Ashereng wondered, "I still don't understand why high GPA = no street smarts."
It's a recurring theme in this thread--"Low GPA? Well, at least that means you're not one of those high-GPA people with no street smarts."
TWO bad assumptions in such statements--that anyone with good grades is likely to have only book learning and nothing else (either in engineering "street smarts" or general life skills), and that anyone with crappy grades makes up for that with "street smarts". Both are foolish assumptions.
I can tell you exactly why I have a 4.0 toward my engineering bachelor's degree:
(1) It was a second degree, so all my teenage idiocy was reflect on the OTHER transcript, as were all the non-engineering classes that I wouldn't be able to get A's in.
(2) I made a deliberate and considered choice to go into some debt rather than work a lot during school (once I decided that marrying my housemate just to get in-state tuition rates was taking creative financing just a little too far). I'd made the mistake of putting work over school in my prior academic life and this time I was going to take school as seriously as I possibly could. That said, I still played music in public on a regular basis and had a better social life than I have now as a working stiff. So much for lacking in human skills.
(3) It wasn't that good a school. I wouldn't have had the same grades at, say, MIT where the competition would have been stiffer and I would have been at the mercy of the grade curve rather than setting it myself.
So this 4.0 should count against me why?? I went to school with a couple of idiots who had bad GPAs for good reason. I hate to think that someone interviewing them would think, "Oh, bad GPA, at least he's not one of those no-street-smarts geeks!"
When interviewing for grad schools, I did meet one faculty member who was put off by my high GPA. I won him over, though. (I am SO freaking charming...) The fact that some people are just prejudiced is bad enough; the thought that someone might have tossed my job application on the basis of a too-high GPA, without even giving me the benefit of an interview, is galling.
Back to an interviewer perspective...Would I rather have someone who lies about the stupid reason they got their bad grades? No, I'd rather have someone who didn't make those bad decisions to begin with.
I honestly don't know if I would consider GPA; I don't do any interviewing myself, and none of the hiring I've been witness to has involved people just coming from undergrad so that hasn't been a factor that I've seen in action. I think I'd be more interested in faculty recommendations than raw GPA, but I suspect that's not the kind of thing typically requested from job applicants.
But say for the sake of argument that I would be looking at GPA (maybe HR tells me I have to). I'd be much more willing to accept a lower GPA if, like monkeydog, they can show a trend of improvement. Or if they have some "nobler" reason for lack of concentration on schoolwork--trying to go to school while working full-time, being a primary-care parent, having a new baby, having an extended illness, being active in the military reserves.
Why are those causes of low GPA forgiveable?
(1) Some are temporary, and I wouldn't expect them to reflect on what the person would be like in the long term as an employee.
(2) Some are situations that will definitely have a worse effect on school, which involves a lot of work at home, than they would on work, where the person is relatively isolated at an office and not having to try to simultaneously handle "real life". In a lot of ways, time management gets much easier in the more controlled environment of an office. Being in training on weekends can seriously cut into your study time but won't have too much of an effect on work. Having children underfoot at home when you're trying to study is a problem; having them underfoot when you're done with your workday is not. Etc.
But if you goofed off and continued to goof off right till the very end, and are entirely unapologetic and even proud of it, would I rather have someone who lied about it? No, I don't want either one of you.
So if you gave me the honest response of "Oh, I just preferred playing Ultimate Frisbee and honing my macrame skills to sitting in a classroom," my response would NOT be, "Wow, what a cool honest person with a refreshing appreciation of the roses to be smelled while stopping along the way." It would be, "Okay, convince me why I should believe that you wouldn't also prefer those activities to doing your job for me. Show me how your judgement and priorities have improved."
Actually, your answer to the GPA question should have covered that, and if you didn't think to address such concerns in your initial response, that would be a warning sign right there. I shouldn't have to ask for that clarification.
And this post is now long enough.
Hg
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