What career fields are very unforgiving towards low college GPAs even years after the fact? (apply, degree)

[joe from dayton]

Originally Posted by Jowel

I wonder if academia (i.e. being a university professor) itself is one of the career fields that would be concerned with GPA.

Professors have terminal degrees, which you can't get with Cs. There is no such thing as a prof with a poor GPA.

[HTY483]

Engineering. If you can pass the classes, graduate with at least a 2.5, pass the FE exam and the PE exam (if required) then you're good.


If I had to do it over again I would have picked an easier degree program, graduated with a 3.5 gpa and gone on to a masters in Finance.

[John7777]

Originally Posted by MoxinLockin

I know that the common advice people give is if you graduate college with a low GPA but get some work experience on your resume, employers will start to care less and less about your GPA. For other careers, what you do outside of college and what you achieve will overcome a low college GPA (lets say low as in 2.0-2.5 low).

But what career paths would you say are permanently closed off to people that finish college with low GPAs no matter what they do after they get that degree?

None. Why can't people understand that? It's not as though you wear a copy of your transcript around your neck.

What matters is how well you can perform.

[Shoshanarose]

I never knew my GPA.
And no one ever asked me what it was.

[FerrariMatthew]

If you are considering applying for a job at the central intelligence agency, and many other government agencies related to law enforcement and/or investigations, and with relevant financial duties or access, you can guarantee that your gpa will be relevant and they will ask you for your gpa. If you lie about your gpa, you will either be fired or terminated after employment or you won't get hired to begin with.

[MetroWord]

Originally Posted by FerrariMatthew

If you are considering applying for a job at the central intelligence agency, and many other government agencies related to law enforcement and/or investigations, and with relevant financial duties or access, you can guarantee that your gpa will be relevant and they will ask you for your gpa. If you lie about your gpa, you will either be fired or terminated after employment or you won't get hired to begin with.

Here's the thing. Government employees are known to be lazy inefficient leeches. Not all, but a lot.

[Larry Siegel]

Management consulting, top-level finance (hedge funds, pensions, etc.), top law firms, academia.

[11thHour]

I'm now 17 years out of college, and the positions I'm currently apply for still require not only college transcripts, but high school as well. They also weigh gpa heavily. They don't care this stuff was from half my lifetime ago. It's ridiculous.

[city living]

Originally Posted by joe from dayton

Professors have terminal degrees, which you can't get with Cs. There is no such thing as a prof with a poor GPA.

But they might have a BA/BS with a poor GPA, which they would've had to work around in order to get into their graduate programs. My MS degree was about 100x easier than my BS degree so I don't always put stock in graduate GPAs, which are often times inflated anyway.

The place that I work at now asked for my GPA. I don't know if they really cared or not because many places just seem to care about whether or not you're licensed.

[Dd714]

Just as everyone says, no one cares.

Some government jobs may want to record it just as part of the beurocratic hiring process, but I doubt even they care...and if one is working for the government then likely one's grades aren't good to begin with.