The single biggest screening tool used in Wall Street recruiting is the legendary GPA. Get yourself a 3.8 at a target school, a decent internship or two, and you're all but guaranteed the interview.
But is the candidate who pulled A's in Marketing and Greek Mythology really going to be a better banker than the kid who got B's in these classes (but outperformed in Finance coursework) because he didn't give a sh*t?
If you asked me, I'd prefer to read a 150 word description about the candidate rather than rely on their GPA (past a certain threshold) in making an assessment on who I want to interview. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've almost noticed a "sweet spot" in GPA where the most successful candidates come from (typically somewhere from 3.3-3.7) and people below - or even above - that level are typically a toss-up.
That's not to say a higher GPA is bad, but, more often than not, grade point average is not the best indicator of success due to grade-padding, rigor of coursework, and motivation of the student.
I'm just an ignorant kid who had a sub-par GPA, so I'm no authority. But... thoughts?
I don't think many people would disagree with you.
But when you're receiving thousands or tends of thousands of applications in a particular recruitment cycle, what else are you gonna do???
GPA, with no other information, is highly valuable.
Those 3.3s that actually get recruited tend to have a lot of other stuff going for them. Don't forget that they are likely the 99th percentile of 3.3s. Not so of higher GPAs.
I cant wait to hear Flake's opinion on the op's writing style.
i always round my gpa 0.5 higher, so i got no problem
150 word descriptions?.......... For 10,000 applicants that 1,500,000 words. Banks should hire you to do nothing but reading these descriptions.
Most successful candidates come from 3.3-3.7 range........ that's because a lot more people fall in this range than those who fall in the 3.7-4.0 range. Like PetEng pointed out, if you take a 4.0 and a 3.5 side by side, everything else being equal, the 4.0 has a better chance of being successful. The chance might not be significantly higher, but with the lack of information, I would take the 4.0.
I wouldn't, I would question if the 4.0 can strive in our social environment. What I observed the 4.0 Math/Engineering/CS major is usually socially inept and hard to get along with, but that's just me.
For example, I have a 4.0 math major who is my Physics Lab partner, she treats me like crap and says shit a normal person wouldn't be stupid enough to say in the first place, but she blows the professors(metaphorically) so she gets an A. I would also question her IQ and work ethic, but that's a different story. The point is don't judge some one by just GPA; furthermore, I have a question for people who actually conduct interviews on this website how informed about the real world was the 4.0 student vs the ~3.0-3.7 student? Because I would bet big the the student in the range listed above would slaughter the 4.0 in that respect.
Let's be honest, any who says a 4.0 is a good indicator of work ethic/IQ is on crack or needs to get their heads examined. The kids with 4.0's are generally robots who are socially inept as fuck and didn't challenge themselves hard enough(read took bull shit classes). If you get a 4.0 in college then your school didn't do you a favor and your skills weren't tested, period. BTW her best quote - in intro to abstract (relatively easy class(canas15 don't -1 be
I wouldn't, I would question if the 4.0 can strive in our social environment. What I observed the 4.0 Math/Engineering/CS major is usually socially inept and hard to get along with, but that's just me.
For example, I have a 4.0 math major who is my Physics Lab partner, she treats me like crap and says shit a normal person wouldn't be stupid enough to say in the first place, but she blows the professors(metaphorically) so she gets an A. I would also question her IQ and work ethic, but that's a different story. The point is don't judge some one by just GPA; furthermore, I have a question for people who actually conduct interviews on this website how informed about the real world was the 4.0 student vs the ~3.0-3.7 student? Because I would bet big the the student in the range listed above would slaughter the 4.0 in that respect.
