Ah yes, dressage. Those people won’t talk to me! My wife is into dressage and hunter-jumper. She even looks down her highly held nose at me. 
peteman, that’s brilliant, reminds me of the maxim that you shouldn’t employ unlucky people so throw away half the pile of applications before you start!
My wife uses it the way it was designed, as a training system, not an end in itself. Originally it was a way to train cavalry mounts. Napolean hated it because it took too long to train both the riders and the horses. I kind of feel the same way myself.
We have a term for the people you’re talking about, DQs, it stands for Dressage Queens. Most of them don’t like letting their horses outside (as if they didn’t evolve on the plains) and are afraid to take their horse out on a trail. My wife and daughter go on pack trips with me in the mountains and the horses they ride are their event horses that have lots of dressage training in their past. They do just fine, but we treat them like horses instead of spoiled kids.
To restate what others have said, the GPA can be a barrier to even getting an interview, so your personality, interviewing skills, interest, etc. won’t even have a chance to be evaluated. After a couple of years of work experience, the GPA becomes progressively meaningless.
While it is unfortunate, where you go to school also has a pretty big influence on initial job offers. You can get a good education at the local state school and you can get a crappy education at MIT or Stanford, but the perception is that a mediocre GPA from a nationally recognized school is better than a mediocre GPA from a regional or state school. Some companies believe that a mediocre GPA from a nationally known school is better than a good GPA at Podunk.
There is also a bias based on your major, even within particluar fields. I work at an engineering company that employs a wide range of technical people (EEs, computer scientists, physicists, mathmeticians, other engineers, etc.). Most of our work (in my division) is basic systems engineering. However, there is an institutional bias toward prefering EEs over other disciplines. So a 3.0 in EE would carry more weight in my company over a 3.0 in CS or math. The work you would do would be the same, but the hiring preference and perception of difficulty of the cirriculum is still there.
However, once you have a job, your work experience pretty much dominates your education. The exception to this is that some positions require certain paper, and experience can’t trump that in most cases. If the job description requires a master’s degree and you don’t have one, you won’t get the job even though you may be perfectly capable of doing the job based on your skills and experience.
The workplace is generally a meritocracy, but with some limitations based on entrenched perceptions and (in some cases) outdated traditions.
good summary man… i agree
I got my degree in Computer Engineering, and squeeeeked out with a 3.0. The other day my boss asked me “so what was your GPA, anyway?” I don’t think that either of my bosses paid attention to it when they hired me, and I was coming straight out of college.
Really, once you’ve got experience in the field, gpa becomes less meaningful. And after you have your first job, noone will ask for it again.
Yes, 50% of doctors graduate from the bottom half of their medical school class, but you better believe that it wasn’t that way in undergrad.
Bobu,
You didn’t say where you got your degree and what field you want to get into.
If you’re looking to get into professional services, i.e. final four accounting (tax, audit, advisory services), consulting, or investment banking/private equity/VC, your GPA is EXTREMELY important as well as your pedigree (school name). My firm won’t look at resumes w/ less than 3.5 GPA. Everyone w/ lower than that will be screened out. I know a lot of big banks who do the same – they told me specifically that if you got no pedigree and have anything less than 3.5 you should NOT bother.
Whether or not this is right is irrelevant. They want someone who sets their goals high and achieve them regardless of the other external factors. Although you worked two jobs, play on a team, and work out, there are other people who do the same and manage to maintain good GPA. That’s what’s going to set them apart from you cuz it shows that they can prioritize and do a good job of multi-tasking.
You want me to tell you something that I saw? A friend of mine – a very very smart guy with great instinct – wants to do hedge fund. The big hedge fund places won’t hire anyone with lower than 3.5 GPA, despite the fact that he and I both graduated from top 10 undergrad business schools. His GPA is about 3.4. While in school, he worked, he was very active in extracurriculars, he also has great personalities. He couldn’t even land an interview even though he’d be a very good person for doing hedge fund cuz he blew off some of the classes that he just didn’t like all that much. So he got stuck doing something he hated (mortgage) for 2.5 years, and now he’s finally quitting and moving to NYC to land a job at a hedge fund place.
And recently when I changed my job, my new employer asked me what my GPA was. Thank God it was decent (not great, but decent) cuz otherwise it’d be very embarrassing for me to tell them although what attracted them to me was my experience and expertise in CRM. Perhaps they’ll stop asking for GPA if you’re out of school for a long time. I’ve been out of school since May 2001 and working since then.
Now that I presented some gloomy stories, let me present you a bright story.
Your GPA will not prevent you from getting a job, esp. if you have very good skills. My brother has an OK GPA (lower than 3.5) from an OK school. He’s an IT manager at a company (he graduated in December 2002 when the job market just sucked), and he got hired full time right away out of school although his pay’s crappy cuz of the market condition when he graduated. But he’s got very good technical and social/people skills and a quick mind. That’s all that was needed for him to land a job. Of course, it did help that he worked there part-time when he was in school as a programmer, and he knew a lot of the key decision makers (i.e. President, VPs, etc) and got along w/ them very well.
So what should you do?
You should seriously consider networking w/ your alumni and recruiters and resume reviewers (and yes, that’s almost always the company workers who go to the career fairs – I reviewed a lot of resumes and met a lot of hopeful candidates and I can smell BS when I see it). Collect their business cards and send nice thank you notes after the event. Ask smart questions and look prepared and confident. Dress professionally if you’re applying for non-programming positions, i.e. corporate, and you should DRESS better than the company people. If they’re in biz casual, you should be in a nice suit. Nothing less will do. I typically never wear suits at work, but when I interview for a job, I always put on a suit no matter what.
Getting a good job, i.e. a job that you like, is possible despite the GPA. It’s just harder, esp. given how crappy the job market is. (Altho it’s showing some signs of recovery)