Engineering Jobs and the 3.0+ GPA?

the average Cal Poly GPA: http://i.imgur.com/8OaBJKX.jpg source: this email was sent out to faculty by a CENG Department Head, then subsequently forwarded to me by a professor. I'm not sure if this info is meant to be seen by all students, but i think its valuable information. so i'll keep it anonymous.

it was pretty shocking to me TBH. i thought the GPA average was much lower. It's above a 3.0. and it compares to the average of other universities. Cal Poly doesn't have as big of a grade deflation as people think.

to answer your question. yes. You need a high GPA as a fresh grad. Anybody who says differently is deluding themselves. No, having kickass internships does not make up for a bad GPA. You need both high GPA and kickass internships.

it is the only quantitative evidence that employers have. Companies, especially large ones, want to see if you have the work ethic and the ability to be trained and GPA represents that the most out of all factors.

Cal Poly is also not as "super duper awesome!!!!111" as people make it out to be. HR recruiters don't stop and say "Cal Poly grad!!" when they see a resume. Its still a Tier 2 school. Don't for a second think that because you are from Cal Poly you have some edge over someone else who went to a "less ranked" school.

The job market out there is extremely difficult, especially in CA where everybody is competing against people from West, East Coast, & Mid West universities who all want to move to beautiful sunny CA. the economy sucks in CA so you better be cream of your crop. You aren't just competing against people from Berkeley and UCLA. You are competing against people from UMass, UPenn, MIT, Harvard--all want the same jobs you do.

the guy out there who has a 2.3 GPA but kickass projects is still competing against the guy who has a 3.9 with the same kickass projects.

It is that competitive.

I'm in the top 15% of graduating engineers in the CENG. interned with NASA, doing advanced independent studies this year and STILL get turned down for jobs left and right.

Good luck. Hopefully this motivates you to do well in your studies. spending 20 hours on Sat & Sun studying to get a high GPA should be considered for the next 3 years.

I'm not kidding. You'll regret it if you don't. You don't want to be at the end of your senior year regretting you didn't spend more time obtaining a higher GPA because you're now entering a job a non-ideal job that you think you won't like; or not even ending up with one at all. Take a look at the statistics of % of engineering grads who actually end up with an engineering job as their career.

/r/CalPoly Thread