Let's be honest, any who says a 4.0 is a good indicator of work ethic/IQ is on crack or needs to get their heads examined. The kids with 4.0's are generally robots who are socially inept as fuck and didn't challenge themselves hard enough(read took bull shit classes). If you get a 4.0 in college then your school didn't do you a favor and your skills weren't tested, period. BTW her best quote - in intro to abstract (relatively easy class(canas15 don't -1 be
When I was in college my GPA suffered because I worked 60 hours a week to pay for out of state tuition. I would consider myself just as successful or even more so than anyone that had a 3.8 or higher.
Learn to sell yourself and get yourself in front of the right people and GPA won't matter.
I'd say lucking into finding this website 2 years ago was more important in terms of getting a job in investment banking than my high gpa.
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High GPA usually means that you are either smart or hardworking - both qualities are needed to succeed in banking. That's why the metric is used to screen for interviews. Interviews are then used to weed out social retards.
If you're a hustler, you know what you want, have a little talent for what you want, and are of average intellegence you can make it in any field within finance, dont let anybody tell you otherwise. Im sure Mr. Braverman and some similar guys who are a little older will tell you the same.
I think that GPA is way overrated, and that this obsession with GPA is actually detrimental to students.
It encourages students to avoid challenging courses in favor of easier courses. I knew a kid who spent his college years taking every single bullshit course the school had to offer and bragged about his 3.8 (in an easy major to top it off). That shit makes me sick and I hope that no employer gives him priority over a 3.3 in a respectable major.
I think that generally GPA is an acceptable screening tool, kind of like the SATs. As nice as it'd be to interview every single candidate, you just don't have the time to do that when you have 1,000 applications for 50 positions. But I feel that the difference between a 3.9 and a 3.7 is negligible. Yes a 3.9 is a lot harder to get than a 3.7 given that all else is equal, but those numbers just don't reveal enough about the candidate without more information such as major, course selection, extracurricular activities (if a 3.6 guy is a D1 track & field runner while the 3.9 doesn't do shit outside of school, then the 3.9 is no better than the 3.6 based off that info alone), etc.
So basically I think that too much emphasis is placed on GPA. Having a minimum cutoff of a 3.0 GPA is fine with me, but when you see 3.5 minimum cutoffs, I just think that's bullshit. Grades just reflect how much you cared about them. If you can test well, then you can get As (assuming you're not an English major or something, in which case you have to know how to read/write). A lot of people test well but have no conceptual understanding of anything they learn (ie. they rote memorize). A lot of people can't figure out how to do their homework (or they're lazy) so they go to office hours every week and have the professor basically give them the answers.
We can whine about GPA and how much it's relevant or not relevant, but at the end of the day theres a big difference between a 4.0 and a 3.5 and everyone knows that. True, everyone has their own story and as long as you can sell yourself it may not matter as much but when I'm screening resumes and I see a 4.0 vs a 3.5 with the same experience / background who do you think I'm more intrigued by?
Granted if its a Communications major vs an EE major ...
I hate to make this generalization but the dumbest people I know actually had the most outstanding GPAs. That was the motivation behind the post in the first place. Given that classes don't really teach you what you'll be doing at your job, (isn't that sad?) how well you do in them just doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me in gauging future success.
Sure it gives a measure of how much bullshit you can handle at once, which is why I'd advocate for GPA being useful up to a certain threshold (say, 3.5)
Haha, I would have to say the smartest people I know by far have the most outstanding GPAs. It's definitely true that there are the dumbasses that somehow have really good grades, but I would say they are the exception, not the rule. True that classes dont really prepare you for work unless youre into programming or engineering, but the correlation between grades and success is definitely positive in general.
