Do Grades in B School Matter?
The title pretty much sums up my question - I am feeling confident about getting into at least one of the M7 schools I applied to, and I want to know if grades at a top b school matter or if it's just important to pass your classes as far as getting a job afterwards goes. I don't want to stress over grades if they have a minimal impact on recruiting or if it's non standard to put your b school GPA on your resume.
Depends on what you are recruiting for. You don't want a sub-3.0 GPA to be the only reason why GS or McKinsey-caliber firm rejects you.
A lot of schools have non-grade disclosure (GND) policy. However, for fields such as hedge funds, they will ask for your GPA even if your particular school has GND. At the end, if they ask and you want the job, you want to make sure you are at the top of your game academically (yes, most of the core classes are not useful at all for anything).
Thank you for the reply and noted. I am transitioning out of the military having served as an officer for the last couple years, and my goal is to use b school to transition to a job in IB or other finance field despite no prior experience or prior finance degree.
My back-up plan to that is to just shoot for the easiest job I can in a field like marketing. The pay doesn't matter to me so much as that I actually have a job I can support myself with in a big city and the time to pursue interests outside work. Yes, I realize IB is a ton of hours, which may result in me taking a different route.
EDIT: I inferred from your reply that a sub-3.0 GPA is where you should start to get worried, but anything above that shouldn't impact you too negatively. Is that a correct assumption?
At a GND school, I know people with AM/IM/PE offers that didn't give out grades (and have bad ones, at that). So I don't think it's true that hedge funds ask your grades (regularly) at GND schools and, even if they do, it's generally a violation of the honor code if you disclose (and the firms know this).
Essentially, if you don't want to have to care about grades, go to a non-disclosure school. Grades absolutely do not matter at those and firms that regularly recruit these schools know they aren't allowed to ask (I had ib interviews across the board and some PE interviews and was never asked). If you go to a lower level school, I have heard of top firms weeding out candidates based on their grades, but I still think it happens not all that often if the firm regularly recruits your school. The lower you go, the more it matter. Also, that said, even at top schools without GND (Sloan, for instance) firms will sometimes ask (I know GS asked people from Sloan).
In summary, though don't matter much. They matter more as you go down the school spectrum. And they REALLY don't matter at GND schools.
That sums up pretty accurately
Also went to a school that had GND and was never asked for my GPA (and I had quite a few interviews with PE / HF ). Recruiters on the other hand will ask for any grades / tests you have ever done including in most case the SAT (which I think as a 30-year old is kind of silly, but anyway). In any case, the MBA grading system is kind of a joke and I think you would really have to make an effort to get a crap GPA. I would not worry about this. I would also highly recommend going to a school that has GND, I cannot imagine having to go through the MBA exprience and having to worry about my grades
http://poetsandquants.com/2014/02/27/how-mbas-are-graded-at-top-schools/
this is a good article that highlight how schools grade people btw
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