How to get an internship with a low GPA?

Question

A lot of changed majors and some other mitigating circumstances have left me with a pretty low GPA. My GPA in the last couple of semesters hasn't been stellar, but my grades have gotten a LOT better.

I want to try and start putting in some resumes to get a good internship this summer. I do think that I have some decent experience for someone at my level, but I see my GPA being a pretty big potential stumbling block. Is there anything I can do to help my chances of getting a good internship?

(For the record, the mitigating circumstances aren't something I'd feel comfortable discussing with a potential employer. I'd prefer getting a job by proving my merit, not making excuses.)

Answer 1

I've found that GPA doesn't matter. If you can prove you are a good programmer, you will get hired.

It may close some doors, but there are still plenty of employers that take how well you answer the interview questions into account a lot more than GPA (but that means you DO have to prove yourself in the interview).

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EDIT: Also, if you can show that your in-major GPA is pretty high, that can give you bonus points.

Answer 2

You should high light your programming experience in your resume. If you have done any projects, make sure to mention them clearly, and also specify the technologies that you made those projects in.

If you like, you can include an extracurricular activities section in the resume and add all the programming related (self-improvement) things that you do, for example - I think it is a thing to brag about if you have 2500+ repo on Stackoverflow.

I hire a lot of people for my company, and personally I look at the grades last.

Answer 3

Have you searched for job interview questions on the web? Can you answer those?

Because a GPA while possibly a symptom of smartness and capability it does not necessarily translate into capacity to write code.

You certainly might have some problems getting past the HR screener for an internship, so you may need to apply for a couple extra positions. However, do your best to get a person on the phone and make you case that while your GPA might not win any awards its due to extenuating circumstances. Try and get the person on the other side to get you to a technical interview, so you can show them your stuff.

I do not have a CS degree, and I do not usually even bring up my education in an interview. I am certainly past the point of having to look for internships, but the questions I get are about programming. Seek out the code, and get yourself judged on something that at least approximates what the job will entail. (Interviews usually don't do this, so memorize big O notation :)

Anyway good luck, and don't write off Joe's House of Programming, all it takes is one good programmer to take you under his or her wing, to really step up your game. In fact for your next job, nobody will even care if that place wrote crappy code, or your GPA, because even at Joe's House of Programming, programmers write programs.

Answer 4

As someone who started working full-time at 18, never earned a degree, and more or less set my own terms at my most recent job, my biased opinion is that it doesn't matter. And any employer to whom it does matter... doesn't matter.

Answer 5

if your grades are a concern, take some easier classes to pull them up

in the meantime, don't emphasize them. i don't recall anyone ever asking about my GPA, even when I was applying for intern-type jobs. If they do, just say 'well they could be better, but i spend too much of my free time programming and on stackoverflow.com' ;-)

Answer 6

Well, you don't have to put your GPA on your resume, although that might cause as much of a red flag as a low one. You could pick a stack (Java, LAMP, .Net, etc.) and get certifications in it. Certifications might not mean much, but when you have no experience, they can differentiate you from other candidates. You can also get involved in open source projects. You can also get advice from your favorite professors who might go out on a limb for you and write you a good recommendation or even put in good word for you at a company. (If you don't have a professor that is a good mentor figure late in your college life, then your GPA is the least of your problems).

Once you get your first job or internship and you actually prove yourself in some way, then they will never ask you about your GPA again.

Answer 7

Your problem is so simple that it's hardly a problem at all!

Question: When was the last time someone with 10 years of experience got asked for their college GPA?

Answer: never.

For new college grads grades matter because they have no or very little experience, and when hiring you, guys like me have to look at the next best thing, which is your GPA. But that's because it's a proxy for experience, not because it's intrinsically important.

The solution is to get some real experience and then no one will care about your GPA. How do you do it? Open Source! Go contribute to ANY major open source project (Linux, Apache, Firefox, mySQL, Open Office, etc). Put your contributions at the top of your resume. Now no one will care about your GPA.

Answer 8

I suffered a similar set-back to you. I spent two years on a vocational course to teach high-level Computing concepts, along with Software Engineering. My marks weren't fantastic but I was getting through everything and was close to being able to transfer to my final year of university.

Then I suffered an accident and broke both heels, forcing me to drop out of college.

