Is a perfect GPA necessary for success in industry?

[Math Is Hard]

If you were in charge of admissions, wouldn't it be a little freaky to see transcripts with all "A"s and "A+"s for a student? I would wonder if that person had a "life" and if they might implode at the next level of coursework if things went less than perfectly.

I was a pretty uptight undergrad student, nothing but A+, A, or A-. I actually liked it when I got an A- in a course because I thought, "well, they will see I am not a robot", when my transcripts are reviewed.

I have no idea how admissions committees look at these things, but if I were on one, I might be slightly biased against students with flawless grades, worrying how they might fare at the next level. I guess that's what the essays sort out.

This is not a personal question, BTW. I've already been admitted to my program. Just general curiosity.

 

[Klockan3]

I think that the committees think a lot less than you give them credit for. There is not much to tell about someones personality based on their grades except that grades probably correlates with responsibility and personal drive.

 

[flemmyd]

Isn't that the point of letters of rec?

 

[Ryker]

Agreed, you can't just make arbitrary and unsupported assumptions about people. Well, you can, but I guess anything goes then.

 

[snipez90]

Meh, seems unlikely adcoms would even think that hard about grades. Also research is more important than having a "life", right? :P

 

[twofish-quant]

If you were in charge of admissions, wouldn't it be a little freaky to see transcripts with all "A"s and "A+"s for a student? I would wonder if that person had a "life" and if they might implode at the next level of coursework if things went less than perfectly.

Or it could be that you went to a school with massive grade inflation like Harvard.

 

[FAlonso]

Apparently I have heard some cases of employers turning down people with high cGPAs as those people might be sound technically and expert in their field, they do not have what is demanded by employers of today: communication skills, confidence, man-management and temperament

 

[Vanadium 50]

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

 

[G01]

Apparently I have heard some cases of employers turning down people with high cGPAs as those people might be sound technically and expert in their field, they do not have what is demanded by employers of today: communication skills, confidence, man-management and temperament

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

I agree with Vanadium.

Why would an employer use grades to determine communication skills? This is what interviews are for.

 

[TMFKAN64]

GPA is not everything.

However, all else equal, higher GPA is always better than lower GPA.

All else is never equal though.

 

[viscousflow]

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

An A student can easily cheat the system. I see it all the time.

 

[viscousflow]

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.

 

[jwxie]

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.

Your username fits this... viscosity. Haha.

I have no idea how admissions committees look at these things, but if I were on one, I might be slightly biased against students with flawless grades, worrying how they might fare at the next level. I guess that's what the essays sort out.

Yeah. Grade inflation is a common problem, but as long as you have a high, consistent GPA...

 

[Vanadium 50]

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

 

[turbo]

If I were in admissions, I wouldn't shy away from students with all A's. It might be a sign that they weren't sufficiently challenged in their previous course-work, or maybe that they really buckled down and learned the material as well as the instructors demanded. Either way, they deserve a shot. If they go through some shock early on and start to melt down from increased demands, that can be addressed.

My friend and I both had a few B's and B+'s in HS but she and I tested above the top 99.5 percentile on our SATs. We were not the Valedictorian or Salutatorian of our class, either. Top honors went to my cousin, who was a really hard working young lady and was a perfectionist in school. Second place went to a nice lady who was in the business track. It's hard to compare typing, bookkeeping, stenography, etc, one-to-one with technical courses in the science track. Still, she earned the grades and earned the honor, and she and my cousin had to to write and present speeches at graduation. My friend and I dodged a bullet. I had to say a few words while collecting an award for participating in more extra-curricular activities than anybody else in my class but that was a piece of cake.

 

[R.P.F.]

This sounds stupid. I love math and sciences and I enjoy solving problems. This is my life. You have to have hobbies outside your expertise to have a so-called 'life' is the most stupid cliche.

 

[jwxie]

This sounds stupid. I love math and sciences and I enjoy solving problems. This is my life. You have to have hobbies outside your expertise to have a so-called 'life' is the most stupid cliche.

Good point. Social norm. But does your statement imply that you would in a room for 18 hours 7 days a week?

 

[twofish-quant]

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

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

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.

 

[bcrowell]

Or it could be that you went to a school with massive grade inflation like Harvard.

I was a grad student at Yale, which I think has average grades about the same as Harvard. I taught undergraduate labs (to premeds), graded the work, and recommended final grades. Although the grades I recommended were very high, the thing was that most of these students really were very good students. In most cases, there was essentially nothing being taught in the course that they didn't master, and they basically never did anything major that was incorrect in their written work. The Ivy League isn't like it was back when Bush went to Yale. Admissions standards are extremely high.

 

[lisab]

I'm not so sure there's a real difference between a 4.0 student and a 3.9 student.

