is why businesses will not hire someone without a face to face interview.

 

[snipez90]

Repeated logical fallacies running through this thread. Being a good test taker is obviously useful, and many people who know their subjects well can (and should be able to) pass exams with ease.

 

[clope023]

See, now I think you're just being contrarian. Sure, maybe some B student did spend time outside the classroom writing poetry, but that doesn't imply that B students are better prepared for life (or whatever standard you're trying to measure them up to) than A students. It's great that it worked out so well for you, but now you're making it seems like by definition A students are worse than those with B's.You haven't answered his question, though.

And really, some of you are now making it seem as if it's the admission committee's task to try and come up with as many "excuses" for those A students performing well as they can, and then when they do, experience that "gotcha!" moment and adamantly refuse to let a "good test taker" into their school. This is getting ridiculous.

What boggles my mind most, though, is the fact that all of you are or striving to be scientists. If these inferences and conclusions are based on logic employed in science, then slap me silly and call me Sandy.

Well I'll give you an example, Sandy, in my controls engineering class the instructor allowed open notes even on the final; however he was a somewhat lazy professor who didn't change his questions from year to year. He only made 2 different versions of each test and it was not difficult to find old tests with answers that were the exact same questions as the one being currently given if you knew the right bunch of guys. So all one had to do was obtain the old test, stuff them in your notes, and copy the answers on your final, boom, instant A on the final. I'm sure this does not characterize every A student, I know plenty and the good ones work damn hard for it, but some don't work hard and don't deserve high grades in every instance.

You're assuming any criticism of some A students based on jealousy or whatnot and that's not the case.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I'd expect zero correlation, but it wouldn't surprise me if the correlation was negative.

Feel free to argue that. What facts do you have supporting it?

 

[flyingpig]

Even if the actual percentage did show up on your transcript (which, in concurrence with cjl, I have never heard of), it seems very unlikely that a grad school or possible employer would know how many other people got 100%. Not only would the other 100%-scorers have to apply to the same place at the same time, but whoever was reading the transcripts would have to somehow know that you took the class at the same time, with the same professor, and then notice how many of you got 100%. And even then, there would be no way of knowing whether it was an easy class, or if several excellent students had just happened to apply to the same place. All-in-all, there are too many farfetched "if"s to bother worrying about such a scenario.

I thought class averages also appear on transcripts...?

 

[twofish-quant]

Feel free to argue that. What facts do you have supporting it?

Personal experience. A lot depends on your definition of achievement, but if you use my definition and you use as a sample people I knew as a undergraduate then it's pretty negatively correlated with GPA.

Also even if I'm totally all wet, listening to what I'm saying it still useful since, there is a non-trivial chance that someone will have to deal with me or someone that thinks like be in a job interview, so even if it turns out that what I think is totally unsupported, stupid, and wrong, you still have to deal with it.

 

[twofish-quant]

Being a good test taker is obviously useful, and many people who know their subjects well can (and should be able to) pass exams with ease.

That's not necessarily true. In software development, you have a lot of certifications which are useless because they are based on knowledge that isn't useful. It's easy to come up with a programming test that a good programmer will fail at but a lousy programmer would ace. Designing a good test can be quite difficult, and one thing is that in some fields (software development is pretty notorious for this), any test in which you get a numerical score is inherently limited.

In our hiring we do give written paper tests, but it's to identify people that have no programming skill at all. Once you've passed that test, then you need to talk face to face to figure out if they are barely competent or outstanding.

 

[twofish-quant]

I thought class averages also appear on transcripts...?

They don't in most US schools.

Also, if you are getting 99% or 98% on a calculus test, that means that they are teaching calculus in ways that is quite different than the way I think it should be taught if I were teaching the course. If I had control over a class, I'd want to teach it so that the median score would be like 60% and I'd do this by including "unfair" programs (i.e. problems that I didn't directly cover in class).

 

[leright]

That sounds silly. Why would a B student have better communications skills than an A student?

I know many B students that have better communications skills than many A students but I also know many A students than have better communications skills than many B students. Not much correlation between grades and communication skills, especially in technical fields. English, for instance, might be a different story.

 

[leright]

So you're arguing that grades are reliably and negatively correlated with achievement? Hmmm...

I did not see anymone above your post arguing this.

 

[R.P.F.]

That's not necessarily true. In software development, you have a lot of certifications which are useless because they are based on knowledge that isn't useful. It's easy to come up with a programming test that a good programmer will fail at but a lousy programmer would ace. Designing a good test can be quite difficult, and one thing is that in some fields (software development is pretty notorious for this), any test in which you get a numerical score is inherently limited.

