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How important are grades?

#21
alapantera said:
A good grade will help keep the water out of your basement.






:hiding:
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I can say from personal experience this last week that this is
an outright fabrication. :rolleyes:

kesslari said:
Q. Do you know what they call the guy who graduated with the worst grades in medical school?
A. They call him "doctor" just like all his classmates.

At a certain point, your grades become less of a determinant of your life than some of the other skills you mention (especially people skills). Once you've been in the work world a while, your grades mean a lot less than your work experience.
But early on, and when you're first getting into the work world - good grades will make it a lot easier to get good work experience :D
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This reminds me of a story from college. There was a guy who took Physical Chemistry the semester before I did(he is an MD now) and got an A in the course. They only gave one
A out.

Anyway, I looked him up when I was having difficulty with a 2nd Law of Thermodynamics problem for some help.

His response was 'Are you kidding? That was last semester. I don't remember any of that crap!'

I hate to think what he may not have retained from Med School.

I know more about Entropy 35 years later than he knew six months after he studied it. Dweeb. :rollno:
 
#22
Keep grades within reason, and know the material, that is most important, so long as you pass. If you don't pass, at least you haven't wasted your time with nothing to show, this helps if you want to try again, which my brother is doing right now. Last year he had an F on each of his finals, this year, he's maintained a B+ average, and is on his way to passing all of his courses.
 
#23
I am a big fan of pass/fail courses, or even courses that don't have grades at all. It forces you to really look at why you are there in the first place. Most people in university are there for the piece of paper that they get at the end of four years. I have heard the theory put forward that if you took away the degree and the grades, you would have only the people in university that truly want to be there to learn. Society as a whole would be smarter for it, because you would have the smartest and brightest, getting smarter and brighter; while the people that end university educated beyond their intelligence doing the same work that they are doing now, only they wouldn't have wasted 4 years of their life. Most jobs that "require" a university degree, don't.

Also, just because you get the best marks doesn't mean that you are the smartest or most intelligent. In my engineering program, I wouldn't hire the guy that is at the top of the class. Yes, he is smart, but he lacks the ability to make connections between our different courses and how they all relate to each other. Which means that he is good at memorizing things, but he can't think things out to their logical conclusions. That is a very important skill in engineering.

lowsound
 
#25
Pilgrim said:
There's nothing wrong with a B average. It's best to be on the + side of 3.0, but that's fine. It won't get you recognition, but it will let you move through.

I had a 2.99 undergrad and later earned my Ph.D.
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I know several people that have had significantly better grades in grad school than they did in their undergrad. My dad doesn't even have his undergrad, but got accepted into a masters program.

lowsound
 
#26
iamlowsound said:
Most jobs that "require" a university degree, don't.
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....and this is the crux of the debate, IMO. While grades may or may not accurately reflect how well you know the material of a course, you better get decent ones anyway because if you don't end up with a degree from a decent school many jobs you would be capable of doing well and being well compensated for will be unavailable to you.
 
#27
Yes grades matter.
One reason I've stayed in the music biz as a player and tech all these years is that with a 9th grade education I don't have many other options that I could stand. I've very thankful I got into a college commercial music program when that particular school was just getting it going in the late '70's. They needed asses in seats more than high school diplomas and I learned a lot. I can legitimately say "some college" but if anyone looks at my complete transcript it don't look good....er, I mean DOESN'T look good.

Grades also matter simply because they are part of the process you accept by attending school. I don't see eye to eye with much of that process but my idea of a perfect education system won't change it.

Learning is another issue though that can be (and often in various ways is) separate from grades. If I were the serious student of jazz I once was I would move to NYC and study privately with the best teachers who'd have me. Grading learning other than you "got it" or you "don't got it" is ridiculous.
Grades don't matter a bit.
 
#28
My Uni fees are expensive. I try to do the best I can and try to get the most out of it as possible. That is just my personal approach to it.

Having said that, I have been working in telecommunications engineering for 12 years. I got in without the correct bits of paper and was very lucky at the time, so grades don't mean everything. Now that I have 12 years in the field, I could probably get employed by other companies without ever having the required bits of paper, but I have decided that I want to get them anyway. Now that I'm doing the study, I don't see the point in being half assed about it.
 
#29
Grades don't necessarily matter. As long as you pass all of your classes and get your degree, 9 times out of 10 any potential employer won't care that you got a 2.1 GPA. All they care about is that you actually have the degree. To them, if nothing else, it says you can commit to a four year project and follow through with it.