 

[twofish-quant]

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

It would be interesting to do a statistical study of people's undergraduate grades and outcomes after getting their Ph.D., but personally, I can tell you that I've had a much easier time in industry because of things that lowered my GPA in college.

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

 

[twofish-quant]

I was a grad student at Yale, which I think has average grades about the same as Harvard. I taught undergraduate labs (to premeds), graded the work, and recommended final grades. Although the grades I recommended were very high, the thing was that most of these students really were very good students. In most cases, there was essentially nothing being taught in the course that they didn't master, and they basically never did anything major that was incorrect in their written work.

I've had experience at both Harvard and UTexas Austin. The thing about UTexas Austin (at least when I was a TA there, I hope it has changed) was that you had very good students also, but there weren't enough upper class places for all of the people taking physics, so the lower division courses graded extremely harshly in order to weed out students, and the attrition rate was extremely high. Part of the way you did this was to set up the tests so that silly minor mistakes could kill you on the tests, and there were students that got "weeded out" at UTexas physics that I thought would have done just fine at MIT or Harvard.

One thing that the professors at MIT did which I thought was a great thing but which would get you screamed at in some places is that they generally put problems on the final exam that were not covered in class. The philosophy was that "life gives you problems that we didn't cover in lecture, and so will we." That sort of thinking (which I think is great) would get you in trouble at UTAustin and at least with the courses that I took at Harvard as well.

This insures that no one got anywhere near 100% on the tests, but then the final grades were scaled so that you ended up with reasonable GPA's. Also the way that tests at MIT were graded was pretty good. You got lots of points off if you missed the concept, but you got few points off if you "got it" but just did something stupid. The consequence of this is that you cannot machine grade tests, because you need someone that is pretty skilled to figure out what the student was doing. Hand grading is extremely time consuming, but people at MIT thought this was vital enough so that you had to hand grade the tests. Once you start machine grading tests, then what happens it that you end up playing a game of "gotcha."

Curiously machine grading is something that the University of Phoenix does not do, for the same reasons.

Something that I find interesting is that how you grade is part of the "hidden curriculum". There is a very deep and (I think wonderful) philosophical message in how MIT grades that makes it different from how Harvard grades. One thing that makes it really interesting is that it's "tacit knowledge." People are used to a given grading system and they assume that how the world works and they don't think very deeply into how that system works, and the "deep philosophy" that is embedded in the system.

 

[twofish-quant]

Also part of the reason I happen to believe that "grades aren't that important" is that I got that philosophy from some of my teachers both in high school and at MIT. The problem with that philosophy is that it got me into the meat grinder. Grading policy at MIT is something that people have screamed about since 1861, and the people that I was strongly influenced by were what I called "new school" people in the Office of Undergraduate Education (the names there are Benke, Paul Gray, and Margaret Macvicar) that had a very different philosophy than the "old school" people that ran the departments.

I was very strongly influenced by "new school" people but "old school" run the graduate admissions so the fact that I had relatively low GPA meant that I wasn't able to get into graduate schools that I wanted to. On the other hand because of that background, I think I've done better after I got my Ph.D. so if I had to talk to a younger me (which is what I'm doing now), then I'd give "new school" advice.

 

[HeLiXe]

Thanks for starting this thread MIH :)

The Ivy League isn't like it was back when Bush went to Yale. Admissions standards are extremely high.

 

[R.P.F.]

Good point. Social norm. But does your statement imply that you would in a room for 18 hours 7 days a week?

Hmmm...I'd say 14 hours a day during school years. It is a lot but that's how I function.

 

[twofish-quant]

One other thing that causes problems is *defining* achievement. In a lot of places GPA *defines* achievement, so there is a 100% correlation between GPA and achievement.

The problem is that if you define achievement another way, then the correlation is different. Even the act of defining achievement in a way that is mathematically quantifiable restricts you.

For example, one thing that is important for my definition of achievement is "not being a jerk." How do you put a number to that?

 

[twofish-quant]

One other thing. I said that Harvard inflates grades. I didn't say that it was a bad thing. Personally, I think it's good that Harvard does that because it helps makes grades a bogus measurement.

Something that I would like to do one day is to teach a class, and tell everyone on the first day that they all get A's. They can leave the class, do nothing, and they will get an A+. Heck if they want, I'll give them an A++++++

Of course, everyone knows that they will all get A's which makes that A totally meaningless. Anyone that stays around and tries to earn an A that they get automatically are the people that I want to teach.

 

[clope023]

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

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.

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

I'm not so sure there's a real difference between a 4.0 student and a 3.9 student.

It's a slippery slope you slip, I can argue that your'e not so sure there's a big diff between 3.9 student and a 3.8 student... and we all know how this all ends in.

 

[Leveret]

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

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.

 

[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?