Hi – I’m not sure where to put this but this site seems to be well-versed in understanding these types of issues. I’m in my senior of undergrad as an Economics major at UC Berkeley and I’m wondering about my longer-term career plan. My GPA is a 3.2 and I’ve worked as an intern for a F500 company for 2 summers now in various corporate finance functions: one in FP&A and one in treasury.
My GPA is the product of my inability to deal with bad situations. During my sophomore year, my martial arts master died due to cancer and my parents divorced. While it was understandable for my grades to drop that semester, I let my sadness carry on for way too long and it ruined my GPA. If I pull 4.0s for the last 2 semesters, my GPA will rise to a 3.4.
Despite that, I did really well in my internships. I saved the company about $15M a quarter and found an extra $3.5M in revenue per quarter that wasn’t documented. I basically took the role of 2 people for the entire summer. The entire finance org knows me by name and the CFO thinks I put out high-quality work.
Overall my resume is pretty solid – demonstrate competitiveness through my collegiate martial arts team (2nd in the national collegiate tournament), I started and still run a business club on campus and I help out in my major’s department by organizing and forming the semester class schedules.
My goal is to hit a Director level in FP&A or in Treasury, receiving about $130K-$140K a year ASAP. I know this is a high goal coming from someone who has a low GPA, but I just want to know if this is even possible and, if so, how can I achieve it? I’d like to stay at my current employer if possible but I don’t know how to go from there.
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
