Make More Than GPA

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/11/make-more-than-gpa.html

by jlhamilton • 17 years ago

55 54 17 years ago

ryansloan• 17 years ago

I think before you can convince students of this, you need to convince prospective employers. To a lot of them, GPA is an easy filter.

jchonphoenix9• 17 years ago

You would be highly incorrect. Most employers have a border of a 3.5 GPA or higher as a cutoff. Beyond that, they really care little. If you have a 4.0, you might get some extra "points" in their eyes.

And for those of you who don't believe that 3.5 is a fair cutoff, I would challenge you by saying this: I attend one of the most difficult universities in the United States, and I do not know of a single person at the university who could not achieve a 3.5 if he or she only bothered to focus. Alas, our average GPA is closer to a 2.5.

Yes, GPA is an easy filter, but for good reason. Companies want the very best. And the very best can easily achieve a 3.5 without trying and still have time to do everything this article suggests.

JacobAldridge• 17 years ago

I've heard of instances - specifically in legal recruiting - where there's also a top limit filter. That is, some firms (top level of the second tier) won't interview graduates with a GPA over 6.0 (I'm in Australia - GPA ranks to 7.0).

I spoke with a legal recruiter about this once. The logic is that the very high GPA students are almost certainly too interested in academia, likely to go back to academia (and so leave the firm), and those that don't want academia probably worked hard for that GPA because they only want to work for a soul-crushing top tier firm.

When I pointed out exceptions to this (including my beautiful, smart and focused lawyer wife), the recruiter just shrugged. It's much easier to miss the occasional exception, than waste time on the majority where the rule applies.

djcapelis3• 17 years ago

> And the very best can easily achieve a 3.5 without trying > and still have time to do everything this article suggests.

Yes, but why not spend that time they're investing in classes on more productive things?

pmichaud• 17 years ago

That's true. I had a near 4.0 (one A-, gah) as a senior before I said "fuck this noise" and dropped out. I also had a family, was active in a couple campus clubs, and held a full time job as a developer. I was busy, but it's not impossible.

atamyrat• 17 years ago

But in Singapore, maybe in other Asian countries too, getting a good grade is not that hard, but it is very time consuming. For me personally it is a choice between high GPA or personal projects, achieving both is almost impossible.

harpastum• 17 years ago

I'm sorry, but your comment really pisses me off.

"I do not know of a single person at the university who could not achieve a 3.5 if he or she only bothered to focus."

This is total bullshit. First, there are many people that barely made it into college (most of whom aren't in computer science/engineering), and no matter how much they worked, could not get a 3.5. Second, by saying "if he/she only bothered to focus," you're claiming that everyone who doesn't get a 3.5 is careless, lazy, or both.

Everyone on this forum could achieve a karma rating of 3,000. And for those of you who don't believe that 3,000 is a fair cutoff, I would challenge you by saying this: I have been on HN for over a year, and I do not know of a single person on HN who could not achieve 3,000 if he or she only bothered to focus.

The reason I don't have a 3.5GPA is the same reason I don't have 3,000 karma: I enjoy both school and HN, but there is a diminishing rate of return for effort. If I do the minimum amount of effort in school to get a 2.75, then work for 40 hours a week at my company, and still hang out with my friends, I really have no regret that I never "bothered" to get a 3.5.

Grade point averages are a result of intelligence, commitment, and personal priorities. Simplifying them the way that you do is both crass and incorrect.

gamble2• 17 years ago

By design, the average GPA should be close to 2.5. Most schools try to modulate the difficulty of their courses to maintain a C+ average year-to-year. In my engineering school, they had a schedule of expected class averages for each year in the program; professors that wanted to assign significantly higher or lower grades had to justify their decision to the department head. After all, if the class average is 3.5, there's no headroom for above-average students to distinguish themselves.

However, I agree that any individual who wants to put in the work can probably achieve a 3.0 or better any most schools. Most people just don't want to do that much work.

j_baker2• 17 years ago

Believe it or not, there are a lot of talented and smart people who genuinely aren't any good at college.

wooster2• 17 years ago

I take it you don't go to Harvey Mudd then?

There's a fairly wide variation in grade inflation between schools, which is why a lot of the top grad schools will adjust GPAs for students from schools with grade inflation, or lack thereof, compared to the average.

Companies would do well to do the same, or to simply work on a case by case basis. Sadly, most companies recruit from a fairly small set of schools, and have little knowledge of the grade inflation differences.

