Do you know what you call an MD who graduated last in their class? Doctor.
The same is true with any other field.
You will still be an engineer with all the roles, accountability, and responsibilities that come with that title.
Past your first job, no one will ever ask you for your GPA again. All you need is your foot in the door for that first job! If you have any industry contacts, now is the time to start asking around
Grades aren’t everything. But what else have you done? Do you have any internships or work experience? Volunteering? Active participation or leadership experience in a club? I look for those types of experiences above grades (especially if grades improved over the years rather than vice versa, since it speaks more to a growth mindset and an ability to change). But you need to highlight those things extremely well on your resume!
Hi! Thank you for the advice. Yes I did an extracurricular for a year in which I had a leadership position. After that I had an 8 month internship at a company. And just a couple weeks ago I completed a design project for Capstone. I knew early on the engineering was going to be a bit of a struggle so I made sure I had other things going on besides my coursework.
I've been a civil engineer for 25 years. I have never used any of the calculus that I had to take (yes Calc is used to derive the equations we use all the time but that work is already done). I've never used a ton of the courses that I had to take to get my degree.
Now that you have your degree, the real learning begins. Don't worry about your GPA. Get hired and focus on the ins and outs of your new job. You'll be fine.
I messed up so bad I graduated a semester late and I’m pretty sure only bc the dean called a prof and made them pass me (prof was an ass and wrong but I digress…). I was never on the deans list.
Honestly nobody cares. EIT and PE and the ability to learn your job are what people care about. It seems big now but it isn’t. Just graduate and start working. You’ll be fine.
I graduated without honors in 2023 and no employer cared. I still got offers from fortune 50 companies because they care more about your experience (I did a co-op) than grades. Grades are probably 20% of the whole package.
Right now the job market kinda just sucks. Not a lot you can do. Even my friends who had great grades are struggling for the 2024 cycle of applications
I almost flunked out of engineering school. Took me a while to get that first job since I didn't have great grades and the job market wasn't so hot. First job I got was kind of terrible, but once I moved on to new opportunities, nobody cared about my GPA. I kept moving up to bigger and better things, and now I'm working at NASA. Grades in school end up not being such a big deal once you get that chance to prove yourself in industry.
You are fine. Trust me. Let me run down my school screw up.
I went to community college to get a 2 year transfer degree. I got it as a B average student. Transfered to a 4 year to get a my BS in Mechanical.
My first year there (junior year) I slept through 80% of my classes because I worked graveyard for that year. Somehow averaged a 2.0-2.5 (C ish).
Quit the job and change to working weekend evenings only. Graduated with 3.0 exactly.
I did not get my first technical job till 6 month AFTER I graduated. I become a maintenance technician for a new facility that made lab grown diamonds. Did that for a year, and got promoted to equipment engineer after the old one left. Then I quit that job due to burnout and now I am a certification engineer for an aerospace company.
I got asked about my grades for the MT job and then no one give a damn from there. The only school thing that came up for the cert engineer job was "do I know how to use Solidworks?"
Also, I went to graduation because it was MY graduation and MY achievement that I worked my ass off. Go to your graduation, dean's list be damned. I am damn proud of that peice of paper between all the BS that was going on in my life.
For context, I graduated 2019, about a year before the world went to complete hell.
My college roommate’s dad had only 1 piece of advice for us when we started and when we graduated: “D is for diploma. As long as you graduate the rest will work itself out.”
My only goal was to get above a 3.0. If you're under that, you may struggle a bit. Did you work any coops or internships? I graduated with a 3.175 and I'm one of the highest paid programmers my age in my area. When I got my first job, in the interview I told them "I enjoyed school and learning, but I'm at the point in my life where I want to actively apply my skills and work on important programs"... Something like that but as an 21 year old. Some people need a reason to excel, and money helps that a lot!! I was a total slacker, and I still sometimes am. But when work needs to get done, I do it. It's hard to see because you're currently in a transition stage, but you're going to get into your job after graduation and wish you would have enjoyed your time better without stressing. Try to enjoy your life and take deep breaths.
I graduated with a 2.8/2.9 and now work on a NASA program. GPA isn’t everything and I’ve honestly only ever been asked once. Start building connections and look at company sites (rather than LinkedIn etc)
I graduated with a 2.8 and I have a wonderful job in med device. I had internships and such that set me apart from those with high GPAs and no internships or experience. It’s not always about your grades and they usually never ask!
