bad grades after offer

so i was wondering what the "contingent upon no deterioration of academic performance" could most likely mean? Do you guys think the bank will take away the offer if you don't pass a class. For example, I know someone who got a D and I got a NP(no pass) in a tough non major class that we both didn't care about, just decided to take cause it might be helpful. Should I worry about the NP and should my friend worry about his D and tell the bank before we graduate in June. I think the bank will request a transcript after graduation but not sure. What would your banks do and what steps do you guys think we should take. Thanks!

 

Little. If you fail every class and barely graduate with a 2.0 than that will raise eyebrows. If you had a 3.5 and got a bunch of Cs your last semester that will probably knock you down to 3.2 or 3.3 and you will be fine. But through the course of training and your starting days on the job it can give them a good reason to fire you if they think you're a total douche.

 

I tanked my GPA from a 3.97 to a 3.64 (I think) during my last year of school. When you think about the solid years of As supporting that 3.97, you'll understand how bad my grades were in my final year.

I actually attempted to publicly fail one class to make a point to a certain professor, but he was so unsettled by the idea of his former star pupil failing that he gave me a courtesy C-. My classmates were amused. The bank did request a final transcript, and I gave it to them. They didn't care.

Have fun, guys. Tank it as far as you can. You earned it.

 

I'm not worried that much about my grades, I got some pretty crappy ones last semester but there were some genuine reasons for that. Still, I don't intend to bother really making up for it 2nd sem as at the end of the day my scores in everything else have always been excellent so I have "proof" that I'm no dumbass if it ever came to that.

 

Don't let them fall to the point where you bschools admissions can be impacted. There's a huge difference between 3.97 and 3.64 for MisInd. Bschool admissions staff will take GPA into account and notice the big drop in grades you last semester. A .1-.2 drop won't make a difference though.

 

Scott, you're absolutely right. Fortunately, with my GMAT and my crazy life history and my work experience at a bulge bracket, even if I should have to go to b-school I shouldn't have a hard time getting into a top-5 school.

However, my plan is to not go, so b-school's a fallback anyway.

Guys, if you care about b-school, don't tank your grades.

Anyway, Ghosht, it was amazing. Especially since I spent my entire life for the previous three years obsessing over securing every single A in every single class no matter what. (I wasn't the super-smart 4.0; I was the ass-busting 4.0.) I'd stroll into class five minutes late every morning, smile warmly at the prof, fail to turn in the smaller assignments, skip one out of three classes, study three to four hours for each exam (instead of the 20-25 I'd done at one time), and all the professors still loved me. Hell, maybe they understood. I don't know. All I can say, Ghosht, is that it was 100% worth it and I wish I'd slacked off even more.

My goal was to tank it below 3.5, but I didn't realize that many professors were kindly people who actually give you higher grades than you deserve if you're doing poorly. My necessary assumption all those years is that you only ever get exactly what you earn, so if I wanted an A I'd have to aim for 100% accuracy in every class on every assignment. If I'd realized that those kids getting Cs and Ds weren't doing half the work I was, as I assumed... if I'd realized that the C and D kids were doing more like a fifth or an eighth of what I was doing, man, I would have been furious.

But it did feel hellaciously sweet to join them in their slacking. We threw some crazy parties that year, my fiance and I. I think senior year slacking is an experience that no one should miss.

 

You must be half retarded. It seems like you're trying to validate your own intelligence by claiming that you purposely tanked your senior year. My guess is that you're not very bright, and if you study only as much as the average kid at your school, as you did your senior year, you get WAY WAY below average grades. And while you might not currently be planning on Bschool, you have no idea where the market is going to be in three years, and regardless of your other qualifications, your senior year is going to raise some eyebrows. Maybe you'll sneak into a top 5, but there's absolutely no guarantee. Have fun working after Jefferies after you graduate from UCLA business school in 2012.

 
Best Response

Whoa... why the intense hatred here? And I'm not sure you know me or my history on this board -- I have all the quals I need for b-school, if I ever want to go.

I always knew that being entirely certain of making straight A's took exponentially more work than being an "A and B" student. Every class has an expected return and a standard deviation: mu and sigma. It takes a certain normal amount of work to ensure that your mu is an A... but then that sigma may drop you below an A pretty frequently, leaving you with a 3.8 or 3.9, which in my book was not acceptable. This is the shortcoming of the A and B student. They aim for As, but they don't ENSURE them.