If GPAs were the worst of it, then it wouldn't be so bad, but usually the ignorance runs much deeper. I once saw a recruiter for IBM Research's Extreme Blue internship program complain to the audience that he was wasting his time talking to a room full of students, because he could be spending it talking to MIT kids instead -- he was addressing a room with 100+ CS majors from, among others, Caltech, Harvey Mudd, USC, UCLA, UCSD, Cal Poly SLO, and Pomona College.

potatolicious4• 17 years ago

Heartily agreed - I see that one of replies below already demonstrates your point all too well, the unfair (and in my experience grossly elitist and simplistic) characterization that anyone who doesn't have a high GPA simply didn't try hard enough. This is especially relevant in our field.

For one thing, I've only run into a handful of software companies who have a hard grade cutoff anywhere. None of the big names (MS, GOOG, etc) do it, and IMHO if you understand what makes a great hacker, you wouldn't do it either. NVidia was the last company of note I dealt with that had a hard grade cutoff. I didn't make it - and many other talented programmers I know didn't either... their loss I suppose. I do know the people who were selected, and none of them can really be called good hackers - at most competent coders.

I've seen this pattern time and time again - in college the ones with the highest grades were the least employable. I had the pleasure of being in a program that required internships, and invariably the people with middle-of-the-road marks (3.5 is well above middle) had a much easier time finding employment than the ones at the top. The amount of effort it takes to stay at the top precludes one from doing the side projects that invariably makes the main difference between a merely competent programmer and a talented hacker. The top marks had no problem landing interviews, but had trouble converting interviews to offers.

Sure, you can claim that a truly elite individual can make the grades and do all the side hacking projects and make it home to cook dinner. Reality of the matter is, these guys are exceptionally rare, and odds are you're not paying half as much as you would need to hire one of them ;) By hiring in that range you're getting an unproductive mix of academic overachievers mixed with a handful of pure geniuses. By targeting a lower grade bracket you're getting a much more even mix of people good at the job you want them to do, but aren't so good at academics.

jchonphoenix9• 17 years ago

I'm just being honestly direct. You cannot completely throw out GPA because it is a measure of something. And you cannot completely rely on GPA because it is, as in all things, somewhat biased.

The people with the low GPAs will continue to say GPAs do not matter. The people with the high ones will continue to say it does. All I'm saying is that, at a target of 3.5, it doesn't preclude you from accomplishing other endeavors during your university years.

gamble2• 17 years ago

"I've only run into a handful of software companies who have a hard grade cutoff anywhere. None of the big names (MS, GOOG, etc) do it"

Isn't Google notorious for requiring a 3.0 or better GPA?

j_baker2• 17 years ago

Meh. If someone wants to turn me down for a job that I'd otherwise be qualified for because of my abysmal academic record, I view it as their loss.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

GPA fanatics usually have few interesting thoughts of their own.

Seems like an overly broad generalization.

daniel-cussen• 17 years ago

Hence "usually."

scott_s3• 17 years ago

The qualifier "usually" does not prevent a statement from being overly-broad.

codexon2• 17 years ago

GPA is also a measure of compliance and subordination.

For many businesses this is a more valuable measure than pure smartness. Many employers say they would rather have a dumber but more cooperative worker: a "team player" so to speak.

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

GPA is also a measure of compliance and subordination.

Bullshit. No one forces you to go to college. Presumably, if you're there, it's because you want to be. Working hard and getting good grades might just mean that you want to get as much out of the experience as possible.

It might also reflect an understanding that getting a good GPA expands your options. For example, good grades may improve eligibility for more financial aid options, it may open up better grad schools, etc.

Painting GPA as a measure of how much people are willing to subjugate themselves to the big bad evil system might make for a good punk song, but it hardly reflects the reality of modern society.

bugs• 17 years ago

You would be surprised at how many people aren't going to college because they want to.

GPA is a measure of how well you can follow the rules, though in some cases (more difficult degrees such as those in engineering) it also is a measurement of how hard you work.

In modern society you are expected to go to college in the majority of cases, it is now the norm.

mquander• 17 years ago

Speak for yourself. Almost everyone I knew in high school (typical upper-middle-class kids) in the first part of the '00s when I was there was forced to go to college. Their parents had groomed them from an early age for college, and no other options were on the table.

In the same vein in which they aren't forced to go to college, they could get up and leave the country if they wanted to, or go get a sex change, or hang themselves in the closet. Certainly they are physically capable of doing such things, but they aren't exactly likely, either.

codexon2• 17 years ago

Bullshit. No one forces you to go to college.

Society does.

A college degree doubles your income compared to a high school degree. If you only have a high school degree, you are viewed as an incompetent buffoon. You will also struggle to scrape by in many areas, let alone raise a family.

http://money.cnn.com/2006/10/25/pf/college/census_degree/ind...

philwelch• 17 years ago

"Working hard and getting good grades might just mean that you want to get as much out of the experience as possible."