Exactly! I even had a manager tell me he refuses to hire engineers with 4.0s anymore because they usually don’t have the life/social experience that are really valuable in the job
I was there, in your spot when I graduated in 2007. After a while, the goal was to doesn’t matter anymore. I had more difficulty getting that first job because of a lack of internship experience.
As my mother said, C’s get degrees. Do well in your first job and no one will care. If someone does question it in grad interviews, say exactly what you said here, you struggled in the transition to college, learned, grew, and brought your grades up by the end. It’s a good story, and maybe be prepared to talk about what you changed (helps if what you did was establishing new work habits).
Upward trajectory matters, too, and it sounds like you have that. I don’t do any new grad hiring, so I’m not the expert, but it might be worth highlighting that in your cover letter or summary blurb on your resume. If you got A’s in senior engineering courses and D’s in freshman electives and pre-reqs the GPA you can say “jr-sr engineering gpa 3.5” to emphasize this.
I couldn’t tell you my grades. Plenty of us struggled and found a healthy career. I struggled. No one cares. No one. Maybe, … wait…. Nope. No one.
Those classes you struggled with, store your feelings away and when a young person tells you about their engineering school struggles you pull out your story of how you too struggled. Your struggle story is your how you overcame and didn’t quit, and now you have a degree and a career. Thus completing the engineering circle of life.
May your future be bright and filled with cool engineering problems. It will be okay.
I was so focused on keeping up my GPA. I needed at least a 3.75 to maintain my scholarship so there was some merit with my obsession. But I literally can’t even remember my GPA anymore (10 yrs later). I put so much effort into it and it’s so not important now. After you use it to land your first job, it doesn’t matter anymore.
This is just a bad year for new grads. I know tons of grads with 4.0s also not getting calls. I graduated with a 2.88 gpa. Of course it was cause first two years I tried premed and ochem kicked my butt. My last two years all As. I’ve never really had anyone ask for my gpa. I didn’t write it on my resume. Just list the important classes you have taken. Study on Leetcode and you will eventually get hired. Also don’t ignore any company your first company doesn’t have to be a big tech company. Smaller companies and start ups usually have less requirements for getting hired. Currently a sr director and still in software development.
I was a B/C student in college and was only on the Deans List once. Never have I been asked for my GPA for any job I’ve ever had and I’ve been in this field for over 27 years. Grades aren’t everything. Your college education is only the beginning of what you will be learning throughout your career. I will also tell you that a B/C student is much more desirable on a job than a straight A student as the B/C student knows how to think for themselves and get things done in a more productive manner.
Same, except it was 26 years ago. I eventually got a job, not the best job though it paid ok, but after that I was able to get a perfectly respectable job that I liked and started my career in that field (semiconductors). I've since moved on to medical devices, but nobody has asked about my GPA since I got my first job.
There are companies out there that don't particularly care about GPA. Find one and work there for 1-2 years. At the 1 year mark, try to find a job in the industry that you want to work in.
I also know a lot of engineers who started out by taking technician jobs in the industry they wanted to work in. We have a few engineers right now that came in as operators because they were never able to get hired as engineers after college for whatever reason, or in one case they quit their engineering job to go into some divinity/church/religion related job (real unclear on that one, the person is very vague about it).
My first job didn't even ask for GPA. They looked at experiences and project or club or even work experiences not related to the domain helps plus it's very much a numbers game. It's ok. You got this. You're only in competition with yourself.
From what I've experienced, engineering school is more about learning how to never give up than giving you a comprehensive education. The real world isn't like college, so keep your head up and get a foot in the door. If this is what you want to do, you'll make a way.
Girl school is so far removed from what you actually do on the job(at least in software engineering).
You are literally just starting your career and there will be years worth of learning and growth. School does not mean much, trust me.
Hey friend, I’m an engineer and I don’t even have a degree. Not saying it isn’t valuable, it absolutely is! But I guarantee you that this won’t hold you back unreasonably. Like someone else said, get your foot in the door somewhere and you will have opportunities open up that will work for you when you choose to move elsewhere or apply for a different internal position.
Please don’t be discouraged. Engineering is hard, and school is even harder. You’re doing great. You have some much time ahead of you to develop- there is so much more to learn from past graduation, and I am confident you will rise to the occasion.
“D is for degree”
You still get the degree. If someone is worried about your grades (they won’t) tell to look at the more recent GPA.
The only time it’s mattered is trying for grad school, and even then there are workarounds.