On the other hand, if you get through school with a 4.0, it could open doors that wouldn't be opened otherwise. But think of that as a bonus, not a missed opportunity.

And as far as the "quality" of the school you are attending goes, thats mainly BS. Unless you go to Harvard, or some other Ivy League school, it won't really matter. A degree is just to get your foot in the door. I guarantee if I was at an interview going against some punk from Harvard, I'd blow him out of the water. The saying of "It's not what you know it's who you know" is absolutely true. And on top of that you can talk yourself into damn near anything you want to. It's just gaining an audience with the right people that's the challenge.
 
#31
Alot of people think they need to do great in highschool to get into college, you can flunk out of highschool or babrley get by with a 2.00 GPA and still go to college, you just go to a community college first. A community college does not care what your grades were at all , you just need to have a diploma. I busted ass in highschool and had a GPA of 3.60 and when i was ready for college i realized community college did not care about grades, just money.

Do i regret it? no i learned and tried and thus college is easier, if i would have flunked out of highschool college would be a struggle maybe, i mean how much do you learn in highschool.
 
#32
Grades matter for continued education and not a lot else.
Grades are extremely inflated in the US today, so a lot of advice from even 10 or 15 years ago might be pretty useless to you. You'll need good grades (as a bare minimum) and then other things to make yourself stand out on top of that.

Someone younger than you can get into college with bad grades, but probably needs a 3.8 or so on top of some bling test scores and activities if he wants to actually get a big chunk of that schooling paid for at the area state college. Go to a more elite institution and you can raise the requirements to get that kind of access to proper amounts of scholarship.

If you're looking at an even moderately competitive master's program, you damn well better have straight As in your field of study, a GRE score that puts you in the 95th percentile, an overall decent GPA (I'd say B+ or A-), and papers, presentations, etc. that show how good you can be at your prospective field. I had all of those things, considerable experience as president and an event planner for the honors society in my field, and about a 3.9 GPA and still got turned down from almost every (non-prestigious) master's program I applied for. The bar can be pretty damn high for continuing education.

On the other hand, I don't think employers care much at all.
 
#33
Being just a senior in high school right now, I may not have the perspective on this issue that a lot of others here do, but here's my 2 cents:

Grades do not always reflect whether or not you have learned the material. I at one point overheard my math teacher talking with another student who was asking how you can possibly know the material if you have bad grades, to which the teacher responded "There are people in this class who know the material very well, but are just lazier than snot." I can vouch for this, because I'm about 99% sure he was talking about me. With the exception of differential equations, I've gotten A's on all the tests despite not having done a single homework assignment. My grade in the class is still good because the homework is "for our benefit," and not graded, but that still goes to show how one can know the material and still potentially not have good grades.

That said, having poor enough grades can definitely hold one back, if continued education is the goal. If your grades are poor enough, they may prevent you from moving on to the next level (high school to college, college to grad school, etc.) That said, it seems to be less of a big deal than many people claim, however. I recently heard a story of someone who attended a college that is incredibly easy to get into, then went on to grad school and said she felt she had an equal quality education compared to her grad school classmates who had graduated from places such as Stanford.

Tl;dr: grades are somewhat important, but not as important as they're cracked up to be. If you want to go to grad school, get good enough grades to get in (although scholarships may help,) and that's about it.
 
#34
To me, my grades are the means to get into law school, and I'll stop at nothing to get what I need to get in. However I care less about actually remembering what I've learned past the exams coming up. After that I will, after all, be studying law and not English, Norwegian, geography, marketing or whatever.

I've been told when people hire in law firms, perhaps they'll take a look at their language grades and maybe even their math grade from high school. Not so much anything else (well apart from your law school grades that is). Which serves as another incentive to get the grades I need and leave it at that.

So I don't really think grades matter past getting the education you want. However the grades you get in that course is very important, because someone with a strong B will never make it to, say, "riksadvokat" (directly translated attorney of the realm or something).
 
#35
geeza said:
Grades are an indication of how well you can take a test.
They are NOT an indication of how well you learned the material.
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Actually, it's not as clear cut as that. Tests have value insofar as they have validity.

More specifically, a good test has construct validity in that it accurately measures whatever concept that it's supposed to measure - for example, a test that's supposed to measure general intelligence actually measures general intelligence rather than measuring memory ability.

Next, a good test needs criterion validity in that its measurement accurately predicts future success related to the contruct its attempting to measure - for example, doing well on a test on network topology means that the test taker will do well in the Real World in an IT gig by creating a good network topology. Notice I didn't say the test was paper-and-pencil. An applied test on the subject could have a high level of criterion validity.