I ensured them by doing so much work that my mu was a 97 and my sigma was 3. This took at least double the amount of work required to ensure a 94 mu with a sigma of 5, which would have put me somewhere between a 3.8 and a 3.9 GPA.

This should illustrate how the amount of work to ensure a certain grade elevates exponentially above a certain point. The reason I tanked my GPA was so that I could experience college the way everyone else does. I enjoyed it and benefited from it immensely. Hope this helps.

 

But you really need to stop spreading bad advice and telling people to tank their senior year grades. They matter for business school, not to say anything about PE recruiters.

With regards to your case specifically, how is what you did in college in any way logical? So you tried putting in "double the amount of work" in your first three years of college to guarantee a 3.97, when with half that work you could have had a 3.85 (give or take) for those years? Then, in your senior year, you do nothing and get a 2.5 or whatever you got, thereby dropping your GPA to 3.64. Why not instead put in half the amount of work in the first three years, thereby having a 3.85 GPA, then put in half of the work you put in your first three years during senior year, maybe get a 3.3 that year and end up with a 3.75 total? That seems a hell of a lot more logical (and enjoyable) than what you did.

I don't know your specific background, but quite frankly unless you're a minority or from a top 5 school (HYPSW), you pretty much f**cked yourself for admission to a top business school. Working at a BB is not really that special, and will not guarantee you admission anywhere. But best of luck to you though.

 

Dude, listen: 3.85 wasn't good enough to make me stand out, because the standards are extremely high for people from my school. I knew the 4.0 was the key to Wall Street for me, and it was. It got me the internships (including a summer at GS) while all the 3.9s and 3.85s were languishing. With the 3.97 I had during recruitment season, I then got the job that three hundred kids applied for. I was one of two graduates in my year (me and the valedictorian) to end up in a bulge bracket IBD (though a number did go to ECM, DCM, and boutiques). Once I had my job offer, I could finally let go and relax, and that's what I did. It was perfectly logical to do it my way instead of your way. In fact, if I'd done it your way I'd never have gotten here.

And my credentials for getting into an MBA program have nothing to do with college or with working at a top BB. I have the GMATs, and I have made a sizable name for myself in other areas that are both unusual and (to many people) impressive. I also have a wide network of contacts. They'll at least talk to me... and once somebody talks to me, I'm almost always accepted, being far stronger in person.

So, my friend, I have solid advice based on what I did to rise from a ninth grade dropout to Wall Street. And it doesn't involve genius but simply hard work and knowledge of how to work the system. Who wouldn't want to know? And what advice are you offering to these people who request help? Finally, why do you continue to be so hostile?

 

Average GPA at HBS is 3.64, and total enrollment is approximately 900 per class. I'm going to assume that there are three classes of school and the median GPA for admittance into HBS from each of the three classes is different: 1st tier = top 5 school = HPYSW; 2nd tier = target school (i.e. Duke, Dartmouth, etc.); 3rd tier = random non-targets.

It seems reasonable that 20% of HBS classes will be made up of 1st tier, 60% by second tier, and 20% for third tier. I.e. for the first tier that equates to 180 total kids per class, or about 35 for each of those schools. This seems reasonable as from each of those schools you'll probably have about 25 kids total at HBS with three, four, or five years of work experience, and probably about five kids each with more than 5 years of work experience and less than three years of work experience. This also passes the "smell test", since it's reasonable to conclude that 35 people in any given graduating class from these top-tier schools will at some point in their life enroll in HBS.

Anyway, back to the median GPAs by tier. From tier-1 schools, there will likely be a quarter of the kids who gain admittance with above the overall median GPA (i.e. 3.64+). The other three quarters will have below median GPAs, and I'd guess the median from these schools is about 3.5. From tier 2 schools, you'll likely have half the kids with above median GPAs, and thus the median from these schools will coincide with the overall median, 3.64. From tier 3 non-targets, you'll have 75% with above-median GPAs and 25% with below, so the median GPAs from these schools is probably about 3.8.

