What is a good undergrad GPA when applying for programming jobs?

Question

I was wondering what is considered to be a "good" undergrad GPA in the industry for new grads? I understand it is a vague question and involves lots of variables, but say you graduated from an average college (University of Minnesota) what would your GPA have to be to give you a solid shot at getting jobs at decent companies. I am in my 3rd year and my GPA right now is 3.34, I have quite a few electives next term and was considering switching to some easy courses to boost my GPA, is it better to have 3.35 GPA with tough electives or something like ~3.45 with easy electives?

Answer 1

Probably anything as good as your interviewer's. It's probably is secondary to your college and work experience.

Answer 2

I regularly interview college kids, and in my mind map there are three categories: bad, ok, and very good. The threshold is around 3.8 between ok and very good.

I tend to focus more on actual details of project participation and what languages the person is comfortable with, and how much they know about it.

Edit: I have turned down high GPA students to invite other candidates with more interest in programming (made game in VB) or better handle of concepts. Having said that, low GPA does come into consideration, which I didn't mention because OP has an ok average. The threshold between ok and bad depends on the college, but I'd say 2.7ish combined with general impression I get from the student's response.

When I am recruiting students I don't expect them to be an all-rounded developer or some genius; however, low GPA could imply that the student has some issues like inability to follow simple instructions or lack of self discipline. If you look like a sloppy unprepared frat boy who doesn't take notes in the classes and have low GPA, the GPA would reinforce your sloppy impression.

Coming back to OP, I'd say take the hard electives. If you have slightly lower GPA because you tried taking grad level Machine Vision and Autonomous Mobile Robotics at the same time, I wouldn't hold it against you. Besides, it's much more fun to talk about hard courses than hear about some basic data structure homework.

Answer 3

It is best to know what you're talking about in an interview. As long as you graduated, and know what you're talking about, no one really cares about your GPA unless you can brag about how high it is - and if you can, don't mention it unless asked. If it is not so high and you're asked about it, tell the interviewer you spent more time perfecting the code instead of memorizing answers for the test!

no one ever asked about my gpa; i've never asked anyone about their gpa. it is largely irrelevant for most business-programming positions. Academic and research positions may care about such things, businesses care about results.

good luck!

Answer 4

Don't put too much emphasis on what you're GPA is. As long as it isn't below 3.0 I wouldn't worry too much. Only your first employer is going to look at your GPA. After that it is all experience.

You might want to try looking into internships, personal programming projects, or an open source projects so that your GPA and degree isn't the only thing you bring to an interview.

Answer 5

In the grand scheme of things, you are better off taking tougher classes even if they hurt your GPA some, as it will be more beneficial to you in the long run.

That said, the GPA on your resume is a slightly tweakable number. If it's low because you had some non-technical classes you didn't do so well in, consider putting your technical GPA in addition to, or instead of, your full GPA. If you took hard classes that drove it down some, you might consider listing them on your resume.

Having been more on the interviewee side than the other way around, I'm not sure what the standard to look for is. I would imagine the difference between a 3.3 and a 3.4 is not going to be that substantive in the eyes of a recruiter.

Answer 6

Most companies use some combination of your GPA and the school you came from (And in some cases your class rankings) to do an initial filtering. This may change from company to company. It's actually really sad because a lot of people's college GPA is primarily affected by things that are not related to programming courses.

For example, my own GPA was significantly affected by courses in math and physics that I haven't actually bothered to much with in college. Luckily, I was above the cutoff in those early years to get interviewed for my first job.

Answer 7

Grades are important, but I would care more that the person had successful projects and got things done.

Answer 8

I have interviewed and hired recent graduates for programming jobs. I typically don't ask about GPAs. I really only care about three things

1) Did you learn all of the important basics of software development. For example, I don't want to have to explain the difference between a for/loop and a while/loop... I expect you know how to do this.

2) Did you work well on a team? For example, are you responsible and will you put in the time necessary to do your part?

3) Did you learn how to teach yourself? If anything this is really what you should get out of an undergraduate education.

Additional thoughts....

A former boss once told me that he respected students more who got C's and B's due to working their way through school than students with straight A's and no work experience.

If your GPA does come up as a question and they don't like what they see, learn how to present it as a positive.

Answer 9

in my opinion gpa does not metter in geeting goog job becuase practical experience is necessary

Answer 10

in my opinion gpa does not metter in geeting goog job becuase practical experience is necessary