In our hiring we do give written paper tests, but it's to identify people that have no programming skill at all. Once you've passed that test, then you need to talk face to face to figure out if they are barely competent or outstanding.

I have a lot of friends with very high GPA. None of them has perfect GPA though. I guess the reason is that you need to fulfill some distributional requirements to graduate and a lot of humanities professors at my college simply do not give out 4.0s. My friends with high GPAs are usually very active members in varsity, student organizations. So speaking from my personal experience, people with high GPAs tend to be successful outside academia as well. High GPA means you are hard-workding, smart or both. Pretty much every aspect of life requires at least one of those two.
I also know this one person who is extremely smart and is a fantastic programmer. But all he did was playing video games so he failed some of his classes. We tried really hard to get him to do work for his classes but he wouldn't listen to us. I'm pretty sure even after he got a job he would still only do things that interest him. I'm not sure that he would be an ideal employee.

 

[Vanadium 50]

See FAlonso's post about employers rejecting A students.

 

[Ryker]

Well I'll give you an example, Sandy, in my controls engineering class the instructor allowed open notes even on the final; however he was a somewhat lazy professor who didn't change his questions from year to year. He only made 2 different versions of each test and it was not difficult to find old tests with answers that were the exact same questions as the one being currently given if you knew the right bunch of guys. So all one had to do was obtain the old test, stuff them in your notes, and copy the answers on your final, boom, instant A on the final. I'm sure this does not characterize every A student, I know plenty and the good ones work damn hard for it, but some don't work hard and don't deserve high grades in every instance.

So how does this example of yours support the claim that more students with some B's deserve their grades, whereas those with A's not only don't deserve the A's, but deserve even less than what their B counterparts get? I mean, are you saying the admissions committees should hold assumptions that all universities have such poor standards as in the example you provided, and on top of that, that the A's came from studying up the previous exam questions, whereas the B's came from independent study and mastering of the material?

Again, what you provided is an example of why perhaps someone doesn't deserve an A. That's fine, and I'm sure there are plenty of cases of this being true, but it still adds nothing to the argument that not only are there less such cases when a B is concerned, and even less to the argument that those that get a B actually function or master the material better than those that get an A.

You're assuming any criticism of some A students based on jealousy or whatnot and that's not the case.

I don't quite get this. What jealousy are you talking about? If one was a straight-A student, jealous of those that get an occasional B, wouldn't that he be able to easily fix that then?

 

[snipez90]

That's not necessarily true. In software development, you have a lot of certifications which are useless because they are based on knowledge that isn't useful. It's easy to come up with a programming test that a good programmer will fail at but a lousy programmer would ace. Designing a good test can be quite difficult, and one thing is that in some fields (software development is pretty notorious for this), any test in which you get a numerical score is inherently limited.

In our hiring we do give written paper tests, but it's to identify people that have no programming skill at all. Once you've passed that test, then you need to talk face to face to figure out if they are barely competent or outstanding.

You didn't necessarily refute my point though. The person who applied to your firm and managed to pass the preliminary tests, regardless of whether he or she is barely competent or outstanding, still probably understands the value of good test-taking skills.

As for your claim that it's easy to design a programming test that a good programmer will fail but a subpar one would ace, providing some specific cases would be enlightening. Certification exams don't seem to cut it, since the good programmer should already understand that these are probably pretty useless. Part of what I deem 'knowledgeable in a certain field" involves understanding basic problem-solving and test-taking skills in that particular field. If the "good" programmer can't do something that the "bad" programmer can do (and certainly it must be something basic), then there seems to be something fundamentally lacking in the "good" programmer's basic problem-solving ability.

 

[thegreenlaser]

I'm having a little trouble here, because the impression I'm getting is that even if someone gets straight A's because they love the material and have the work ethic to spend time mastering it and really understanding it, they should stop working as hard and get a couple B's because their communication and real-world work skills will magically improve. (I know that's probably not what people mean, but that's the sense I'm getting)

There is a certain type of A student that ends up in worse shape in the business world than a certain type of B student. One of the things that you have to do if you have a 4.0 GPA is to convince people that you aren't that certain type of A student.

What would you say are the characteristics of the A student that ends up in good shape vs the one who ends up in bad shape? Would I be correct in saying that the successful A student will be the one who gets A's because of a love of learning combined with a good work ethic, whereas the one who ends up in bad shape is the one who's just terrified of failure or thinks that good marks automatically make them better than everyone else?

