Hacker News Reader

Comment by dpark | Hacker News Reader

GPA has no impact on your final degree in the US either. You complete the same coursework and get the same degree as the person with a perfect GPA.

The only real exception is if you’re screwing up so bad that they kick you out, in which case you don’t get the degree because you don’t complete the coursework.

View on HN

What I meant is that in the UK the "class" of degree us (or at least used to be) based almost entirely on what you did in your final year. People seem to refer to GPA for US degrees in the same way that we use the class of honours: first, upper second etc. even though they would appear to measure different things.

On a number of occasions I have had prospective employers ask what my final grade was for specific classes. I have never been asked about my GPA specifically, but my grades at the University certainly affected me beyond academia.

That's pretty asinine. I wouldn't have the foggiest idea what I finished any of my classes in college at, even when I was only a year or two out.

May I ask which classes, and what type of employer? I don't even know if any of my employers bothered verifying that I graduated college.

Before I graduated, when I was interviewing for jobs, lots of companies wouldn't interview anyone with lower than a certain GPA. Google was the most notable one, although they've since gotten rid of that requirement since they found it has almost no correlation with your performance as an employee.

Other larger companies that cared were Lutron, Epic, and a few more I don't really remember. I think Epic even asked me what my ACT score was.

Beyond that first job though, my GPA hasn't mattered at all, which is good because mine was pretty mediocre.

Outside of the college recruitment pipeline, I've neither seen nor heard of anyone asking for gpa. Some places want or even require degrees, but nobody cares about gpa at all once you have a year of experience.

I've had one company so far ask me for transcripts, and this was after I had been working for several years. That should have been a huge red flag.

What did they want your transcripts for?

I have absolutely no idea. If it helps, that company also wouldn't hire one of my best interns without him taking some programming language courses. He had a 4-year degree, too. They also didn't want to hire one of my other good interns into an embedded role despite that being what she went to school for, and despite her having the aptitude for it. They wanted to hire her into SDET instead. I don't believe she took the job.

You are missing the point.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com