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Graduate with Bad Grades or Repeat a Year?

Posted by Cliff on from the student-dilemmas dept.

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?"

4 of 277 comments (clear)

  1. Graduate. by Zack · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  2. Large companies are flexible on GPA ... by AHumbleOpinion · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  3. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Informative

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  4. Re:Yes. by Rakishi · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.