Lol this is all BS IMO. Of course GPA doesn't determine how smart someone is and a 3.7 isn't that much different from a 4.0 (even though a 4.0 would be monstrously harder to get). The real fact of the matter is that despite how good you interview, or how competent you are, its always the rich guys who get in with networking/banker dads anyway. At least GPA is neutralizer for Midwestern kids like myself and the only guys I know with a gpa 3.8+ are all gunning for banking and have been working hard forever to get in the industry so the cutoff at 3.5 does make sense. Honestly given how type A this entire forum is I feel like everyone would agree that assessment centers would be kickass granted they tested as hard as the CFA to weed people out. I think that would be a lot fairer determinant of success (time spent practicing for it) than GPA or Networking
And if business schools weren't such a joke, than they would require finance majors to take math until the very minimum calc II while encouraging Linear Algebra, Diff EQ and Financial Mathematics. Oh well thats why Quantitative Econ/math majors rape at Asset Management at least
The problem with this theory is that the socially adept, above average IQ kids end up beating out the way smarter socially subaverage folks in the non-academic world.
The Hardcore nerds don't have close to 4.0's since they take harder classes to end up in academia. Of course you have geniuses but the vast majority of people 3.8+ are people who put serious effort into it. If one is socially adept, might have been very popular in high school, but prefers to spend time focusing on getting into finance rather than socializing/partying in college and gets a 4.0, who would you rather choose? I just get the impression that people with high gpa's "want it more" but I can only tell from my non target midwestern school so what do I know
I think it speaks volumes about a person when they have the mental capacity to get As in course like "Marketing and Greek Mythology" yet don't because "they don't give a shit'.
The importance of your gpa is no secret. Whether or not it correlates with future success is ultimately irrelevant and should absolutely not be used as an excuse for performing poorly.
I could not agree more about this. Is your first year as an analyst filled with making great financial predictions or reviewing and formatting work? If you can't get a high GPA in easy classes I think it shows that you don't give a shit or take pride in your work.
I also think that the majority of posters on this site are from non-targets. If you want a job you should work at promoting your strengths and answer questions before they come up. A high GPA is like a shield that says "I preform at the highest level compared to my peers".
If have yet to encounter any classes in undergrad that couldn't be solved by "More Work". It's not a hard concept to grasp that you might need to read things second, third, or fourth times.
Funnily enough, I find that the classes I've taken which don't appear to be vulnerable to the More Work plan of attack for the most part seem to be the bullshit classes that most people here would spit on. Like Philosophy. Or Literature.
If a teacher gave me a bullshit assignment that I thought was worthless I wouldn't do it. Their job is to teach me and if they aren't doing a good job I'll disengage from the class. It hurts my GPA but doesn't change what I learn. After all, isn't learning the point of college?
I have no problem doing bitch work for my employer because that is what they're paying me for. I knew that going in and am fine with it. But don't tell me that GPA signals how hard I'll work on the job. That is a discredit to everyone who believes that college is about more than getting A's.
In IBD?
I'd probably agree with you. I fall in the 3.8+ category, and I got so bored with banking this past summer that I turned down my offer to do something else full time. The other guy I know who jumped ship (He's actually going into academia instead of working) was also a 4.0 in a STEM subject. I'll be honest: I was just way too much of a vagina to spend two years doing something that didn't seem all that profound. I'd characterize myself as one of those annoying dipshits who took a couple of difficult math/engineering classes, did well, and so believe all things to be beneath me, which will in all likelihood lead me to a life as a Post-Doc making $15,000/year.
Anyway, all things being equal, you need a mix of GPA's, I'd say. If you take a 3.8+, you could swing and miss (me), or you could get a bomb-ass employee. Then, you need the 3.5's to ensure that you have some people who are actually going to give a shit.
//tongue-in-cheek //Monkeying Around
Banks and other institutions can afford to screen for high GPAs simply because they get inundated with applicants and can thus seek out the 'brightest' among an applicant pool. Of course GPAs might reflect one's work ethic and perhaps determination, but it certainly does not reflect intelligence. As much as your professor would like you to believe otherwise, being able to perform well on exams does not necessarily imply effective understanding of concepts. I myself used to resort to seeking out 10+ years of past exams to extract patterns in order to prepare for the predictable. Hence, there is little doubt in my mind that there exists a rather weak positive correlation between between GPA and earnings potential within the financial services industry.
