Cumulative Transfer GPA on Resume

I spent my freshman year at a top STEM school studying a STEM subject, but I wanted to work in finance, so I transferred to a top-20 target school. I finished my degree in finance and math with a 3.6 GPA, and I'm working in quant investing right now. My GPA at my old school was a 3.9 (I really hustled to make the transfer happen and grading was easier imo). Lately I've been listing my education on my resume as:

XYZ University
- ...
- 3.8 (Majors GPA), 3.7 (Undergraduate GPA)
- ...
- Transferred from ABC University

Do you think this is fine or should I separate it?
From my perspective, my current employer never asked for my transcript (if they did I would just turn in both in one document), I haven't been questioned about how I've presented it in an interview, my school's career center doesn't have anything online regarding this topic, and I also know of other students who transferred from CCs doing the same (which I think is bogus). I'm only asking, because I was once called out by a quant for my 3.6 being low, and I really don't think quants understand the grade deflation at my school; we're just like Wharton, perhaps tougher given our smaller class sizes. I also think it's unfair people will just completely overlook an entire year of hard work which I didn't have a chance to make up for at my new school when I did list them separately.

Also I noticed UNC's career center is perfectly fine with students doing this (https://careers.unc.edu/sites/careers.unc.edu/fil…)

 
Best Response

Copying and pasting my comment from the original topic - there's really no need to open up several:

I don't think I can make it clear enough that you do not have a 4.0 at your new school. You have a 0.0. Whichever admissions counselor/student outreach employee etc. was just making a metaphorical point that you have a clean slate: the bottom line = 0.00/4.00.


You don't have a 4.0 - grade points accrue. Putting a 4.0 on your application would be a bad decision. I wouldn't call it a bald-faced lie, but it is definitely not accurate and there's a high chance anyone discovering you don't have a GPA yet would view it as an outright lie. The way I see it you have a few options. 1. a) Only list your current school, leave off GPA entirely. b) Only list your current school, list GPA as "N/A" c) List the GPA as a 0.00 if it's online application demanding an actual number 2. List community college with your GPA assigned to it, and list your current school without GPA or N/A

If you list your current school with a 3.75 GPA you could get away with it since technically your cumulative college GPA is a 3.75, but I'd be shocked if you didn't have to submit a transcript of some sort. If your application/resume GPA doesn't match the one on your transcript and someone notices, expect to be dinged heavily. I would say you should just be 100% up front and honest about it. Putting in the work to get good grades at a community college and transfer to a semi-target isn't something to be ashamed of - anyone who dings you for that probably wouldn't be someone you would work well with anyway. If you talked to an MD you should let HR know and explain your situation so you make it through the resume screen, but if anyone digs even a little into a 4.0 you're likely to just have your application thrown out.

 

You probably have a shot - just come up with a convincing narrative about why your sophomore year sucked, and don't let it be "Georgetown was way harder and it took me a year to figure that out". Maybe grandma got hit by a bus, maybe some other hugely distracting life event occurred, etc etc. As compared to the rest of the data, it definitely appears to be an aberration.

 

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