I decided that I wasn't going to go back to college to do my vocational course. Instead, my best option was to pursue a Computer Science degree. Despite my transcripts being okay no one would touch me, not even into the first year. I eventually managed to grab a place at a local university that treats Computer Science like a second-rate subject, as it doesn't bring enough student interest (or money).

Grades matter in academia, make no mistake. Despite having worked for some large companies as a Freelance Web Designer/Developer, developed for several open and closed source scripts and administered a website gaining several hundred-thousand visitors a day I was shunned for younger people with better grades. Still, I got in somewhere, and it's not all that bad. I've been provided a platform to shine and so far I have done just that. I've topped classes, won prizes and worked on projects above undergraduate level. Not only that, but I have been offered managerial IT roles the second I finish university at another university.

The best thing you can do is continue to improve and to fight for the places you want. Put yourself above and beyond what everyone else can demonstrate and you'll get any role you want.

Answer 9

My GPA wasn't anything to brag about or put in bold text on my resume, but, to the best of my knowledge, it only disqualified me from one job that I applied for. Basically after sending out a handful of resumes, I had three interviews in the city I wanted to move to. One company asked my GPA at the start of the interview and essentially said that they'd go through the motions of the rest of the interview, but that I didn't meet their minimum qualifications. The other two companies offered me a job.

Now, 20+ years later, I'm the person doing the interviewing for new hires. Our HR people may ask and may filter out people based on GPA, but I've never asked an interviewee about their GPA and I think it is fairly irrelevant if they can handle the interview and their knowledge and experience looks OK. I do ask about what courses they took and which ones they enjoyed or learned the most from, but I learned a lot in courses that I didn't make high grades in and got high grades in a lot of courses where I learned little or nothing.

I've worked with several people who didn't have degrees in the field or dropped out before finishing their degree. Many of them are the best programmers I've ever worked with.

But... Some companies have a hard time hiring people without a degree sometimes because contract rates are often keyed to degree and experience. Not having a degree doesn't mean you couldn't do the job, but it means that you can't be given a competitive salary if your billable rates are much lower. Of course, in product shop or start-up this doesn't matter.

One more thought (more than half serious): Boost your Stack Overflow reputation score up to ridiculously high levels by answering a wide variety of technical questions in a helpful and literate manner. Then put that on your resume. It would impress me as much or more than a high GPA...

Answer 10

I had a similar problem. I don't think I'm any smarter or dumber than the people in my classes but they're definitely better at getting good grades. Anyways, I graduated and didn't get as high of a salary as them. I'm definitely over performing at my job and I feel that once I get a little experience (and then switch jobs) I'll easily surpass many of my classmates because I simply have more interest and background in programming. So, you might not have the best luck in the beginning but you'll be fine. No worries.

Answer 11

Start doing stuff.

Stuff can be ...

• freelance work for small business (those people usually never ask for your GPA)
• contribute in one way or another to a open source project
• take extra classes to demonstrate that you are willing to make up/improve

All in all, no one ever asked me for my GPA - or the German equivalent. My teachers did care but besides none of my clients care how I did in school.

I started working early and managed to build references for myself and so far, my clients have always chosen me based on my skillset. Those skills, I demonstrate through references [past projects, opensource related, writing, ...] and nothing but references. I am pretty fortunate in that respect because looking at my grades you can't call me a genius either. More a lazy bastard. :)

Keep in mind that people will double check what you claim in one way or another. For example if you claim you can write ASM, maybe be prepared for a question related to that even though you are applying for a rails web development job.

Also, I don't want to frighten you, and I don't even know your GPA, but even though references can make up a lot for bad grades, you should prepare yourself that some companies will still judge you just based on your school work. I for myself chose to start my own business so I am pretty much out of it.

Especially in larger corporations there are always jobs you will not be able to get if you did [really] bad in school. Or for example, they require PHDs to apply for a job, or only people with a BS/MS, etc.. There are companies where work experience is no equivalent. HR are not always the brightest people either and seeing talent is sometimes not one of their strong points.

Answer 12

My GPA wasn't all that great either: it was approximately PI at 3.14. However, my CS major GPA was even lower..I can't remember now what it was. I can't remember often getting higher than a low C on CSE exams. Some people just don't get along with school...I am one of those people.