I have to admit I'm a little biased, because a couple of my relatives are convinced that getting A's is pointless and that C/D students are obviously way smarter, so I get into this argument a lot. One of those people has literally told me this: when he was in university, he spent half an hour on a project and failed it, whereas the people that got A's spent an entire weekend. From there he claims it's obvious that he's much smarter than the A students because he could have got an A if he'd spent another half hour on the project. The thing is, there's no proof that he could have got an A, and I'm seeing a lot of similar arguments here. Sure, a B student COULD be spending his extra time developing important life skills, but there's nothing inherent to getting B's that requires that to be true. All you really know about an A student vs a B student strictly based on marks is that the A student has done better in an academic setting then the B student. I don't see the jump to making claims about 'real-world competency' based on grades alone.

 

[Ryker]

Sure, a B student COULD be spending his extra time developing important life skills, but there's nothing inherent to getting B's that requires that to be true. All you really know about an A student vs a B student strictly based on marks is that the A student has done better in an academic setting then the B student. I don't see the jump to making claims about 'real-world competency' based on grades alone.

Nicely put, and that's all I'm arguing, as well.

 

[AlephZero]

Baed on my own experience interviewing, I don't think there is any correlation either way between "real world competence" and academic grades. 99.9% of the time we are looking to hire people with a balance of both, which is why we have to spend a lot of time and money interviewing people.

On the other hand, there is a (fairly small) minority of people with excellent grades who are totally clueless about "real life", or what working in industry is actually about (in extreme cases they seem to think they will be solving exam type problems for the rest of their lives). There don't seem to be many of those misfits who DON'T have brilliant academic records - or else something filters them out before we get to see them.

 

[kmarinas86]

On the other hand, there is a (fairly small) minority of people with excellent grades who are totally clueless about "real life", or what working in industry is actually about (in extreme cases they seem to think they will be solving exam type problems for the rest of their lives). There don't seem to be many of those misfits who DON'T have brilliant academic records - or else something filters them out before we get to see them.

It is because they are shy. They don't break the barriers they need to have a feel for their industry. They often work alone. Their success comes from their organizational skills and memory, and that's pretty much it.

These "misfits" can be warmed up, but it takes some effort—something that not all employers are interested in doing for them.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Someone who has the skills to get good grades but no others might make it through college. Someone who doesn't even have that won't. So you never see them.

 

[twofish-quant]

High GPA means you are hard-workding, smart or both. Pretty much every aspect of life requires at least one of those two.

It could also mean that you have one of two personality traits that make you dangerous in investment banking. If you have a perfect GPA, I'm not going to toss your resume, but I will make sure that you don't have one of those personality traits. (The two very dangerous traits are the inability to cut your losses, and the inability to distinguish skill and luck.)

Again this is company and personality dependent.

I also know this one person who is extremely smart and is a fantastic programmer. But all he did was playing video games so he failed some of his classes. We tried really hard to get him to do work for his classes but he wouldn't listen to us. I'm pretty sure even after he got a job he would still only do things that interest him. I'm not sure that he would be an ideal employee.

There are no ideal employees. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and part of the point in hiring is to get a mix of people with different strengths and weaknesses. Also one thing that is important in my company is diversity. This isn't merely ethnic diversity, but also diversity in personality, backgrounds, and test scores.

 

[twofish-quant]

So how does this example of yours support the claim that more students with some B's deserve their grades, whereas those with A's not only don't deserve the A's, but deserve even less than what their B counterparts get?

I don't see where I was talking about "deserve."

My experience is that people more or less end up figure out rules about "deserve" based on what they have and what they think they are likely to get.

In academia, GPA correlates very strongly with "success." In other fields the correlation is not as strong because the definition of "success" is different. Where I work the definition of "success" is how much money that you make, which may or may not correlate with getting all A's.

The correlation is weak enough is that people don't use grades for anything other than the initial screening, so once you get to the interview stage, no one will care what your GPA was. I do know of some companies that will hire pretty much on the basis of only GPA and test scores (DE Shaw) and I know of others in which having a high GPA is considered to be a sign of lack of "street smarts" which will get your resume tossed.

Everyone does things differently, which I suppose is a good thing because everyone is different.

Also, it would be good if people stopped talking about "what employers want" as if there was one employer that wanted one thing. I can tell you want I want, and what my company wants, but that is very different from what other people want, which I think is a good thing because it means that no one starves.