Ha. I've been in college six and a half years (I know, nothing I should brag about) and this is false on its face. If you want to get as much out of the college experience as possible, even in terms of pure academic learning, you're not gonna maximize GPA. Sorry. I'd rather lose some grade points because I half-assed some busywork than piss away time I could spend pouring myself into something deep and interesting.

GPA is a measure of how well you did what your professors wanted you to do. A lot of professors want you to do something clever and smart, but a lot of professors want you to waste your time on pointless time-wasting exercises to learn something you already know.

djcapelis3• 17 years ago

I'm thrilled my graduate program doesn't require that I take any courses for a letter grade. Grades don't matter, research does, it's nice to finally have that reflected on my transcript.

alain94040• 17 years ago

If you replace "independent study" by "relevant experience", my advice in http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2009/05/13/being-a-new-cs-grad-... is completely identical.

To paraphrase: optimize for GPA first so you are in the acceptable range (>3.5), but then, focus on optimizing the second most important criteria: project experience.

I was a hiring manager once.

jswinghammer• 17 years ago

The first part of this article just seems like a good argument to home school your kids. I'd imagine a home schooled kid with a nice SAT score would probably do quite well dealing with college and then just fine after college. I've never been asked for my GPA and probably wouldn't continue talking to a company that asked for it.

That being said part of the point of starting your company is to not worry about stuff like that.

sili• 17 years ago

Grunting for GPA is a well-defined path. You take your classes seriously, study, do you assignments, and pass your tests; that's all there is to it. Whereas independent projects means venturing into the unknown, having to define your goals, and judging your success yourself. The later is a more daunting task.

btilly2• 17 years ago

Reading this reminded me of The Homework Myth (see http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/hm.htm for more on that).

I'm not looking forward to arguing with my kids about doing homework. Particularly when I know how useless it is.

scott_s3• 17 years ago

I haven't read the book, so I don't know what the claims are, but it sounds silly on the face of it. I'll grant that some homework is busy work. But some homework is necessary.

You don't learn math by listening to a teacher explain it. You learn math by working through problems. That requires homework. You don't learn how to write by listening to a teacher talk about good writing. You learn how to write by writing essays out of class. You don't improve reading skills by listening to a teacher talk about a book. You learn by reading.

Maybe the claim is only concerned with younger children?

btilly2• 17 years ago

You don't learn math by listening to a teacher explain it. You learn math by working through problems. That requires homework.

You were fine until the last sentence. Teachers can and do assign practice to be done within the classroom. And practice time in the classroom has many advantages over homework. The primary one being that students are much more likely to practice problems correctly, and get help if they are going in the wrong direction. If the same student is assigned homework, the odds of correct practice strongly depend on the quality of adult assistance at home.

The important questions then become whether there is enough time spent in the classform for effective practice, and what the incremental benefit is or isn't from homework.

What does the research say? It says that once you control for parent's education and socioeconomic status, there is little correlation between time spent doing homework and academic performance. (Whether measured by future grades or standardized tests.) However within the population assigned large amounts of homework, the correlation between academic success and parent's education and socioeconomic status increases.

This is evidence that 35 hours per week spent in a classroom is enough time for teaching and practice. It is also evidence that homework on the whole doesn't help or hurt much, but does move responsibility for educational performance from the teacher to the parent. As a well-educated parent this is modestly beneficial, because moving more responsibility for my children's education to me gives my kids an edge. But at what cost?

The same research, unsurprisingly, finds very strong correlations between homework assigned and how much kids dislike school. High homework levels also result in significant increases in family conflict. The causes of both trends are so blindingly obvious as to not need discussion.

There is less research on homework versus academic performance in highschool. But the absence of evidence of effectiveness of the treatment does not imply that the treatment level should be increased.

I don't know of any research on this in a university setting. But there I support the use of homework for two reasons. The first is that there is much less classroom time. In school you spend over 35 hours/week in the classroom. At university a full load might be 15 hours a week. So practice needs to happen out of the classroom. The second reason is that university is supposed to teach skills around independent study. And the only way to practice that is to study stuff on your own.

Ixiaus• 17 years ago

A good argument for self directed learning. I was home schooled a number of times and you're just replacing a class room with your living room and a teacher with your parents; the material is all just as rote and redundant as the school material.

The difference can be likened to working in an office and telecommuting from home. Both are work, just different environments. There are obvious benefits of telecommuting over cubicle working and those benefits can generally be applied to the homeschooling situation. More time with kids, kids get to learn from the one on one focus of a nurturing parent, they get to play in their own backyard, etc.

I like his arguments, they are sound. Project based learning generally provides more hands on knowledge with a focus on being inspired to do what you are doing rather than being motivated (big difference between those two terms).

