Mediocre GPA due to hard major - how to be more competitive?
I'm a current (computational) engineering + finance major (a program at our school), and within my university (semi-target) it is well known that our engineer program is notorious for tough classes and unfavorable GPAs. While my finance/business courses help balance these out, my gpa is still fairly mediocre/bad (think 3.4-3.5ish). I also don't qualify for diversity.
I managed to secure an okay position at an okay firm. Its a banking job at a fairly mediocre MM bank and while I'm grateful for getting it at all, I think it was pretty clear that having a bad gpa gated me from going for better opportunities, and I am very worried that it might do so again for FT recruiting.
I will be looking to improve my gpa, but because of my program, there are still tough engineering classes to come, so there's no real guarantee for it.
Folks, do you all have any tips on making myself a more attractive candidate?
If you have a job you're fine. Just give it 100% at your internship and make sure you secure that return offer - it's not hard to get return offers in IB, you have to mess up or be a seriously bad culture fit to not get one.
And honestly this situation is why people on here get advised to drop these impossible double majors and just do finance, you don't get rewarded for it. GPA will always be the main filter, and someone with a 3.8 in medieval basketweaving is going to get more looks than a 3.2 from quantum physics. One thing you can do if you haven't already is to put your finance GPA beside your main GPA to make it clear you're not getting Cs in those classes.
If you have time for it, a spring IB/PE internship at a local boutique would add something to your resume (10-20 hours a week) but with the double major that may be a bad idea. Stuff like extracurriculars are good to talk about but don't really swing the pendulum vs. a low GPA.
Just wondering what range of firms you ended up in
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