Case in point- George Soros: Middling grades while at LSE, started off selling purses in the streets of London upon graduation and cold snail mailed Hungarian bankers in the UK to break into the industry. Solely based on Soros' philosophical theory of reflexivity and open society it becomes more than apparent that he has far more intellectual horsepower than most of his competitors, which says a lot in an industry tends to attract some of the brightest individuals.
It's already been said in this thread, but if you're a resume screener it's really simple - you set the cutoff for interviews at the school you're looking at as something like 3.5. Then you interview the ten strongest people from that category (so everybody with a 3.9+ in a difficult major will prob get the interview no matter what, but for the rest a 0.1 higher GPA buys you a few points - a really good internship buys you much more points).
Then when you do the interview, it's possible you have a few favorite candidates, but 80%-90% of it comes down to how they interview.
I'm a student so what do I know, but this just makes sense to me
It's been my experience going through the process that GPA is a disqualifier but not a strong qualifier. I've found it almost means nothing if you have above a 3.5 or so. Things like your internship experience and especially whether you play a sport or not (athletes are shoo-ins in S&T) is the determining factor, not GPA. That being said, it'll definitely be harder to get that interview if it's too low. Then, once you've got the interview, it's almost completely irrelevant, whereas your experience and extracurriculars are not.
If you had to choose between having a 3.8-4.0 and having no activities that show your interest vs. a 3.5, a sport, and/or a solid internship, obviously the 3.5 candidate is going to do better.
There is no doubt a high GPA helps you get noticed and will get you through the door to an interview in many cases; however, I agree with others here that it has little correlation with intelligence and future success.
My own story is proof of this. I definitely do not meet a 3.5 cutoff (think 3.2-3.3), yet I have been able to find internships in business development with a large global oil and gas company, sales and trading with a big 5 Canadian bank, and now this summer in investment banking with a BB firm. When you have a low GPA you have to work much harder to sell yourself. I have also never had an interview where I haven't been interrogated about my GPA; so be very prepared to explain. I have also not gotten as many interviews as others with high GPAs so I had to really capitalize on a few interviews.
The key to my success, however, I believe has been my ability to display a record of strong achievements that make up for lacking grades. I have invested a considerable amount of time into high impact extracurricular activities. In the end employers want to find the best people, and if you don't have the best grades you've got prove yourself another way. Unfortunately, screening processes miss a lot of qualified candidates, but thats just way it is with so much competition for so few jobs.
Oh ya, networking helps too.
I think it is not a predictor at all, and honestly, I don't really give a crap about GPA as long as it's above 3.0 or so. I think about the difference between getting an 86 and 88 in a class, the difference between a 3.0 and a 3.3, and to me it's just completely negligible and arbitrary. There are so many different compounding factors in GPAs that I think it's crazy to compare them blindly across students. It's like when people analyzing sports compare win totals of pitchers, it's the same stat, but the factors that influence the number (the quality of the team's offense), make it absurd to use.
I'd much rather see someone with a 3.2 who has a relevant internship and can speak the lingo enough to show me that he's done his homework and knows the industry rather than a 3.8 who thinks he wants to do IB because his peers told him it's prestigious.
I think banks look for GPA because they look for people who give a shit about studying.
In my opinion, GPA doesn't mean crap. It's like buying a stock by only looking at the P/E Ratio. I'd take anyone who was moderately smart with heart over someone with just a 4.0 GPA. So pretty much I'm taking Tebow anyday over Jamarcus Russell.
I'd like to see the day a company accepted everyone with a bachelors degree and then put them through a grueling process and see which one survives. Kinda like the Navy Seals of Finance.
The question isnt whether you would take someone with a 3.5 that has good personal skills and internships to a person with a 4.0 that's just a nerd. There are oftentimes the exact same people with the same personal skills and the same interests and the same desires that have GPAs of 3.5 and 4.0. Then clearly I am more impressed by the person that can do all that and mantain a 4.0. But of course though, GPA doesnt guarantee competency we all know. Successful people come from all kinds of backgrounds, all GPAs.
