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Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

Unless you're already about to fail, few, if any, employers will care about your GPA, and joining a large network of college graduates who share camaraderie can't hurt when it comes to finding well paying positions and moving up in organizations

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GPA is virtually meaningless to me as an interviewer. There are so many more important things to me.

If you don't care about GPA, why do you need me to be a college graduate? I'm genuinely confused about the point of college. I can spend four years drinking and partying without going into debt if that's what I need to get a job.

A college degree is a legally and socially acceptable form of an intelligence test.

Hyper-socialization can teach a lot of "soft skills" which come in useful in the business world. Whether it's a fraternity, a sorority, military boot camp, or similar experience, this influence may account for some of the data.

> few, if any, employers will care about your GPA

"Elite" careers care a lot about GPA.

I can guarantee no one really cares about your GPA, especially after your first job. If it's your only proof of competency/intelligence that's been validated by a third-party, they'll care, but if you have other outside evidence and interview well, no one will ever even think to ask, even in elite settings.

I, for one, have never put my GPA on my resume.

No, I've seen "elite" careers care about your GPA after your first job too.

> I can guarantee no one really cares about your GPA

When a buddy of mine was interviewing at hedge funds, a few of them didn't just want his undergrad GPA, but also his high school SAT scores. He actually got shit from one of the interviewers because his French SAT scores were shady... the dude had a few years of finance experience and a PhD in theoretical physics. YMMV.

To be fair your high school SAT scores are generally more predictive of job performance than your GPA.

These are "generalized careers" so they have to grasp at arbitrary cues that vouch for intelligence and competence. Careers that require specialized tasks don't look at generalized grade averages or test scores of non-relevant backgrounds like "French SAT" for a "hedge fund" job.

Indeed. Certain institutions will not even consider a candidate who has not gone to a top tier University AND graduated with 3.5 or greater, unless of course they have some sort of connection with someone working at that institution. For first job out of college

I've seen certain institutions want "elite" job experience, degree from top school, high GPA, and sometimes high test scores. This is not for the first job.

Sounds exclusive, almost like a fraternity.

There are definitely parallels. A fair amount of people in these industries were in fraternities, secret societies, or similar student organizations.

Boeing cares about GPA, so does Intel. Quite a few others do as well

Granted, Boeing’s cutoff is 2.7.

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