However, I've done a lot of programming at home, and the place I got a job at allowed me to give a presentation of projects I've worked on. I showed them these during my interview and explained some of the algorithms I researched...and got the job. Basically if a place can see you're competant at programming and enjoy it...you'll probably get offered the job.

Answer 13

GPA is overrated. It is more important to have fun in school. I got a very high GPA (it rounds to 4.0 if you round to the tenths place). But overall I still spent the year after college unemployed in 2002. A high GPA did not guarantee me a job. Also at job fairs there were guys with 2.5 GPAs getting jobs (granted they were in a different field because no one at the job fair was hiring Computer Science people). But same difference. The interview and stuff was more important.

At the same time some companies do have a paper requirement. They won't hire you because of a high GPA, but they may disqualify you. Some have 3.0 minimum GPA, others 3.2 or something. I never saw higher than 3.5 required. But do you really want to work at a company like that? If so, just get a bunch of certifications. I would prefer a company that hired based on whether you can do the job and was smart enough to find people good at the job.

Answer 14

Work your network. A good reference and a person on the inside will get you a job more easily than the best college GPA in recorded history.

Find somebody who will hire you - an academic department, an open source project, anybody who won't look at just a number - and meet people who know people.

Answer 15

I think GPA does matter, but only for your first job or so, because that's all they have to go on.

Honestly though, if you truly enjoy programming and you can demonstrate it, then that will be far more important that your GPA. As some people have suggested, get started on an open source project.

You can also do what I did... come up with a product! Its a pretty simple piece of software, but almost 5 years later I'm still selling it. The money is not the important part though (it doesn't bring in all that much), it's the experience. One of the factors that helped me land my first job was the fact that I was able to see a business need and come up with a solution.

You'll also get a boat load of experience dealing with all types of end users. I found that this helped me tremendously in creating usable programs.

Answer 16

I will not proclaim that GPA isn't important. It is---albeit partially. During the last year of my undergraduate studies, I saw many an organisation recruiting at the university only allow students with >= 3.00 CGPA to apply. I knew back then as I do now that they missed out on some excellent programmers because of that unreasonable criteria, but in the real world, that is just how things are.

You can have an OK CGPA for any reasons. Sometimes it can be because of some inevitable circumstances. Sometimes because you were only ever interested in the programming courses, did well there, but not in other courses. But, if you ask me, I think an individual's CGPA can be a good indication of how the student has been throughout the undergraduate programme. I believe that if you are exceptionally good and sharp at one subject, you should have no problem is balancing out the rest of the subjects, doing modestly well, and earning a good CGPA. It is not that hard, IMO.

Having said that, I've had three jobs so far, and none of them have ever focused on my CGPA.

Answer 17

You got great answers already, but I thought another answer would not hurt you.

My friend has a really low GPA (around 2.3). However, this has not stopped him from getting good internships. He interned at Adobe, Qualcomm, and Google. (He has taken a full-time offer from Google and is desperately waiting to graduate)

He came into college as a cognitive science major and found out that the major was not what he expected. He tried out couple of CS classes because he had taken introductory programming classes in high school. He found that CS classes were a lot more interesting and changed his major. He was not a diligent student (as you can see from his GPA), but he loved and was passionate about computer science. He loved going to tech talks, starting a bunch of random projects, and learn new stuffs.

He found out that going into MS program was a reach because of his GPA. Therefore, he chose to work in the industry for few years and think about getting MS or Ph.D degree after. He enjoys everything about computer science. I hope you do as well.

Don't worry about GPA. However, worry about brushing up what you've learned from algorithms to data structures to nitty-gritty programming techniques to computer architectures. Many of my past supervisors (from internships) said they chose me and other interns because of our skills during the interview and nothing from the "educational background" besides the classes or projects I have done in school.

I hope this helps :)

Answer 18

I didn't graduate from High School and my job title is CTO now.

So...don't sweat it. Do good work and it won't matter.

Answer 19

GPA is never even asked for 99% of contract jobs and maybe 90% of full-time jobs. For some reason, the finance industry seems to care some of the time. Of course, banks selecting candidates via GPA doesn't seem to have helped them have any more recent successes...

Answer 20

Give them something else to judge you by other than GPA .like say a solid open source project !!