A good test has discriminant validity in that it accurately differentiates between the people who have a high grasp or ability of the material being measured from the people who have a low or moderate graps or ability of the material being measured.

A lot of the debate about the value of standardized testing really centers on criterion validity. There's no doubt that most standardized tests have construct and discriminant validity. The question really comes down to if doing well on a bunch of word analogies and abstract mathematical shortcuts for the SAT or GRE really is related to college or grad school success. I'm skeptical, at least when it comes to certain disciplines. In my opinion, the LSAT at least has face validity, since it measures a person's ability to parse arguments and language, which are skills any attorney needs. Furthermore, I think this is really the issue that needs to be discussed with teacher evaluations and No Child Left Behind. If the standardized test really isn't measuring skills that students need to truly be successful, why evaluate teachers on teaching it? But I digress.

It's not as black and white as saying testing is good or testing is bad. I've taken tests that lacked the validity mentioned above and I've taken tests that were very much validated. The former were worthless; the latter served their intended purpose of evaluating me.

To answer the OP's question, look at grades as being important because they are a means to an end. When you're straight out of college, they carry some weight, especially if you plan on going to graduate or professional school. However, five years out of school, your tangible skills and experience are going to be much more important. I've never heard of a college or graduate program rejecting someone because his or her grades were too high. With that said, colleges and graduate programs, as well of course as employers, are going to be looking at more than your grades. My advice is to maintain great grades, but also bust your ass and take every opportunity to learn tangible skills and get experience.

P.S. I got accepted into a reputable PhD program with a 990 on my GRE, so perhaps I have a bone to pick with standardized testing. :D Or perhaps the department I got into doesn't really care as much about GRE scores as other programs and departments.
 
#36
My grades in high school were atrocious, but I still got into a school that looked for a 3.5 GPA because of my extracurriculars and leadership activities. My grades in college weren't AS bad, but it was still not a sign of my intelligence, as I got into a very competitive company based on my extracurricular activities, projects that I had worked on in my time at school, and my leadership activities.

Grades are neither a sign of future success nor a measure of intelligence. They are, however, a measure of how well one does everything they're told, the way someone wants. If I were to hire a yes-man to work for me, I'd hire a 4.0 student with few extracurriculars. If I were looking to hire a free thinker, I'd probably shoot a bit lower and find someone who's shown themselves to be able to think in situations, not just spit back information.
 
#37
tplyons said:
Grades are neither a sign of future success nor a measure of intelligence. They are, however, a measure of how well one does everything they're told, the way someone wants. If I were to hire a yes-man to work for me, I'd hire a 4.0 student with few extracurriculars. If I were looking to hire a free thinker, I'd probably shoot a bit lower and find someone who's shown themselves to be able to think in situations, not just spit back information.
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I find the insinuation that good grades and the ability to "think in situations" are mutually exclusive to be offensive, to the point of trolling.
 
#38
SpamBot said:
I find the insinuation that good grades and the ability to "think in situations" are mutually exclusive to be offensive, to the point of trolling.
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+1

It goes back to my above post about the ideas of construct and criterion validity. Assuming that a 4.0 GPA is indicative of pure intelligence is ignorant; similarly assuming that a 4.0 GPA is indicative of an inability to think for oneself or it just means the person can spit back rote information is as equally ignorant. It's like the same BS argument that learning music theory is bad because you then you can't be creative and think outside of the box.

The fact of the matter is a GPA is indicative of many things, from ability to work hard, general intelligence, test taking ability, ability to synthesize information, and yes, ability to think abstractly and creatively, especially if the GPA was synthesized from classess that evaluated someone on that criteria.

And as far as hiring someone based on GPA or ability to "think in situations," - I hope that there has been a better job analysis and a synthesis of the KSAOs required of the position in order to make hiring decisions.

P.S. I said "sythesis" and "synthesize" a lot in this post. :D
 
#39
SpamBot said:
I find the insinuation that good grades and the ability to "think in situations" are mutually exclusive to be offensive, to the point of trolling.
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I'm not saying good grades and the ability to "think in situations" are mutually exclusive by any means.

I'm saying that a general trend that I've personally witnessed, that more often than not, people who are able to maintain a 4.0 average do so by means of falling short in other areas.

As a matter of fact, I interviewed a girl with a 4.0 yesterday, who admitted she was unable to accept anything less than perfect. It caused her so much stress that she was unable to function in an unpredictable environment.

In business, I'd rather have someone who can fail, learn from their failure and bounce back, than someone who will be unable to make decisions with less-than-complete information.
 

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