Genuine question. Have a chance to take unnecessary credits to boost my GPA by 0.04 and then round to a 3.8. This will cost me an extra $20k. Is this in any way worth it for PE OCR, MBA programs, etc?
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If you have a ton of family money laying around go for it. If not, no
Depends on your major- if it's a hard major 3.71 is fine but if you have 3.8 doing business or econ it looks bad but not a dealbreaker
$20k is temporary, but a 3.8 is forever.
one of the highest ROI investments you can make in your career
Assuming this is sarcasm but can I double check?
no. 3.8 opens doors and interviews you may not get with a 3.7. if you apply to mba, etc. it is worth it
college is $200k to get a brand on resume. another $20k to improve gpa from good to great is insanely high ROI.
fwiw i know people who care about gpa for candidates 10 years into their career. it is used as a proxy for intelligence and hard work, fair or not. and i understand why: things like first job, college, promotions are not always meritocratic and nepo driven. gpa is 100% in your control
have seen 30 year olds with sub 3.7 gpas get asked about it in interviews and was part of reason for accept/rejecting that person
I tend to agree with comment above, if you can afford it and money isn’t an issue then I would. It’s dumb but even after being many years out of school people will ask you what your gpa was. Even if your school has grade deflation or you took harder classes, they won’t care and will try to normalize it to other schools. Particularly in cutthroat industries like IB or buyside where everyone has almost the exact same resume, you would hate for the reason you were cut was because someone had a slightly higher GPA than you.
If it’s in your control and you can afford it, it’s one less thing to worry about and the optics on a piece of paper help you. Dumb in the grand scheme of things but probably worth it.
Depends on your school tbh and honestly I don’t remember talking to anyone about my GPA (3.75 - semi target) and currently a VP at MF (HBS/GSB grad)
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