Grades Vs. Getting A Job

Question

We had a presentation today by our career office. One of the counselor's was impressing upon us the importance of time management and prioritizing. Ultimately he said, it comes down to the fact that you can't do everything.

He said, "Do you want A's, or do you want to get "A" job." 

That's pretty much the way it seems to me, I've picked two classes that I'm trying to get A's in, the rest I'm happy to coast by with B's to free up time for recruiting, networking etc...

Thoughts?

Xeo78 · Answer

Getting a job should always be top priority. Ask yourself - would you rather get that great job and a B+ or not get that job and get an A- ?

Grades are not going to matter, especially not down the road. Your first job WILL matter.

Just my 2 cents.

GMATT73 · Answer

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't our resume look something like this:

Johnny Doe
Contact details

XYZ Business School + date of graduation
Certificates, Clubs and Organizations, including positions held

Pre MBA job #1

Job #2...

I have never seen anybody include their GPA on their resume, never.


As for A's vs. getting "A" job, heck I'm just trying to "pass" and get a job. Neverthess, still putting more effort into the career search process. Up until the past few nights, I was skimping a little bit on the social activities, but all that is about to change.

johnnyx9 · Answer

Yeah I agree, the only thing is that some industries grades might matter, like consulting for instance they sometimes ask about your GPA. Even if companies don't ask, it would be nice to have some sort of scholarly award listed under your school. For instance if a company comes to campus and they need to pick twenty resumes out of fifty people that applied, maybe the guy who has, "Received Cornell Scholar Award" or whatever award a particular school gives out, will have a slight edge on other people. Emphasis on slight, but I've heard that some consulting firms' attitude is basically "Okay we don't care about your work experience, it's all on your resume and looks fine, tell us about the top part of your resume and the bottom part" i.e. the top part being what you've been up to in business school, and the bottom part what your outside interests are.

Guess what I"m saying is a job is definitely top priority, but grades can be important depending on industry or how you do relative to peers.

riverripper · Answer

When I was at MIT last week I actually sat in during a conversation with a few second years talking about the recruiting they are going through right now. They also noted that even with grade disclosure most companies never even ask for GPAs. They said it seems like companies actually cared more about GMAT than GPA, pointed out that some consulting companies dont seem to invite people with below 700-720 GMATs to interview. It was explained to me that a lot of people have very similar GPAs because a lot of profs give out 90% Bs, and only a handful of A's and C's.

OasisNYK · Answer

Unfortunately its not that easy at Darden - yes jobs are more important, but if you ignore your studies and think you can coast to a B I think you will find yourself in trouble. I wish I had a little more time to devote to the career stuff and maybe I should pay less attention to class but this program is pretty demanding.

johnnyx9 · Answer

I think GMAT does come up more often with recruiters in fields like i-banking and consulting. I have a friend who went for an informational interview at Goldman -- which is supposed to be a low-key sort of information gathering interview FOR THE STUDENT -- but right away the Goldman person started grilling my friend, asking about GMAT, undergrad GPA, midterm grade in finance.

GMATT73 · Answer

I see that as clear indication of the high-turnover (cutthroat) culture at GS. No thanks, I'd rather settle for half the salary and enjoy my work enviornment among peers who actually respect each other. 

Incidentally, I had dinner with a group of people last Friday, one of whom scored a 770 on the GMAT, and he was probably the most antisocial person in the program. The guy even has the audacity to undermine our prof's lectures, citing clearly unrelated and overly esoteric BS. 

Back to the topic at hand, I've had several informational interviews with the entire gamut of consulting firms; from a boutique start-up to the standard "flesh peddlers" and three out of the "big four." Not once did anybody ask about GMAT scores or undergrad/MBA GPAs. In fact, what they really wanted to know was how familiar I was with their core competencies and frameworks, who their clients were, and if I knew any alumni at the firm. Perhaps the academic questions will arise when I formally begin the interview process this week.

pelihu · Answer

I've met with all of the big banks (including GS) and for the most part, GMAT and GPA have not come up directly, but they reference them indirectly. Several firms have said things like "we recruit for high mental horsepower" and "we go after pure athletes". Sometimes it's brought up in the negative, as in "you don't have to a 750 GMAT to land an interview", implying that it would be nice if you did. I'm quite certain that all of the big investment banks, and some of the top consulting firms will consider GMAT when setting their interview schedules. I do not know how it might factor into the final decisions.

I think of it like this. There's a direct relationship between the selectivity of a firm and the selectivity of a school. For example, most firms probably never bring up GMAT when they are recruiting at Harvard, because most firms would be happy to hire most anybody from there. At a lesser school (pretty much all of them) a highly selective firm will limit their interview list through various means, including GMAT, past experience, etc. Here at Darden (just my observations), it seem like most general management firms are happy to hire all comers. I think it's pretty clear that GMAT will be a major factor with the big 3 consulting firms, and perhaps with a couple others as well (Booz Allen requested resumes before selecting a close list for a dinner). GMAT will probably be a factor with maybe 5-7 of the most selective IB recruiters.

