The GPA doesn't matter once you are mid-career, but I'm amazed at how a prestigious university brand helps marginal candidates get through the filter to an on-site interview 20+ years after graduation. I was helping a company scale their solution architect team last year, and the CEO said of one candidate with a resume full of huge red flags, "why would we not interview him? He went to MIT!"

> I'm amazed at how a prestigious university brand helps marginal candidates get through the filter to an on-site interview 20+ years after graduation

Is there evidence for it not remaining a strong signal?

Is there evidence for it being a strong signal in the first place?

Once you have work experience, either from your first few jobs, or for some from internships, then your school rarely matters. It's not like you learned some revolutionary thing that is exclusive to MIT 20 years ago, or that whatever you learned is even applicable for that matter.

I'll raise my hand as a data point. MIT, about 20 years out. It still seems to carry significant weight. I don't even work in the field I studied, so it's definitely not about any particular material I may have learned there. My conjecture is that association with the MIT brand implies that I must be a sharp cookie and someone worth paying attention to.

One trick savvy folk do, and this is beyond effective.

They take these two week courses at these universities. And then they put it at the top of the "education" section of their resume.

It's like $99.99 prices.

Against all human logic, people just cannot look past the magic words "Harvard University." And people aren't dumb, they know it's a two week, meaningless course.

Doesn't matter. Lizard brain sees Harvard.

> ... then your school rarely matters.

... then your gpa rarely matters. But your school always matters. Not only in terms of network, but in terms of reputation, prestige and even camaraderie. Especially the higher you go up the ladder when more and more people tend to be graduates of top schools.

Nobody will ask about your GPA as you get further along in your career. But everyone will ask about your alma mater. You eventually stop putting your GPA on your resume, even if you had a 4.0. But you always put the college you graduated from.

I feel like Harvard and MIT, those two universities in particular, carry a very unique cachet. Other elite universities may not be so worth it.

I've been out of uni for a few years and have forgotten a stunning amount of material that I worked hard to learn during my time there. In 10 years time, anything you haven't been using, you forget.

For engineers, if you have a good internship or two under your belt when you graduate, I'm not sure your GPA really matters even for your first job. But, GPA definitely matters for what internships you can even apply for. So having a good GPA certainly makes it easier to get a good internship, and having a good internship on your resume makes it easier to get a good first full time job, which make it easier to get your second job, etc.

No. My GPA didn’t matter when I got my internships or got my job, because esp. in CS, GPA doesn’t measure motivation, curiosity and eagerness to try.

I always failed math classes, but I transform to something different if I have to apply that math. I get a +3 modifier instantly.

Same in programming. I can tackle much harder problems than my peers, but my grades didn’t show that.

Result? I got my Ph.D., work at a reputable institution, and I’m happy. I’m also continuing a side academic gig.

I personally don’t care about GPAs of people I interview too.

I don't think your experience is representative. Certainly your dismissive "no" is unwarranted.

> Certainly your dismissive "no" is unwarranted.

Sorry, I didn't mean to sound dismissive. I've written this comment on mobile, in a short time, which proved to be a bad idea.

I wanted to say "I don't believe GPA to be a good indicator regarding capabilities and intelligence of a person". That dismissive sounding "No" was a direct answer to

> I'm not sure your GPA really matters even for your first job.

And, I tried to say "No, it doesn't matter from my perspective".

> I don't think your experience is representative.

It's certainly possible. I was not an ordinary student when I was an undergrad due to both my past and my interest in computers.

This is why I'll never work for NVIDIA. They required a 3.5 GPA for interns and new grads, when no one else did. Screw em.

If you ever want to go to e.g. law school, yes it does.

Part of the reason for grade inflation is that it helps with those sorts of admissions down-the-line. US News looks at median GPA when evaluating law schools, which has a bunch of trickle-down effects, one of the major ones being that law schools weigh GPA very strongly.

That problem is not exclusive to law schools.

Law school or really any graduate school.

It's kind of laughable that we still rely on GPAs. The solution would be to convert college grades into a kind of item response theory measure of fitness for each student (equivalent to like the degree of difficulty of test questions). You could do it within a school so that you can create a better measure of ability that controls for difficulty of majors or individual classes.

You could create one nationally as well, though getting data combined together would be a pain. Something like SAT/ACT/GRE scores might help when comparing between schools. Or grades of students who transfer schools.

>> Law schools weigh GPA very strongly.

They say that, but they don't. When someone is rejected they will say it was because of a low GPA. But people are accepted based on their LSAT scores. Do well on the LSAT and your undergrad GPA is almost meaningless.

During my three years of working in law school admissions, GPA was a primary factor at my school and all the peer schools I knew about.

Each school would set a target median LSAT and GPA for the year's class because they were weighted heavily in the US News rankings. Applicants with both scores at or above the target median would get scholarships, applicants with one number at or above the median would be presumptively admitted, diverse applicants with solid numbers were admitted to fill out the class once LSAT and GPA were set, and then there would be a half-dozen or fewer judges' kids, politicians' kids, etc.

<-- This is exactly the process. I've seen scatter plots of LSAT and GPA for admitted students to many law schools, and discussed the process with people in admissions.

I get the comments about better processes for admitting better / more diverse / healthier / whatever students, and it's trivial to come with them, but so long as US News wags the dog, that ain't happening.

Corollary: If your LSAT score is good enough, GPA is irrelevant for admissions. If your GPA is good enough, LSAT is irrelevant for admissions. Both need to be high for scholarships.

Yes. Elite hedge funds, private equity firms, etc. all care about academic credentials. Even within quant firms lots of Harvard grads will look to see if a candidate is a "Math 55er" and the grade received in the course if so.

"Elite" wall street guys just hire their pals from Yale, and their kids, and their friends kids, as long as they went to Yale. Even if they are as dumb as rocks.

The only thing less objectively "elite" than the American investment firm is the American House of Representatives.

This hasn't been true for the past 20-30 years, or ever since the average trader switched from a Lacrosse player to a physics grad.

Been in the industry for 20 years and never seen nepotism on the trading floor.

I think you're overestimating the fraction of the wall street population that is on the algorithmic or technical side of the game compared to the traditional side that simply provides no value to their clients.

Wall Street isn't run by morons.

The quants own the trading floor.

The Yale crowd owns private equity and investment banking. Why? Because private equity and investment banking involve "literally talking to rich old white people" for a living.

Hence they hire the sons of the friends of said old white relics to powwow with them.

However, you can be absolutely sure that the quants pull in the big bucks.

Trading pays far more than investment banking.

This is true. It is simultaneously true that many of these people have excellent credentials from a signaling standpoint. e.g. Shaw loves their Rhodes Scholars

> lots of Harvard grads will look to see if a candidate is a "Math 55er"

Makes sense. Given what I know of the course material, it seems like a very solid indicator of the mathematical capabilities of a person.

I've never put it on a resume and I've never been asked. After the 1st job, (at least in the tech world) it seems to be 95% experience and the accomplishments you can point to. Ymmv.

It does to go to grad school, and to get fellowships.

It matters for grad school and for teaching jobs (transcripts are part of the application packet for K-12 and post-secondary teaching positions), but otherwise it doesn't matter.

Well, doctors and lawyers, as in some of the most powerful people in the country (supreme court justices, etc) have to get graduate degrees.

Maybe it doesn't matter for software engineers, but it matters a lot for the power structure of our society.

No, but Ivy League matters a lot, in certain circles. It's supposed to be the gold standard degree.