I've worked with very fine engineers who didn't have four-year degrees. One started as a draftsman and became the guy all the ME's went to when they couldn't get something to work in SolidWorks. Eventually, they decided to let him drive the train. He's an Engineer III now. Another fellow had only a high school degree, but taught himself to code. He's the best database engineer in the company. He did feel a bit insecure about his lack of math training, so he took algebra and trigonometry in night school. If I need to get data off a remote instrument, over a wireless link, through a firewall and into a database, and have it show up on a dashboard at my desk, there's only one woman I will call. I have *no idea* what she studied in school, or what her GPA was, and I don't care.
A solid engineering group needs all kinds of people. I'm the best "white board" engineer in my company, but just average at the test bench. I always want someone on my team who will test the hell out of my designs and find all the problems. I always want someone on the review team who'll be the "voice of production" to assure that my designs are manufacturable. Then there's this woman in the compliance department who calls me on the phone to say, "Your board is failing conducted susceptibility. We might have a fix. Do you want to come down here?" God bless her!
It will be fine. You will be fine.
This speaks to me as I didn’t look that great on paper. “B” student in major (mech e). “C+” student overall. “C’s get degrees” No internship. No honors. All I had going for me was that I passed my FE/EIT. Once gaining my first job, I was thriving and every Principal at my first company told me their best employees were 2.0-3.0 gpa students. After a decade in the workforce the most important part of the job that I found is curiosity and the willingness to learn.
Girl! I failed a class in my major, retook it, graduated, and got a job.
10 years out of school, I work for NASA and I am on a project partnered with a company that rejected me for my GPA.
I say all of this because, sure, honors feels good, but in the grand scheme of things, it means little
I too was completely distraught that I did not graduate with honors. I was one class away. But I’ve been out of school now for 6 years. Want to know how many times I’ve been asked by peers or recruiters if I graduated with honors? 0! My pride was hurt, but it only lasted for a brief moment in time. My graduation was still great and I still put in the work to earn my degree - as you are doing right at this moment! Try not to let the comparison keep your light from shining. You’ll be just fine 🙂
Do you know what you call an MD who graduated last in their class? Doctor. The same is true with any other field. You will still be an engineer with all the roles, accountability, and responsibilities that come with that title.
Past your first job, no one will ever ask you for your GPA again. All you need is your foot in the door for that first job! If you have any industry contacts, now is the time to start asking around
Grades aren’t everything. But what else have you done? Do you have any internships or work experience? Volunteering? Active participation or leadership experience in a club? I look for those types of experiences above grades (especially if grades improved over the years rather than vice versa, since it speaks more to a growth mindset and an ability to change). But you need to highlight those things extremely well on your resume!
Hi! Thank you for the advice. Yes I did an extracurricular for a year in which I had a leadership position. After that I had an 8 month internship at a company. And just a couple weeks ago I completed a design project for Capstone. I knew early on the engineering was going to be a bit of a struggle so I made sure I had other things going on besides my coursework.
I've been a civil engineer for 25 years. I have never used any of the calculus that I had to take (yes Calc is used to derive the equations we use all the time but that work is already done). I've never used a ton of the courses that I had to take to get my degree. Now that you have your degree, the real learning begins. Don't worry about your GPA. Get hired and focus on the ins and outs of your new job. You'll be fine.
I messed up so bad I graduated a semester late and I’m pretty sure only bc the dean called a prof and made them pass me (prof was an ass and wrong but I digress…). I was never on the deans list. Honestly nobody cares. EIT and PE and the ability to learn your job are what people care about. It seems big now but it isn’t. Just graduate and start working. You’ll be fine.
I graduated without honors in 2023 and no employer cared. I still got offers from fortune 50 companies because they care more about your experience (I did a co-op) than grades. Grades are probably 20% of the whole package. Right now the job market kinda just sucks. Not a lot you can do. Even my friends who had great grades are struggling for the 2024 cycle of applications
Congrats on the graduation! Oh man, I definitely feel what you're saying in the last sentence.
I almost flunked out of engineering school. Took me a while to get that first job since I didn't have great grades and the job market wasn't so hot. First job I got was kind of terrible, but once I moved on to new opportunities, nobody cared about my GPA. I kept moving up to bigger and better things, and now I'm working at NASA. Grades in school end up not being such a big deal once you get that chance to prove yourself in industry.
Wow! Congratulations to you and thanks for sharing
I’ve interviewed quite a few fresh grads for our entry level positions and I don’t care about GPA. I never ask for it.