Further, in order to really be comfortable that you'd gain admission, I'd like to be at least .1 above the median for my tier of school: so 3.6 from top-tier, 3.75 from 2nd tier, and 3.9 from non-target. Obviously way more things than GPA go into Bschool admissions, but the above analysis should help clarify how much people can slack off senior year given their current GPA and school. Unless Mis Ind is at a top 5 school, she will be in the bottom half of the GPA pool for the applicants from her school, and will need great work experience etc. to have a shot at HBS (or really any top-5 business school, though the GPA cutoffs I think are about .1 lower for Stanford, Wharton, etc.). Hope the was helpful.

 

I haven't read all of your post -- too much nonsense, not enough time; you'll have to forgive me. But I did come from a top five undergrad b-school. I'm also a world karate champion, a well-published academic poet who was also the youngest-ever recipient of a grant from the Academy of American Poets, and I typically test either perfect or extremely close to perfect on every standardized test I ever take (PSATs, Iowas, SATs, ACTs, etc.) I interview extremely well and inspire enthusiasm in most interviewers I speak to.

If I want to go at all, I'm going to either my first or second choice b-school. With all due respect, it's how my life works.

 

is fine. By top 5, I assume she went to Wharton, UVA, UMich, Berkeley, Cornell or UT. If she has a 3.64, >700 GMAT, she's fine. Plus being female and having BB will help her. She's also got the "wow" factor that schools like H/S obsess over of coming from a difficult background and making a way for herself. The other things mentioned above will only help.

I'm not trying to be rude, but she probably has a better shot than you since you're the typical HBS/Wharton applicant. Top 5 school, white male, BB. Not to say that isn't impressive, but doesn't have any "Wow" qualities.

 

Hopefully I won't even have to trouble myself, though. At this point, if I have to go back to b-school and re-buy the same old textbooks and sit through redundant classes with the same boring cookie-cutter people (just a few years older), I'll consider it a personal failure.

 

isn't really whether or not Mis Ind will be fine. She went to a "second-tier" school (as I describe above), and thus has a GPA right around the median of people from her school who are admitted to HBS or Stanford. She might very well have a good chance at getting into one of those schools despite her mediocre GPA, as she's a woman and comes from a disadvantaged background (but i'm not really impressed about her BB experience, GMAT, or interviewing skills - pretty much everyone has those qualifications at HBS or Stanford. And don't even get me started on her karate skills - noone cares and qute frankly it will make interviewers think you're a giant tool).

My point is that she needs to stop telling people to tank their senior year grades. Not everyone is fortunate to have a vagina or darker skin tone, and thus for people who are white males, you'd better not let your GPAs fall below the cutoffs I describe above.

 

Of course interviewers think I'm a giant tool (that's why I've worked for two BBs and a MM), and they certaily don't care that I spent my life from age nine to nineteen working through a brutal hierarchy and singlemindedly sacrificing everything towards a single incredibly high goal that I eventually achieved... while still maintaining social skills and book smarts well above the average candidate they spoke to. That's not relevant at all, now is it?

 

From what I understand its pretty much a given.

Think about it, your junior year you had more or less bullshit classes, your senior year you are taking the hardest classes. Add to that the fact that you are busy with the whole recruiting effort, and your GPA tanks.

I mean as long as you graduate on time, thats all that matters, because even if you get all CS/Ds, your gpa will only fall by .1-.2 or so since you have so many courses under your belt.

As far as rescinding offers, I never heard of anyone whose offer got rescinded who got an offer and graduated on time.

Haters in 3,2,1...


Disclaimer: The post above has been made by someone who is not currently employed in IBD, and has not had an interview yet...

 

most banks don't actually pull your resume/check your gpa period. this includes both the period before an offer is made and the period after.

after getting my offer in october of my senior year, i literally went on cruise control and got horrible grades my last semester. not horrible enough that i couldn't go to a top b-school if i wanted to, but horrible enough that i went from a 3.95 to a 3.6 or so.

additionally, from what i've seen, most banks also don't follow through on the drug testing portion of the employment process either. i personally had nothing to worry about in this regard, but at no point was i ever asked to supply, blood, urine, or hair samples.

 

if the offer was rescinded as long as you graduate. First, that would screw up their staffing. Second, it happens to pretty-much everyone so that would be a lot of follow-up checking. Finally, and most important, some schools don't even give out grades, Brown for instance or a lot of MBA programs - so it doesn't make sense for the banks to investigate your year-end grades when some of their new employees don't have grades at all.

 

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