Had a bad GPA but now changing major

I started off at UC Berkeley as a Math major but I did terribly and I didn't enjoy any of my classes. Now at the end of my sophomore year, I have a GPA of 2.8. I realized I was doing my major for the wrong reasons, and I am changing my major to Economics. I have done well in the economics classes I have taken. However, when I submit my GPA to companies in the fall, it will look like I have a bad GPA in economics. How do I explain my major change? I am confident I can do well in my classes in the fall because I will actually enjoy my classes. For additional information, I am interning at IBM as a business intern this summer and last summer after freshman year I had an accounting internship at a small accounting firm. In the future I really want to work in consulting (McKinsey,Bain, BCG, Accenture, etc), but I am seriously willing to take any job that will help me get there.

Questions
1.) Are there any companies that don't look at GPA as a major factor? I've heard that applying internationally helps your chances. is this true? heard the same for PWM jobs.
2.) Where in the application process do I note my change in major? My cover letter?
3.) What can I do to improve my changes for OCR? I really just want to score an interview, but sometimes that feels like the hardest part.

 
Best Response
bezerkley:

I started off at UC Berkeley as a Math major but I did terribly and I didn't enjoy any of my classes. Now at the end of my sophomore year, I have a GPA of 2.8. I realized I was doing my major for the wrong reasons, and I am changing my major to Economics. I have done well in the economics classes I have taken. However, when I submit my GPA to companies in the fall, it will look like I have a bad GPA in economics. How do I explain my major change? I am confident I can do well in my classes in the fall because I will actually enjoy my classes. For additional information, I am interning at IBM as a business intern this summer and last summer after freshman year I had an accounting internship at a small accounting firm. In the future I really want to work in consulting (McKinsey,Bain, BCG, Accenture, etc), but I am seriously willing to take any job that will help me get there.

Questions
1.) Are there any companies that don't look at GPA as a major factor? I've heard that applying internationally helps your chances. is this true? heard the same for PWM jobs.
2.) Where in the application process do I note my change in major? My cover letter?
3.) What can I do to improve my changes for OCR? I really just want to score an interview, but sometimes that feels like the hardest part.

1.) GPA matters, especially for internships and your first job coming out of college. The more competitive/selective the firm, the more that GPA becomes an important factor (to get your foot in the door). I am not in consulting, but from what I have heard from my peers in the industry, the top-3 consulting firms (McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group) all have a pretty firm GPA cut-off of 3.5 (and that is just to have your resume not filtered out during the initial resume screen, it does not guarantee in any way that you will actually get an interview). The same goes for investment banking and other top finance jobs. I'm sorry that I don't have any better news for you, but that is just the way the industry is...

In order to get in with a lower GPA, I would imagine that you are going to have to go beyond the traditional recruiting channels (e.g. having connections through family, possibly through some major networking, etc.) or go to a much smaller, lesser known firm, gain some experience and attempt to lateral to a top firm (this will be challenging, but not impossible) or try to get into a good business school and get a second shot at recruiting (better odds).

I used to have a good friend (we have drifted apart over the years) who worked at one of the "lesser" consulting firms after undergrad, got into HBS (she got lucky in the admissions process, since I don't think she was quite HBS caliber, more like Kellogg or Fuqua, but I digress) and then got offers from top consulting firms (McKinsey et al) but turned them all down to go to Goldman Sachs and is now a VP in IBD. This was pre-2007, though, so the hiring landscape has changed dramatically since then.

2.) Don't waste too much time on the cover letter. Note a separate "major GPA" on your resume that only includes grades from your Econ classes.

3.) Networking. Networking. Networking. Try to leverage any of the alumni connections you may have and try to get someone at a prospective firm to like you and be willing to go to bat for you when internship recruiting/hiring decisions are made.

Good luck.

 

The only place GPA doesn't matter is your dad's company. And you don't need to indicate a change in major on your resume/cover letter. Also, don't bring it up in your interview unless you are specifically asked about it - e.g. you changed from history to econ because you hated history; turns out your interviewer was a history major.

 

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