Comment by gems | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gems | Hacker News Reader

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"But it's true. It is hard, but that's okay. The whole point of the grading system was to acknowledge subtlety; that it's okay if you don't have an A, because it doesn't mean you haven't learnt anything, it just means you haven't learnt everything [in that course]. But somehow many students seem to take it as the end of the world not to achieve that A, when really that isn't the important thing at all."

That's what I believed at first. Then I realized how concerned authorities are with grades. If you're looking to do work with some research group, people want to know your grades. If you want to get into certain graduate schools, you'll most likely end up competing with people with high grades. Grades aren't a super important determining factor but, of course, they are considered and they can be treated as a negative indicator if poor.

Nobody really cares that you decided to challenge yourself. If you don't at least try to optimize for grades, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. If you don't optimize for grades, you'll be competing with people who do.

> Grades aren't a super important determining factor

i would disagree with this. they are THE determining factor in 9 out of 10 things you want to do post-college, and grades follow you for LIFE.

the reason i started a company is because i didn't have the grades to do anything else except be a bottom-rung coder (not even at a "good" company), which I did for a few years after school. i graduated a very good UC with a 2.01 C average (i BARELY graduated, i was put on academic probation 3x, and took an entire quarter off at one point). i'm not kidding around when i say "i'm a terrible student" like some people do - i actually had D's and F's and plenty of W's on my transcript.

even with 5+ years of owning a successful business, if i were to apply to b-school or masters/phd program, they'd probably reject my ass. when was the last time you heard of a C student getting into a worthwhile grad school?

I don't know what kind of companies you're interviewing with, but I assure you that my present employers, my previous employers, and the ones before that had no idea what my GPA was. While grades do follow you for a while, it's a gross overreaction to suggest that they follow you "for life" in a business setting.

i was just saying they follow you for life if you want to do anything that requires grades. the "other stuff" you do doesn't always make up for the fact that you got shitty marks.

Huh? I'm telling you how top graduate schools consider applicants. They usually weight research and letters the highest, then grades, then GRE scores.

yeah, and i'm telling you how i was utterly unqualified for any of that, because of my grades.

I've found college grades to matter for only two things:

1. Your first professional job after graduation 2. Your grad school application

Nobody else cares.

And #1 definitely isn't always true in my experience. I'd guess that smaller companies are less likely to care about grades.

GPA is maybe a useful indicator of work ethic, but there are so many factors it's hard to be sure of that.

i think my point is that your first job, and/or grad school studies, have extremely far-reaching effects on your life trajectory.

for example, if i had good grades, i'd probably have gone to work for a google-esque company, or gone to grad school, and i would NOT have started a tech business.

my life would have been completely different if i had good grades.

I also found that your second professional job depends heavily on your first professional job, which in turn depends on your GPA.

I wouldn't discount the importance of your GPA.

Even big ones don't necessarily care. I worked for Sun Micro right out of grad school, and nobody ever asked to look at my transcript. I've heard intel did.

They matter a lot for grad school, though.

As a counterexample, I had terrible grades and dropped out of university in my second semester. I've never once had anyone ask me about grades or about my schooling in a professional context, and I've worked at some pretty fantastic companies. I can't speak about grad school, as I know nothing about academia, but a significant proportion of the best technical professionals I've worked with didn't graduate university; I've even worked with a few that didn't graduate high school, but still work for top tech companies.

A referral from an employee who knows that you are competent and reliable is worth more in the hiring process than anything you could list on your CV.

> If you're looking to do work with some research group, people want to know your grades. If you want to get into certain graduate schools, you'll most likely end up competing with people with high grades.

As a counter-point to this, to anyone reading who might be discouraged, the research groups I personally know mostly care about sufficient grades (i.e. that you're smart, hard-working, not stupid). The ability to get outstanding grades doesn't correlate that well with research ability; it just correlates well with your ability to do exams.

Given sufficient grades, it's infinitely more important that, say, an addition to your research group is able to work well with the other people in it than what specific grades they got, and the people making the hiring choices are keenly aware of this.

