Thank you for sharing your journey - succinct but compelling. What an invaluable help for people starting the journey and needing to understand it maybe a roller coaster.
thank you for sharing your college journey! i‘ve had a fairly similar trajectory in terms of grades in undergrad, and i’m hoping to apply into phds soon. seeing your journey fills me with hope that maybe i do have a shot!
This is good to see. My kids are not engineering students but they are STEM students, one at a particularly grade deflated, challenging school and man, they have both been on the struggle bus with Chem, math, and even some bio classes! Definitely a change from high school grades.
Yeah it was totally a change! There has been so much complaints about ‘grade inflation’ but based on my experience and I still work in academia and don’t see that as being true.
what about grade deflation? My one kid is at a notoriously grade deflated school (tho supposedly that has been relaxed a bit). But what is the point when then they have to compete with other students potentially for internships or grad school?
Yeah they curved our classes in the first 2 years, so there were only so many "As" and most people got the median grade which was a B or C.
The school I went to printed the median grade on our transcript for our class because so many people complained about this. Unfortunately, the pre-med students could be quite vicious and would sabotage each other's work in orgo lab or even cheat. They harassed the faculty and TAs to get better grades at times too. I was not going to resort to this.
Unfortunately, I was even below the median my first two years (2.9 gpa) and did have a difficult time getting that key internship/position junior year. I took on an undergrad research position the fall of my junior year. I basically had to beg the PI to take me--he totally didn't believe I would do the work well. I threw myself into it and did exceedingly well which helped compensate for my lower GPA when I applied to grad school. When I applied to grad school I also had really good letters of recommendation, did some coding bootcamps to boost my data analytics skills (this was very fortunate for me I got into data science and AI in 2012), had some academic posters, and I knew the field I wanted to research insight and out. I did a ton of research on grad school and finding programs that were suited to my skillset and was able to write an excellent essay. I also had high GRE scores. I graduated with a 3.3 undergrad GPA and got into a fully funded (so I got a paid didn't have to pay) masters program then into a phd program and did very well.
I would suggest doing something to really stand out which is tough and stressful in an already stressful environment, but a unique volunteer position or internship over the summer, a club leadership position, or gaining a unique skill.
It's very tough because grades are currency when you are an undergrad, and low grades does discourage people to continue. However, remember low grades are more often the institutional structure of the course not the student's ability especially if they did very well in high school.
That would maybe help if the job and internship market wasn't so viciously competitive right now. My sophomore kid is in a research lab and will join a different one this summer. Supposedly grad schools understand the deflation at her school. My older kid is graduating in a few months to this job market. It's so discouraging.
💯 Excellent. It's Women's History Month. Sustainability is the theme, and engineering plays a very important role.
Thank you for sharing your journey - succinct but compelling. What an invaluable help for people starting the journey and needing to understand it maybe a roller coaster.
Great post, love the idea of walking down memory lane of justifying my college grades years after graduation. Might have to copy this format haha
thank you for sharing your college journey! i‘ve had a fairly similar trajectory in terms of grades in undergrad, and i’m hoping to apply into phds soon. seeing your journey fills me with hope that maybe i do have a shot!
This is good to see. My kids are not engineering students but they are STEM students, one at a particularly grade deflated, challenging school and man, they have both been on the struggle bus with Chem, math, and even some bio classes! Definitely a change from high school grades.
Yeah it was totally a change! There has been so much complaints about ‘grade inflation’ but based on my experience and I still work in academia and don’t see that as being true.
what about grade deflation? My one kid is at a notoriously grade deflated school (tho supposedly that has been relaxed a bit). But what is the point when then they have to compete with other students potentially for internships or grad school?
Yeah they curved our classes in the first 2 years, so there were only so many "As" and most people got the median grade which was a B or C.
The school I went to printed the median grade on our transcript for our class because so many people complained about this. Unfortunately, the pre-med students could be quite vicious and would sabotage each other's work in orgo lab or even cheat. They harassed the faculty and TAs to get better grades at times too. I was not going to resort to this.
Unfortunately, I was even below the median my first two years (2.9 gpa) and did have a difficult time getting that key internship/position junior year. I took on an undergrad research position the fall of my junior year. I basically had to beg the PI to take me--he totally didn't believe I would do the work well. I threw myself into it and did exceedingly well which helped compensate for my lower GPA when I applied to grad school. When I applied to grad school I also had really good letters of recommendation, did some coding bootcamps to boost my data analytics skills (this was very fortunate for me I got into data science and AI in 2012), had some academic posters, and I knew the field I wanted to research insight and out. I did a ton of research on grad school and finding programs that were suited to my skillset and was able to write an excellent essay. I also had high GRE scores. I graduated with a 3.3 undergrad GPA and got into a fully funded (so I got a paid didn't have to pay) masters program then into a phd program and did very well.
I would suggest doing something to really stand out which is tough and stressful in an already stressful environment, but a unique volunteer position or internship over the summer, a club leadership position, or gaining a unique skill.
It's very tough because grades are currency when you are an undergrad, and low grades does discourage people to continue. However, remember low grades are more often the institutional structure of the course not the student's ability especially if they did very well in high school.
That would maybe help if the job and internship market wasn't so viciously competitive right now. My sophomore kid is in a research lab and will join a different one this summer. Supposedly grad schools understand the deflation at her school. My older kid is graduating in a few months to this job market. It's so discouraging.