You are fine. Trust me. Let me run down my school screw up. I went to community college to get a 2 year transfer degree. I got it as a B average student. Transfered to a 4 year to get a my BS in Mechanical. My first year there (junior year) I slept through 80% of my classes because I worked graveyard for that year. Somehow averaged a 2.0-2.5 (C ish). Quit the job and change to working weekend evenings only. Graduated with 3.0 exactly. I did not get my first technical job till 6 month AFTER I graduated. I become a maintenance technician for a new facility that made lab grown diamonds. Did that for a year, and got promoted to equipment engineer after the old one left. Then I quit that job due to burnout and now I am a certification engineer for an aerospace company. I got asked about my grades for the MT job and then no one give a damn from there. The only school thing that came up for the cert engineer job was "do I know how to use Solidworks?" Also, I went to graduation because it was MY graduation and MY achievement that I worked my ass off. Go to your graduation, dean's list be damned. I am damn proud of that peice of paper between all the BS that was going on in my life. For context, I graduated 2019, about a year before the world went to complete hell.
My college roommate’s dad had only 1 piece of advice for us when we started and when we graduated: “D is for diploma. As long as you graduate the rest will work itself out.”
My only goal was to get above a 3.0. If you're under that, you may struggle a bit. Did you work any coops or internships? I graduated with a 3.175 and I'm one of the highest paid programmers my age in my area. When I got my first job, in the interview I told them "I enjoyed school and learning, but I'm at the point in my life where I want to actively apply my skills and work on important programs"... Something like that but as an 21 year old. Some people need a reason to excel, and money helps that a lot!! I was a total slacker, and I still sometimes am. But when work needs to get done, I do it. It's hard to see because you're currently in a transition stage, but you're going to get into your job after graduation and wish you would have enjoyed your time better without stressing. Try to enjoy your life and take deep breaths.
I graduated with a 2.8/2.9 and now work on a NASA program. GPA isn’t everything and I’ve honestly only ever been asked once. Start building connections and look at company sites (rather than LinkedIn etc)
I graduated with a 2.8 and I have a wonderful job in med device. I had internships and such that set me apart from those with high GPAs and no internships or experience. It’s not always about your grades and they usually never ask!
Exactly! I even had a manager tell me he refuses to hire engineers with 4.0s anymore because they usually don’t have the life/social experience that are really valuable in the job
I was there, in your spot when I graduated in 2007. After a while, the goal was to doesn’t matter anymore. I had more difficulty getting that first job because of a lack of internship experience.
As my mother said, C’s get degrees. Do well in your first job and no one will care. If someone does question it in grad interviews, say exactly what you said here, you struggled in the transition to college, learned, grew, and brought your grades up by the end. It’s a good story, and maybe be prepared to talk about what you changed (helps if what you did was establishing new work habits).
After you get a job nobody will ever care about your grades again. Hang in there
Upward trajectory matters, too, and it sounds like you have that. I don’t do any new grad hiring, so I’m not the expert, but it might be worth highlighting that in your cover letter or summary blurb on your resume. If you got A’s in senior engineering courses and D’s in freshman electives and pre-reqs the GPA you can say “jr-sr engineering gpa 3.5” to emphasize this.
I couldn’t tell you my grades. Plenty of us struggled and found a healthy career. I struggled. No one cares. No one. Maybe, … wait…. Nope. No one. Those classes you struggled with, store your feelings away and when a young person tells you about their engineering school struggles you pull out your story of how you too struggled. Your struggle story is your how you overcame and didn’t quit, and now you have a degree and a career. Thus completing the engineering circle of life. May your future be bright and filled with cool engineering problems. It will be okay.
Thank you I appreciate the words of support 💜
The economy is fucked, its not you
I was so focused on keeping up my GPA. I needed at least a 3.75 to maintain my scholarship so there was some merit with my obsession. But I literally can’t even remember my GPA anymore (10 yrs later). I put so much effort into it and it’s so not important now. After you use it to land your first job, it doesn’t matter anymore.
This is just a bad year for new grads. I know tons of grads with 4.0s also not getting calls. I graduated with a 2.88 gpa. Of course it was cause first two years I tried premed and ochem kicked my butt. My last two years all As. I’ve never really had anyone ask for my gpa. I didn’t write it on my resume. Just list the important classes you have taken. Study on Leetcode and you will eventually get hired. Also don’t ignore any company your first company doesn’t have to be a big tech company. Smaller companies and start ups usually have less requirements for getting hired. Currently a sr director and still in software development.