And when you get beyond your PhD, it's your publication record that people are really going to care about anyway. If you get good papers into good journals, no one gives a crap about your grades.

I go to a large school. My impression is that GPA is a convenient measure to use to select candidates. At my school, you get lots of applications submitted for certain academic positions. If you're the one trying to pick the students, how do you pick the most qualified?

That's only true in the absence of other signals. If you look at it as instead a problem of "how do I convince X that I am the person they're looking for?", you can consider all possible strategies, and additional signals that you could provide to demonstrate your worth. Grades are a very imperfect signal, but often times it's the only signal provided by the applicant.

Of course. But do you realize that some groups/schools filter by GPA? You don't even get considered unless you're above a certain threshold. How do send other signals then?

Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally? How and when are you going to do that?

edit: furthermore, how do you know the professor can single-handedly have any impact on who gets admitted into the program?

> Are you going to try to talk with the professors personally?

Sure, that's a pretty good idea.

> How and when are you going to do that?

Figure it out. If you want a cookbook solution, the answer is probably to just play the GPA game.

That was sort of a trap. It's considered bad practice in academia to bypass the committees and speak with the professors directly. Professors usually say in their home pages something to the effect of 'if you want to do research with me, apply to the school, do not contact me directly, I will ignore you'.

Really? I know someone who got a PhD position by doing just that. Talking to a professor directly seems like a great idea as long you're sure you're not wasting their time (i.e. that you're a suitable candidate).

Even if you don't get the position, there's still a lot of value to be had from a conversation (for both parties).

Off the top of my head I can come up with 3 professors at my school who say that on their home page.

My perspective may be too cynical though.

Or not cynical enough. They no doubt say that because it's expected, and/or because they don't want to be contacted by thousands of hopefuls. It doesn't mean it's true.

I've never seen such a note, and I've known several people who got into a department by talking directly with the professors there. I'm sure there is a difference between asking idle questions or trying to ingratiate yourself and posing specific informed, research-oriented questions because you're honestly interested, though.

I have seen such notes, but you have to take them with a grain of salt. When a department posts a note like that it's sort of the corporate equivalent of "Don't talk to our managers: submit your resume on this web form right here." So you should still talk to professors (but don't waste their time).

When a professor writes that on his/her personal/research website, it means "I already have grad students coming out of my ears, and I don't have enough grant money to support even half of them." This is useful information, because you (should) pick a grad school based on who you want to work with. You need to look elsewhere if all the professors you want to work with at a particular school are over-subscribed. Some professors also become jaded by the sheer number of unqualified candidates who can't hack it: None of the string theory groups in my school will talk to you until after you've been admitted, gotten good grades for a couple semesters and the passed department's second-year screening exam with a good score.

Let me part with this: I got into grad school (probably) mostly because I sent an email to the professor who ended up being my research advisor. I described what I did in the past (which was sorta-kinda tangentially in the same field), omitted any mention of my (not very good) grades, and asked a non-time-waste-y question about the research group. The thing about grad school (at least in the hard sciences) is that one of the criteria for admission is "doesn't anybody want this candidate in his/her research group??" When you have someone pulling for you on the inside, getting in is a whole lot easier.

Odd, talking directly with my professor is what got me into my graduation thesis. I have never heard of this as "bad practice." Then again, I've not heard of a lot of people looking at peoples grades as big factor for hiring, yet a lot of people here seem to think this is the case. So maybe I'm just lucky.

>>That's only true in the absence of other signals.

The problem is that the vast majority of HR departments do not have the time to look at those other signals. Resumes are filtered based on GPA and other measurable numbers first.

I don't even put my GPA on my resume anymore.

And likely, if it's a large zombie-automated HR department, I wouldn't want to work there anyways.

And you should not, unless your GPA tells something outstanding about you.

I do put it, because I can say that with that score (not GPA, but 94/100 score) I was the best of my class/generation.

The Resume is an advertisement, you don't see Coca-Cola advertising that their sugary drinks can make people fat.

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