These is really true. I know some financial engineering students who's favorite activities are going out and watching athletic events.
Well look at it from a bankers or any employers perspective. On the job there are the things that are cool and interesting and then there are things that suck, boring, grunt work, and useless.
You have to be able to grind it out and do the best job. If you can get As in your finance classes you should be able to get As in your non-major courses/electives.
Then again this would consider that all professors are equal graders and capable teachers (highly unlikely)
I think GPA doesn't do justice since you do not know how they are doing overall. getting a couple of Cs can be destructive.
I think their should be a weighted average system gpa where your major is weighed more.
I think some people are making GPA a bigger issue than it really is.
First, GPA is just a number. There are way too many factors involved in success for GPA to be a meaningful signal. At best, it's a very noisy one.
Second, let's not genearlize by placing 3.5 or 3.9 students into categories. Yes, there are those 4.0 students who do nothing but study, but there are also those that get high grades while taking on a whole host of other activities.
Lastly, although the majority of people who break into banking have decent grades, grades are not what got them in -- their grades just didn't keep them out.
If you can get good grades, then just get them.There's really no reason to put yourself at a disadvantage. For those of you with low grades, don't try to compensate by saying you have better "social skills" than those with high grades. You're only hurting yourself by justifying your own academic mediocrity. For those of you with high grades, you're entitled to nothing. Don't be bitter that someone with lower grades became more "successful," just work harder on improving the other aspects of your profile.
to me it seems like GPA predicts future success of students much the same way that multiples/ratios predict future success of companies
it's a peer comparison that only reflects past performance that is ideally reproduced in the future.
it ain't perfect but it's better than nothing
Those who say GPA isn't important have crap GPA's, period. A high GPA says you did well in all your courses not just the ones you were interested in. Pulling A's in courses like literature, art history, your sciences and everything non-business related means that you aren't one dimensional and recognize that all work is important regardless of your interest. This is a key identifier to employers. If you can do well in all those different dimensions regardless of interest... you will be the same person who will strap in and prepare to pull an all nighter and still deliver quality work.
Does GPA mean your intelligent? Yes and no. Yes if you also managed to do a few other things rather than just study. No if you spent your entire college life reading text books and doing nothing else. However, you will see the rest of the persons profile on the resume anyway which tells you which bucket they fell into. I didn't pull a 4.0 but did manage a 3.95 (no A in HR MGMT or Org Behavior - go figure) and can tell you that regardless of the coursework or how much I lacked interest... I still managed to find the time to study for exams while working 30+ hours a week bartending and socializing with my buddies.
Also if you decide to leave banking or your career for business school.. wait til you start filling out those M7 applications with something under a 3.3 if you aren't a rockstar elsewhere.
Rant away!
I'm from a target school with ~3.7. I had a 35 ACT in high school and took 19 AP courses, all of which I got 4s and 5s on. But when I got to college, I was burned out and wanted to have some fun. I agree that all classes can be solved by "more work." There wasn't a single class I couldn't have gotten an A in easily if I studied more. But that's exactly the point, the reason I really didn't ever open a book unless it was the night before a test (generally) was because I wanted to have some fun. I went out on the weekends, I was in some clubs, and I procrastinated like no other with my work and still ended up with a 3.7something.
But then I notice a few kids who literally were in the dorm study room every night, including on Saturdays, and most of them don't even have GPAs that are that high. To me, and I'm not trying to insult anyone, but to me it shows they don't know to to spend time effectively and have a life. That's why if I see a super high GPA, I almost look at it negatively because I question why someone's devoted that much time to studying. They don't seem like people I'd want to have to be around every day. It reminds me of the girl who gets perfect attendance in high school. Most of us slept in occasionally, went on vacation, etc, but the people who had perfect attendance did so because they were supposed to, not for any other reason.