I guess it's pretty straightforward. If a firm is recruiting at schools around the country, they well be more lax at highly selective schools, and more selective at less competitive schools.

lepium · Answer

I was actually discussing this with a 2nd year a few minutes ago. She said that last year after the recruiting process, they checked with all section-mates how many people had been asked for their grades. Out of 90 people (all of them going for an average of 10+ interviews each) only 5 had been asked to disclose grades at at least one interview.

About GMAT, it's just not there in the resumes I've seen. 

L.

pelihu · Answer

I'm not surprised at all that this is the case at Harvard. It's probably true (to a lesser extent) at other ultra-elites. It's less true at elites; the official policy of the career center here is to list your GMAT on your resume if it is 700+. This leads to the prevailing thought that if you don't have your GPA on your resume (just talking about here at Darden), then it is below 700. And GPA and GMAT almost certainly weigh heavily for top firms recruiting at clusters below elite.

rhyme · Answer

People here list GMAT. 

As for GPA, hah! Thank you Grade Non Disclosure!!!

aaudetat · Answer

a friend of mine here is working the wall st thing. he was asked to put his  SAT SCORE   on something....before doing an info interview...you all is nuts.

3underscore · Answer

Goldman and Lehman have both asked SAT's at points (Goldman ask it on their app, Lehman ask it for some invite only stuff).

As someone who doesn't even have a SAT, I don't have a problem with it bar the fact my form looks decidedly empty.

I do think there is a very big difference between IBD and FID/Equities across banks, because I haven't heard a single reference to the mental capacity of anyone. Typically the attitude is "you are all smart. We want people that we think will fit with us, and not annoy the **** out of us in a12 hour day".

Which sounds akin to the mythical fit of less than 12 months ago...

pelihu · Answer

I'm 99.98% sure that McKinsey asks for SAT and all other standardized test scores (GRE, LSAT, etc.) on their application. I think BCG and Bain have the same policy, so it's not just the banks; it's more an indication of how selective a firm is.

Regarding grade non-disclosure, we have that here as well, though I think the implementation varies from school to school. The policy here is that recruiters cannot request grade information from the school; and I think they are not allowed to use GPA as a factor in setting their interview list. However, once you go into an interview they can (and all the banks do) ask for your grades in 3-4 key courses like accounting, finance, etc. It's up to the student whether he/she decides to share this information, but 2Ys have told me that most banks will not invite those that decline for 2nd round interviews. I don't know this to be 100% true (I'm sure it varies by firm), but again the most selective firms will most certainly not respond positively.

GMATT73 · Answer

The only other standardized test I ever sat for besides the GMAT was the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test- three times I might add) so I doubt I'll be doing any  career imprinting  at a top tier firm. 

Anybody received any offers yet? November is usually when the early round decisions begin.

aaudetat · Answer

FY interviewing doesn't start till Jan 7....at least, on-campus. Off-campus is obviously whenever you and the firm feel like it.

uh...someone wanna hire me??

pelihu · Answer

Yeah, it's the same here. I believe there is some official rule that companies that recruit on campus must follow the official schedule. For us, resume drops are in December and closed lists are announced over winter break. After that, there's some period of time to bid for interview slots (all companies that come on campus must allot 25-33% of their slots to bids by students). I think interviews actually start around 1/14, with the banks coming first, and other firms spread out through the end of the month. As I understand it, the banks like to conduct their first rounds, have 2nd round the same evening or the next day, and give out offers later that same day (1-2 days total). They really like to lock people up before other companies have a shot. On the other hand, it's probably good for students as well because banking jobs tend to be tougher to get, so people who whiff on banking still have chances to interview with other companies.

This above only applies to companies that recruit on-campus. I have heard of some people getting offers off-campus at conferences and the like. A guy in my learning team with an engineering background has received 2 offers already - but they were engineering type jobs and not the general management positions he's looking for. As he described it to me, they gave him kind of low-ball offers that weren't necessarily tailored to MBA grads. It sounds like these early-offers are a type of strategy by HR departments to lock in candidates before the students have a chance to fully consider the market, kind of playing on the fear of not getting a job. I guess that kind of makes their strategy similar to the one employed by banks.

squali83 · Answer

I have been lucky enough to receive an internship offer from Pepsi in Purchase, NY this summer for a marketing/brand internship. It feels nice to have the pressure alleviated from me and now I can kick back and concentrate on school. As for the top programs not interviewing till after break I think that is why it is important for us (<top 20 schools) to get the attention of the big companies now. Because after Christmas they will be consumed with the higher ranked programs.

ishcabibble · Answer

Question: Maybe the OSU PT MBA is weird, but in order to graduate, you have to have not only at least a 3.0 overall, but at least 3.0 in every class you took. Is this true at other schools? 

Maybe they're trying to override the "Do you want A's, or do you want to get "A" job." mentality by making sure that everyone who graduates did well.

Grades Vs. Getting A Job

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards