Quote:
Originally Posted by JamesBrown
David, Al is right. I am sure you know this by now but you are not going to be able to change the system fast enough to benefit you. That means to get anywhere you need to play the system. When you get to college it only gets worse, at a highly competitive school your GPA will be key to your success. I know you posted earlier saying you disliked students that play the system to boost their GPA but trust me improving your GPA opens doors.
Most top engineering schools will say they don't have a "Cut Off" GPA or SAT score for admissions, and it is true that these schools turn down people without standing test scores but if your SAT scores are in the 1200's (1800's by the new test) you are going to have to have some impressive accomplishments to get into a top tier school (75% of accepted MIT students score over 1410/2080).
I went to what I consider a very good engineering school (though our 75th percentile for test scores is about the same as MITs 25th) at RPI which is notorious for not inflating GPAs. If you don't take the time to do the work and maintain a GPA above 3.0 (or higher if you want to go to grad school) you will regret it. I had a good GPA and had no trouble finding a job after school. I have a friend who had a Sub 3.0 GPA and had his resume handed back to him at the career fair because many companies will not even look at candidates that don't maintain a 3.0+. While some may think that being smart, hardworking and capable will get you a job somewhere and you can work up based on your merits (not your GPA) from there you are right but only to an extent.
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It is cognitive dissonance to say, "I can have a bad GPA" and "I can work my way up quickly once I get a job." Fact of the matter is a job is hard work... harder work than what you do in school. If you can't work hard enough in school to get a 3.0+, why would you think you'll magically work so much harder to climb the ladder when you get a job? A 3.0+ is proof that you can apply yourself and do decent quality work. Watching youtube for several hours instead of doing that path critical work isn't going to looked well upon by your manager...
The "Oh, I'd apply myself if I liked what I was doing" doesn't make a whole bunch of sense to me either. Even if you land a job doing exactly what you want to do (and honestly, the chances of this are pretty slim) there will be occasions where you don't like what you're doing, and people will still expect you to do good work.
There are lots of old engineers and thus lots of opportunities for young, hardworking engineers. The ball is always in your court. Take advantage of it. (I'm with James, I consider all the opportunities RPI has given me to be a distinctive #firstworldproblem)