Graduate with Bad Grades or Repeat a Year?

An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a CS Student within one year of graduation. Due to financial reasons, I've been working on a full time basis for the past 2 years, and I've worked on an open source project. This has brought me from the B's and A's of my first two years of college to somewhere in the mists of C's and lower. I now have enough money to sustain myself for two years of schooling. I've got two choices: repeat one year, repair all my bad grades and graduate with better grades but with a mark that I repeated one school year; or graduate with lower grades but with no repeated year. I'd like to know the opinion of recruiters out there: if you had two candidates which ranked similarly during the interviews, would you choose someone who repeated classes for higher grades?"

Graduate.

[Zack]

As an employer, grades really aren't a top concern. I graduated with 2.85, I know skills go beyond grade. An interview is really where I'd make my decision.

Can keep your options open.

[lorcha]

You can always keep your options open. Go through on-campus recruiting and see what happens. If you don't like the result, you can always go back to school.

What work did you do full time? If you were in an IT-related position, definitely don't repeat courses. You'll do fine in your job search based on your experience. If, on the other hand, you worked full time at McDonalds, you can still demonstrate your experience on the open source project.

Experience means more than grades. Many CS grads have poor grades. You will probably be pleasantly surprised when you go through on-campus recruiting.

I'd suggest graduate

[pyro_peter_911]

No one will care about your college grades after your first year of work. After that it is all experience, skills, and relationships.

Peter

Large companies are flexible on GPA ...

[AHumbleOpinion]

Many large companies won't talk to you if you have under 3.5 GPA or some such bs ...

You are misinformed. Many large companies do have flexibility on GPAs. Specifically, GPA "minimums" are often waived if the student was also working more than 30 hours per week. Note the person asking for advice wrote "I've been working on a full time basis for the past 2 years".

... The same companies are often not considered good employers.

I believe this statement is about as accurate as your first.

In the real world

[smallstepforman]

A degree is nothing more than a piece of paper which certifies that you can get boring shit assigned to you done. In essence, this is all an employer cares about when hiring graduates. It does not guarantee a minimum level of knowledge or skills.

At the same time, education facilities are running a business. They want to maximise profit, which is where students come in. However, they are also competing against other education facilites, so they dont want to squeeze too hard, otherwise you will take your money elsewhere.

Having looked back at my 'academic' life, all I really needed to have is the minimum 2-3 year tertiary diploma / degree (which is called differently from country to country). This provides the above mentioned certificate (get boring shit done). After a year in the industry, degrees no longer matter, it's all based on experience and specialisation. Shit, I should know, I'm an electronic engineer by education, and 7 years later, I'm a software architect in a company with 120 software engineers. I've advanced faster in this company than people with masters degrees and excellent academic marks.

If you wish to work in academia, its a different story. But then again, if you specialise in a new field untouched by academia, guess who'll be knocking at your door once the 'education business' decides it needs celebrity names to entice a new generation of students.

Let me put it this way...

[EagleFalconn]

I've got a friend who just graduated in physics with a 2.85. You know what phrase gets him to work? "Cleanup on aisle 6." Thats right, he's a janitor at the Wal-Mart next to campus (Purdue).

Granted, physics is slightly different as a field than CS. So heres another argument. Someone mentioned this: Tuition of 20k + lost wages of 60k for one year of school is an opportunity cost of 80k. Well, if you want to work for a top company like Procter and Gamble (where I'm currently working) those extra GPA points will probably get your resume to the top of the stack. Why is that important? Because P&G recruits what they proclaim as the "Best of the best." And they really do. Forbes didn't rank P&G's employees #1 in the world for having a reputation for innovation and intelligence for shits and giggles. Regardless of your GPA, you'll start at the same salary, but first you've gotta get that far.

Re:don't repeat, get a graduate degree

[swv3752]

If you pursue a master's degree later in life, your GPA really won't matter. It only matters if you try to pursue a Master's or Doctorate right from an undergrad program.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Emphasize work, ditch open source project

[AlXtreme]

Unless your job has nothing to do with software development I'd drop the open source project.

I'd advise on doing something you enjoy next to all those boring classes, and certainly not drop something you are enjoying in order to focus solely on those grades. Any hobby is potentially interesting during an interview, as you simply don't know who is sitting across the table.

Recently had an interview at IBM, the manager doing the interview was very interested in my research/publications and work experience (my company), but the couple of open source projects on page two got quite a bit of attention too. It shows that you have a technical interest, and are willing to put in your spare time to complement that part-time code job with something you enjoy. And a presentation at a FLOSS-conference goes a long way, even if you are only having fun on a small niche project.

If you are looking for a dull job, don't do anything besides those courses and work. If you are interested in a truly interesting job, spice up that resume with side-projects (commercial or not), presentations, publications and hobbies. You never know which one might trigger an interesting conversation, in which the interviewer can get to know you better.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Re:Yes.

[Rakishi]

To me, hiring IT people at a steady but slow rate at a mid-size company, a very high GPA says you're brilliant, but all others from 3.5 on down basically all signify "not brilliant", which is fine.

A high GPA indicates one of two things imho:
a) The person is a hard worker and capable of the inane dedication needed to get high grades in his classes such as essentially living in TA sessions.
b) The person took easy classes and knows little about the subject.

Now a brilliant person may get a high GPA or instead spend their time on more useful projects or take classes so hard they don't get As (despite being brilliant). Or they may just think the whole process needed to get high grades is pointless and instead play video games.

I've known people who were brilliant, geniuses even, but had almost abysmal GPAs. I've also known people who while intelligent and hard working were not geniuses but had very high GPAs.