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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > November > 23 > Entry
College grades don’t matter
Last spring, a close friend about my age (37) asked me to critique her resume. She is a talented journalist who has a truckload of prestigious awards and so many accomplishments it was a challenge to keep it all from growing beyond a few pages.
Under her college degree, I noticed she listed that she had graduated college magna cum laude with a 4.0 grade point average. One of my first suggestions was to drop this line and instead use the space for her professional accomplishments. Sorry, I told her, but at this point in our lives nobody cares about our grades in college.
“I was afraid you were going to tell me that,” the friend said. “I really like to keep that on there. I think it says something about me that I took college seriously, worked hard and didn’t just goof off.”
I was thinking about this conversation as I was reading this excellent blog post by Ramit Sethi in which he argues an obsession with grades while in college is both unhealthy and missing the point of higher education. If you know someone in college or headed there, insist that they read this post.
Stanford educated entrepreneur Ramit writes a great blog aimed at recent college graduates cleverly named I will teach you to be rich. It’s always a good read with good advice that I’ve referenced here before, including his tip for how to apply to colleges for free. Here he writes that it’s just as important for college students to meet people, build relationships and learn new things both inside and outside the classroom as it is to get high grades.
Except for maybe your first job, no one will ever hire you based on your grades, he says.
This is not to say the classwork is not important. You must learn the skills the professors are teaching. And my friend is right that “personal growth” is not an excuse for flat goofing off. There is many a college class I’d like to retake now so I could better learn the material I didn’t work hard enough to learn back then. And working hard in college is a good predictor that you will work hard later in life, as my friend’s accomplishments demonstrate.
But college also is a time to expand your horizons. Those who spend four years narrowly focused on taking the classes that will help them ensure they get straight As are missing out.
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Colleges and Universities
Comments
By Mary
November 24, 2005 8:21 AM | Link to this
This vein about grades is another indicator of our cultural problems toward education. We have had lawsuits locally and nationally over valedictorian status. We are a “we’re number one” culture that thinks in terms of wins and losses instead of win-win and lose-lose. The “well-rounded” bandwagon also bandied about in education begs discussion. Who defines what “well-rounded” is? Let people be themselves and compete with themselves when it comes to education and learning. While education should respond to a degree to the real world forces such as hiring and jobs, it does not have to roll over and play dead to all the corrupting influences.By Sawber
November 23, 2005 11:13 PM | Link to this
I must respectfully disagree. In many fields, especially specialty science and engineering fields, finding someone with work experience in the specific specialty is very rare. And often rating and letters of recommendation are firewalled (everyone is the “best�). Academic grades aren’t a tell-all, but give a good indication of their capability to pick up and quickly learn the specific of the field. Of course grades don’t tell everything, experience is clearly a factor, and personal interviews are essential, but grades give me a relatively unbiased view of perspective employees. Good grade usually are a good indicator of potential and ability to excel in the field and are definitely a tie-breaker.By Dave
November 23, 2005 5:19 PM | Link to this
Unfortunately, you are not correct. Three years ago, I discovered that a large majority of HR departments have hiring criteria based on the undergraduate GPA — even for folks like me with a master’s degree and and 20+ years engineering experience. Too bad the recruiters don’t listen to Mr. Sethi.By Dirk Sniggler
November 23, 2005 2:36 PM | Link to this
No, top grades in college aren’t as important as professional work experience. That being said, why doesn’t the DDN drop it’s requirement for J-school degrees for its applicants. Most of the great writers I know of were self-taught (Mike Royko ring a bell)? Start focusing on hiring people with real world experience (who can also write - there are many), and your paper will stop reading like it was written by a bunch of rule-following J-school grads with no real world experience.By Mark
November 23, 2005 12:21 PM | Link to this
Your first “obession with grades” link appears to be identical to the “I will Teach you to be rich” link. Is something wrong with that first link? And I’m just going out on a limb here: You didn’t graduate from college with a 4.0, did you? From one non-four-point to (I’m guessin’) another, Mark