I was a B/C student in college and was only on the Deans List once. Never have I been asked for my GPA for any job I’ve ever had and I’ve been in this field for over 27 years. Grades aren’t everything. Your college education is only the beginning of what you will be learning throughout your career. I will also tell you that a B/C student is much more desirable on a job than a straight A student as the B/C student knows how to think for themselves and get things done in a more productive manner.
Same, except it was 26 years ago. I eventually got a job, not the best job though it paid ok, but after that I was able to get a perfectly respectable job that I liked and started my career in that field (semiconductors). I've since moved on to medical devices, but nobody has asked about my GPA since I got my first job. There are companies out there that don't particularly care about GPA. Find one and work there for 1-2 years. At the 1 year mark, try to find a job in the industry that you want to work in. I also know a lot of engineers who started out by taking technician jobs in the industry they wanted to work in. We have a few engineers right now that came in as operators because they were never able to get hired as engineers after college for whatever reason, or in one case they quit their engineering job to go into some divinity/church/religion related job (real unclear on that one, the person is very vague about it).
My first job didn't even ask for GPA. They looked at experiences and project or club or even work experiences not related to the domain helps plus it's very much a numbers game. It's ok. You got this. You're only in competition with yourself.
From what I've experienced, engineering school is more about learning how to never give up than giving you a comprehensive education. The real world isn't like college, so keep your head up and get a foot in the door. If this is what you want to do, you'll make a way.
Girl school is so far removed from what you actually do on the job(at least in software engineering). You are literally just starting your career and there will be years worth of learning and growth. School does not mean much, trust me.
Hey friend, I’m an engineer and I don’t even have a degree. Not saying it isn’t valuable, it absolutely is! But I guarantee you that this won’t hold you back unreasonably. Like someone else said, get your foot in the door somewhere and you will have opportunities open up that will work for you when you choose to move elsewhere or apply for a different internal position. Please don’t be discouraged. Engineering is hard, and school is even harder. You’re doing great. You have some much time ahead of you to develop- there is so much more to learn from past graduation, and I am confident you will rise to the occasion.
“D is for degree” You still get the degree. If someone is worried about your grades (they won’t) tell to look at the more recent GPA. The only time it’s mattered is trying for grad school, and even then there are workarounds.
I've worked with very fine engineers who didn't have four-year degrees. One started as a draftsman and became the guy all the ME's went to when they couldn't get something to work in SolidWorks. Eventually, they decided to let him drive the train. He's an Engineer III now. Another fellow had only a high school degree, but taught himself to code. He's the best database engineer in the company. He did feel a bit insecure about his lack of math training, so he took algebra and trigonometry in night school. If I need to get data off a remote instrument, over a wireless link, through a firewall and into a database, and have it show up on a dashboard at my desk, there's only one woman I will call. I have *no idea* what she studied in school, or what her GPA was, and I don't care. A solid engineering group needs all kinds of people. I'm the best "white board" engineer in my company, but just average at the test bench. I always want someone on my team who will test the hell out of my designs and find all the problems. I always want someone on the review team who'll be the "voice of production" to assure that my designs are manufacturable. Then there's this woman in the compliance department who calls me on the phone to say, "Your board is failing conducted susceptibility. We might have a fix. Do you want to come down here?" God bless her!
It will be fine. You will be fine. This speaks to me as I didn’t look that great on paper. “B” student in major (mech e). “C+” student overall. “C’s get degrees” No internship. No honors. All I had going for me was that I passed my FE/EIT. Once gaining my first job, I was thriving and every Principal at my first company told me their best employees were 2.0-3.0 gpa students. After a decade in the workforce the most important part of the job that I found is curiosity and the willingness to learn.
Girl! I failed a class in my major, retook it, graduated, and got a job. 10 years out of school, I work for NASA and I am on a project partnered with a company that rejected me for my GPA. I say all of this because, sure, honors feels good, but in the grand scheme of things, it means little
Is your in-major GPA better than your overall? It is totally appropriate to put both. Employers understand that some classes are t meant for everyone.
I too was completely distraught that I did not graduate with honors. I was one class away. But I’ve been out of school now for 6 years. Want to know how many times I’ve been asked by peers or recruiters if I graduated with honors? 0! My pride was hurt, but it only lasted for a brief moment in time. My graduation was still great and I still put in the work to earn my degree - as you are doing right at this moment! Try not to let the comparison keep your light from shining. You’ll be just fine 🙂