"Unsatisfactory" on transcript

So I fucked up royally this semester. My GPA was fine, but I somehow managed to get a U in a course. How bad does this look during recruiting? I know most banks don't ask for an unofficial transcript, but for the ones that do- how bad is this? Planning on retaking it next year, and hopefully getting an A.

4 Comments
 
Best Response

First of all:

1) How far into your studies are you? 2) What's your overall GPA?

In my very first semester of college, I got a C (about 60%, I studied outside the US, don't know if this is the same as your grading). Luckily over the subsequent years I could boost my GPA, and ended up graduating with a high enough average to get internship/grad role interviews at several BB IBs, corp finance at the Big4, and one of the major management consulting firms.

My point is, if you can still carry a good GPA you should be fine. The annoying thing with my situation was that it was right at the top of my transcript (literally the first entry they saw was a C) and it got brought up at interviews all the time. Luckily, I leveraged this into a behavioural answer: basically talking about how starting college had been overwhelming, temptation to party was high, didn't quite anticipate the workload etc, but after the first semester I realised what was expected of me and nailed my subsequent classes. They always seemed to like that.

 

Again, not too familiar with the US system, but I've heard people say a 3.5 and above is good enough for IB. I think you'll be fine.

 

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