I mean, are you saying the admissions committees should hold assumptions that all universities have such poor standards as in the example you provided

Talking about *should* makes things more complicated. I'd prefer to focus on talking about *is*. I can tell you how things work in my company and with me. If you think that we *should* be selecting employees in a different way, that's another conversation, and one that's likely to be somewhat useless.

As far as *should*, personally I think the system should be set up so there are enough places so that we don't have to spend as much time selecting people.

Again, what you provided is an example of why perhaps someone doesn't deserve an A.

I didn't say anything about "deserve." One thing problem with the grades is that it gives people an idea that the world should work a certain way, which causes problems because the world doesn't work that way because it can't.

If we could give new employees a standardized test to hire and hire only on the basis of that, we would, because the way we do hiring is extremely time consuming. The problem is that no one has come up with an easier way, most of the efforts to save time cause problems.

What jealousy are you talking about? If one was a straight-A student, jealous of those that get an occasional B, wouldn't that he be able to easily fix that then?

It's actually harder. One thing that I have seen is when people with extremely high academic credentials get extremely angry when it turns out that people with lower academic credentials end up with the money and power, and it makes people angry because the people with high academic credentials think that the world is unfair because they didn't get what they "deserve."

Examples of this are in any engineering company when the people that make the major decisions (include decisions about who gets hired and who gets fired and who much everyone makes) are often managers that are less smart and have much lower grades than the people they are hiring and firing. Another example, is the lament of the physics Ph.D. who finds that someone that just barely passed air conditioning repair in a community college is finding it a *lot* easier to get jobs.

Now how the world should work is a complex topic, but let's start with the way the world does work.

 

[twofish-quant]

The person who applied to your firm and managed to pass the preliminary tests, regardless of whether he or she is barely competent or outstanding, still probably understands the value of good test-taking skills.

Or maybe worse each overestimates the value of good test-taking skills. I happen to be in a line of work in which good test-taking skills aren't important for "success" (i.e. corporate profitability).

As for your claim that it's easy to design a programming test that a good programmer will fail but a subpar one would ace, providing some specific cases would be enlightening.

MCSE and Oracle Java Certifications. Also Ph.D. in computer science. There are some great Ph.D.'s in computer science that are great programmers, but there are those that can't program at all. It shouldn't be that surprising. Just because you have a Ph.D. in English Literature doesn't mean that you can write a great or even decent novel.

Part of the problem, is that a subpar programmer would memorize the MCSE material. A excellent programmer would start by asking why we are using Microsoft.

Part of what I deem 'knowledgeable in a certain field" involves understanding basic problem-solving and test-taking skills in that particular field. If the "good" programmer can't do something that the "bad" programmer can do (and certainly it must be something basic), then there seems to be something fundamentally lacking in the "good" programmer's basic problem-solving ability.

It doesn't work that way where I work. What people at least were I work is someone that can work in a team to make money. Everyone is good at some things, and everyone is bad at some things. It gets more complicated because you are a looking for a mix of people. There have been situations where we've hired someone we know is a bad or incompetent programmer because we already have a great programmer on the team, and we need someone that is good at another skill.

One other thing that we look for (and the academic system discourages this) is the ability to cross fields quickly. The other thing that helps is the ability to self-evaluate (i.e. the ability to figure out if you are good and bad at something and then the ability to do something decent about it).

Also, one observation that I've made is that the educational system right now is designed mainly to produce corporate cogs that do one particular thing very well. This may have worked for the jobs of the 1960's, but it doesn't work that well for today's jobs.

Again, standard caveat applies. I can just tell you about what I look for and what my company looks for. This *is* very different from what other companies do (and curiously different people within our company have different standards) so anyone input from people that can talk about what they do is appreciated.

This is sort of important, because diversity is good, and if you think that our company does hiring wrong, you are unlikely to change it, so you are better off just finding a different company that does things the way you think they should be done.

 

[twofish-quant]

Someone who has the skills to get good grades but no others might make it through college. Someone who doesn't even have that won't. So you never see them.

*You* never see them. *I* see them. There are lots of people in the business world that are "dropouts" (including myself, I dropped out after getting my Ph.D.), and this impacts hiring.

Part of the history of finance in NYC is that you have some places that were started by people that barely got through high school (Goldman-Sachs to name some names), and so you have places where people actively look down on people with high GPA's (although Goldman is neutral toward this). You also have places that were started by people with high GPA's and high elite colleges types (DE Shaw and Morgan-Stanley).