GPA is almost purely dependent on your major and the classes you take. I know plenty of kids who consistently pull 3.8 and up at my semi-target school, thanks to their relatively easy majors. This is compared to kids who work their asses off in quant majors just to get above a 3.3. Additionally, many kids take classes freshman year that they have already taken in high school, just to ensure easy A's. From my perspective as a current student, I would say that anyone who tries to judge quality of a GPA without comparing it to others in the same major at the school is taking a big leap of faith.
Anyone who thinks GPA shouldn't matter as much as your skills should check out ConnectCubed, a free site for aspiring financiers to prove their talent to hedge funds that are looking for new hires
Having an Ace Greenburg PSD is much more important in life than having a Ivy MBA.
GPA is a great predictor of success in school / academia. In the real world it doesn't mean shit.
I was flipping through the resume book at my BB S&T summer internship last summer and found out that I had the lowest GPA (3.2). By then I had realized that I was probably one of the best interns (got a full time offer, going back) and started wondering why.
Honestly, the school you go to matters so much, even out of the target schools. That said, it may have also been my major (Financial Engineering) that got me ahead. It's not like I learned anything applicable during my classes, but the rigor of the type of theoretical stuff I had to learn just allowed me to be a faster learner than many of the other interns.
Am I the 99% of 3.2's (as mentioned above)? Maybe, maybe not. But I do know that GPA doesn't mean a thing, especially at many of the target schools that inflate grades so much where a top quintile student has a 3.9 and a median student has a 3.7...and mine doesn't :(
Maybe because it's a 3.2 at Princeton? ORFE?
I guess my issue with GPA really comes down to the way academia is run. 80-90% of my classes were inherently bullshit and I walked away from them having learned maybe 1 or 2 new concepts, which were usually obvious anyway. Too many factors not directly measuring ability are involved: how good the professor is, how relevant the material is to the real world, etc. In banking more than in other finance jobs I would say GPA is a decent predictor just because it shows how hard/long you were willing to work, but in many other jobs it just doesn't do justice.
So if you truly thought they were bullshit, why did you stick with it? Why not choose a major that you didn't consider bullshit?
Because if I was a Philosophy major or a Communications major it would have been even more bullshit, and wouldn't have been the right major to have for what I want to do for a living? I take issue with the way we're taught, even at a school like Wharton that is supposed to be practical, the classes are painfully irrelevant with the exception of 1-2 classes. I'm sure there's a million people that would argue that with me but having gone through it that's what I got out of it, and I wouldn't trade it for anything considering what it's helped me to do. Academia in general just came across as a free-for-all circle jerk of people who don't want to tell it like it is or try and teach their students what really matters.
Rodney Dangerfield sums it up extremely well:
I think the better question is, how do you screen for 'drive' or 'hustle' or 'internal motivation' or whatever you want to call the factor that really is the best predictor of success, all while keeping an appropriate level of competence, intelligence and social skills?
The formula for GPA is most simply: Intelligence x Effort. Obviously, the more you are skewed on one of these, the more it can compensate for the other factor. Effort is closer to 'hustle' than intelligence. How do you figure out who has both? How much do you trade off one for the other?
I think test scores are meant to more accurately correlate with intelligence and GPA with effort, relatively speaking. And since I'd rather have someone a little less brilliant than a little more lazy, GPA gets a higher weight. Unfortunately, both scores and GPA have bounds that highly intelligent/lazy people can exploit, but these are probably more the exception than the rule.
Internships show a lot of drive and passion especially if you have them early on, extracurricular involvement/leadership, demonstrated interest outside of those two things...lots of ways.
Quick question: does double majoring matter? Do employers care? And we all have 99th percentile SAT/ACT scores; do any of you include these on your resume past freshman year?
SAT scores still matter, surprisingly. I've been asked about my scores (because they were so high and my GPA was mediocre) during interviews for full time jobs