G01 said:OK. Below a 2.5 will be a problem if this is all you have going for you. Unfortunately, many employers may read a GPA below 2.5 as "This person does not have any work ethic."
Do you have anything else? Internships? Other relevant work experience? What are you're skills? Can your program? Build Circuits?
You are going to need others things on you're resume that make you look like you have something to offer to the company. With you're GPA, you can't count on them hiring you under the assumption that you are going to learn the skills you need for the job. You need to show them that you already have what the employer needs.
Also, you need to focus on getting the highest grades possible between now and graduation. If you can show a dramatic improvement in GPA over the last several semesters, you can use that to you're advantage. i.e. (You've developed learning and studying skills that you didn't possesses as a freshman/ sophomore.)
In short, you need to give employers a reason to hire you as your GPA won't be able to do that in it's current state. You can't just state a <2.5 GPA without explanation. You need to tell employers why they should still consider you, why your GPA doesn't reflect your potential as an employee. You need to tell them what skills you can offer.
Some employers may accept an unexperienced new technician and train him on-the-job, but many will not. In whichever cases you locate if you are hired, the training might not be very lenient for much time, so you would need to sharpen yourself as your are trained and practice or at least you will make people impatient for a while if you are allowed to stay for some time. Training during work on the job is often not very formal.Do you think I should repeat some classes to improve my GPA; Aren't their jobs that train you for the job position you were hired for for just having a physics degree?
noblegas said:But I love physics
noblegas said:I just have not developed great study skills and my professors have not been in guiding me in the right direction.
davesface said:You seem to be missing the point they're trying to make. A degree != a job necessarily, especially with a low GPA and no mitigating factors.
Not only are you unlikely to find a job in a technical field where they don't look at the GPA of someone right out of college, but you have to ask yourself what kind of a place wouldn't look at a potential employee's GPA. Answer: a place run by idiots, which is somewhere you wouldn't want to work anyway.
vociferous said:A college degree is generally not what gets you hired; it is what gets your foot in the door. It is what allows the employer to narrow down the stack of applicants, and if it is a particularly competitive job, they can throw out the resumes that do not have advanced degrees, or high GPA's, or degrees from top schools.
But ultimately, except for a few top students, the schooling itself is not what gets someone hired. I am not saying that GPA does not matter, but it matters a lot less if you have the kind of skill sets that the employer is looking for.
If you have the kind of resume that shows you understand the industry (have worked similar jobs before and do not need to be trained), work well as a team, have leadership skills (military service pays off a lot for the previous two), et cetera, you are a lot more likely to get the job than the guy with a better academic record who is fresh out of college.
Ultimately, not too many employers would prefer to hire fresh graduates for just the reason that a lot of them are 23 year olds with no industry or serious work experience, and if you are one of them, with a low GPA, then you are in that same life boat.
My best advice is to work on getting better grades, and build you skill set. If you do not have good teamwork and leadership experience, get some. Volunteer for a community organization (serious volunteering, not a few hours a week), join the military or americorps. Take unpaid internships in the industry. Do things that will give you a leg-up on real-work work experience, especially anything that shows that you have leadership, teamwork, or industry experience.
Once you manage to get into the industry and get serious experience, a lot of employers are not going to look carefully at your GPA, but if all you have on your resume is your degree, you are going to be last in line.
Vanadium 50 said:It is difficult to get unpaid internships except through your college or university. This is because of minimum wage laws.
Vanadium 50 said:Unpaid = less than minimum wage.
turbo-1 said:You can work as a lab technician, even with a poor academic record. There are lots of fields in which employers cannot expect to have a pool of well-qualified candidates who can hit the ground running. The more specialized the industry/field, the more on-the-job training will be required to bring new-hire technicians on-line with even minimal responsibilities.
This is even more of a consideration when the company you work for has a lot of trade secrets and proprietary information to protect. If you use proprietary materials or processes, you have to regard every new hire as a trainee.
If you intend to work for a company in an industry that is highly competitive in a commercial market, you might expect that they would select their employees carefully. Their investment in new hires can be quite large, and the learning curves can be long.noblegas said:what is proprietary information and what do you suggest I do after graduation? I never held a '"real" job before that required any skill. Should I just show up at one of these labs and say that I want to work at an internship?
This is just too funny.noblegas said:What do minimum wage laws have to do with unpaid internships?
Erebus said:I agree with those who have suggested that you add a second (related) major. If you choose to do this, you should strive to do very well in this major (at least a 3.5) in order to be a competitive applicant. Additionally, you might want to remain in undergrad another year or so to boost your gpa and take graduate level courses. You MUST put time and effort into this if you want to succeed, however. It is not enough to love something - you must work hard at it. Eisten did not accomplish what he accomplished by merely loving physics. And his IQ only took him so far. In truth, Einstein must have worked his a** off to do what he did. If your study habits aren't working for you, change them. If your advisors are not helpful, consider changing them as well. Do whatever it takes to get those A's. You can do it. Just have faith in yourself and don't give up.
noblegas said:Yes, he did indeed work his a** off. It is documented that he worked on a problem for a long number hours and garnered only four hours of sleep. But showed his laziness in class. Did you know that was a lazy student and barely met the minimum requirements for earning a bachelor degree in physics and graduated with a low GPA? I wish I could probably identify my study habits. I don't like how my QM teacher presents QM nor the textbook she uses for class. I guess my problem is that I expect an immediatesolution to the problem that I am working on and that could be one reason why I have perform poorly on problems.
Are all of the students in your QM class having similar difficulty with the professor and textbook? If not, you probably need to take a hard look at yourself to diagnose the problem.noblegas said:<snip> I don't like how my QM teacher presents QM nor the textbook she uses for class. I guess my problem is that I expect an immediatesolution to the problem that I am working on and that could be one reason why I have perform poorly on problems.
mvantuyl said:Are all of the students in your QM class having similar difficulty with the professor and textbook? If not, you probably need to take a hard look at yourself to diagnose the problem.
Not at all. It means that the professor and textbook might not be the problem. If the other students in your class aren't having similar difficulties, you need to find another approach to learning the material. You might consider looking at other textbooks, studying with others who aren't having the same difficulties, checking out the Open Courseware videos from MIT, getting some tutoring, or following some other strategy.noblegas said:not everyone learns the same way. even though this is cliche to say, but it is true. Does your statement mean that I should give up my pursuit of finding a decent QM book to understand QM , and stopped learning QM altogether.