I'm a self directed learner, an autodidact (technical term). I've been pursuing college level Rhetoric, Formal Logic, Mathematics, and computer science. Industry experience has served me well too; but I do fall behind from my University bound peers in theoretical foundations - unless I spend an enormous amount of time delving into all the topics that are given at Uni. Discipline is also another toughie with this chosen path, it's taken me about three years to get down a solid routine that I know I can follow. Waking up early is a key to it.

I generally spend three days a week on personal projects that range from my ideas for web applications, my personal site, writing projects, electronics hobbies, &c.; with two days a week dedicated to book study. Every day for about an hour I do a Mnemosyne session (spaced repetition program) providing timed cards for vocabulary, math, postulates, etc.

Sadly, I'm going to need a part time job or part time contract work soon so I can have some expendable income. I'm living off of passive income ATM but I pinch pennies left and right! No money to go out snowboarding, sailing, partying, etc.

Paton• 17 years ago

I know a lot of people in my high school who are in the top 5% of our class, but have no ability to think creatively.

GPA is just a measure of how much time you spend studying, factored in with your natural intelligence.

The people with the most intellectual potential are those who maintain a decent GPA but spend little time studying, but instead do things that are productive (as the article explained).

A valedictorian who does nothing but studies doesn't have a greatly increased chance of succeeding in life.

jchonphoenix9• 17 years ago

I would completely agree with you on the high school level, but the purpose of high school is just to give you very broad, brute knowledge.

College is a lot more applied, and brute studying and memorization will get you nowhere.

RK• 17 years ago

College is a lot more applied, and brute studying and memorization will get you nowhere.

You need to hang out with more pre-meds.

I agree with your sentiment, but disagree with your conclusion, unfortunately. Pre-meds and especially med students are just studying machines, who seem to have an average intellectual curiosity that lies at least one standard deviation below average grad students. It's likely that these are the result of self-selection and/or adaptation to the way the system is setup.

hugh_• 17 years ago

To summarise most of the comments in this thread:

"My GPA was [low/medium/high], therefore I think that most smart, well-adjusted people get [low/medium/high] GPAs."

edit: However, in the interests of contributing more than snark, I shall say the following: I think the US GPA system is screwed up, due to insufficient resolution and grade inflation.

Where I went to uni, you got a mark for each course out of one hundred. Any mark above 85 was considered very good, and only the top few percent of students in each class would get above 90. (A 100 was unheard of, or more accurately, I only heard of one once).

Anyway, this meant that a lousy mark in one class could be cancelled out by a great effort in another class -- since even the top students only averaged in the very low 90s there was always room to recover. In the US, though, at most places an "A" is too damn easy to get, meaning most of the top students will be running 4.0s, and staying at the top simply requires you to not screw up and get (gasp) a B.

tkahn6• 17 years ago

I think most people tend to forget that the primary purpose of school is to learn - not to get good grades.

Objectively, learning C or reading Knuth is a better use of my time than doing some teacher's bullshit busy-work-so-their-class-seems-more-important homework assignment. If I truly and absolutely was looking out for my own education, I would take the zero and study on my own.

Unfortunately colleges seem to put stock in a student's GPA and I have to waste my time on useless bullshit.

aohtsab• 17 years ago

Six weeks passed this prior semester before I realized I was going to fail all of my classes. Was I focused? Absolutely not.

This past semester I switched into Engineering from a Liberal Arts degree, and I'd never felt so worthless, incompetent and overwhelmed. Everyone had it together, everyone knew absolutely everything—and me, half a year of teaching myself programming in my spare time was showing no results. Except for developing carpal tunnel syndrome.

My roommate was another source of tension. Every day (and I really mean every day), he would talk about how Harvard Law demanded a 4.0, who wore real suits and who wore knock-offs, how School A was so much better than School B, the difference in salary between top-tier and bottom-tier grads, and, to top it off, how much he valued "good ol' American values, like from the 50s".

He flew through his tests and quizzes with straight-As, and I struggled to scrape up a passing grade.

To make matters worse, I started learning shell scripting, further distracting me from homework and classes. Also, I was getting treated for depression.

Anyway, I couldn't find a way to be motivated for anything other than my side projects. I tried turning my homework into a programming puzzle, but it was too late—my grades were too low to salvage.

Taking time off was something that had always been on my mind, but hearing it recommended was the final push I needed.

So I withdrew.

And, surprisingly, the world didn't end—it opened up. I didn't know what to do with all this free time, so I increased my volunteering time at a local school and started job-applying like crazy.

I was interviewed for an IT position and another to cashier, and I got neither. Still don't have a job, still wondering how I'm going to feed my cat, yet not worried.

Don't get me wrong—I'm stressed like hell, but I'm enjoying it. I can literally spend hours coding without feeling guilty.

Finishing college is important to me, however, and I'm set to return in the fall.

Hopefully my work ethic will keep maturing—I'm excited to start again.

GPA definitely isn't on my mind.

Make More Than GPA

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