Dear First year students:
“What did you get on your midterms?”
Never mind, I don’t mean to ask you this question. The majority of first year students who come to engineering receive lower grades than in high school. And I’m even sure that some instructors might have warned you before distributing the marked exams. (Physics is usually the harsh one…) Let’s say you have a 55% on Physics midterm and the instructor tells you, “Don’t you worry” because that is only slightly lower than the median grade of the class. Despite that, a lot of students remain shocked and scared for the final exam.
I am a recent graduate of Waterloo Engineering and I have gone through countless exams and job interviews in my undergrad at UW. I also worried and asked countless times, “Should I worry about my grades? Does GPA matter?” From high school, I probably came to university thinking good marks and a good resume lead to a successful career, happy me, or something like that. Up to this point, I must say that I have witnessed lots of different cases among my friends, colleagues and co-workers – many of which proved my belief wrong. Everyone was an outlier to any kind of trend I wished to draw. Along the way, I finally could arrive at some different perspective. I would like to share it with first year students.
I have met many interviewers whose first question in interview is “What is your GPA.” I have spoken to some graduate office and they asked me, “What is your GPA?” How daunting. So, there seem to be places where GPA is indeed the decision maker. These are places such as med, law, and top-tier graduate schools, to name a few.
But the field of engineering allows lots of freedom and creativity for everyone at every level to apply knowledge in practice. Whether someone has a high or low GPA, is in senior or junior level, has broad or deep scoped knowledge, has theoretical or practical experience, and has exploring or conservative traits, it is a highly cooperative environment. Everyone can be handy. It is important to find the right environment for yourself first and let it grow as your dream, rather than chasing a common goal – that you don’t even know of!
To share a bit of personal experience, in my first year I did well in programming course and got a senior developer position for coop. I finished the project and gained so much experience. On the other hand, I felt like a zombie from studying every day to build foundation knowledge and my manager was not too impressed by how much time I had to put in for learning. After that I was very careful to check the level that the position requires before applying. That was the first time I realized that my GPA wasn’t tied to my success. I realized a junior like me would learn more and better in an assisting position when the foundation is weak.
Lots of students share a common goal of obtaining a “developer” or “design” position for co-op even in junior years. The truth is that if someone at a junior level has a slower-paced learning environment, then his or her performance and satisfaction are higher. Wanting a high GPA could be the same thing. Maybe you are chasing the common goal and wasting so much energy for something that is not the right fit and you won’t even gain much from it. Everyone is smart in different ways. Keep in mind that ranking at a school is only a specific ruler to measure someone in a very specific setting – school, class, curriculum, time, design of exam, subjective decisions on marking, etc. With change of one variable, it will be a different ruler and you might stand in a quite different ranking.
In fact, we are in UW engineering and to get here we have gone through lots of competition in high school where grades played a major role. We were all trained to fight for better grades and treat it as THE indicator and the future. However, school grades are a very specific ruler and this regime would be unfair if one’s entire future relies on it. Therefore, after school, we go through the same phase of re-introducing ourselves outside the boundary of this measure. A good academic record in undergrad may or may not have a huge impact on first landing a career, but that will fade because every place has different kind of expectations.
If you screwed up in First Year, especially a midterm or even an entire course, it is a negligible glitch because there are seven more academic terms left until 4B. You will be introduced to those concepts over and over in the curriculum, as much as it is basic, important and relevant to your field – everyone gets it eventually… I am not saying a bad mark is good or helpful for future. There are even places that GPA is the only decision marker. But even a lot of GPA-oriented admissions consider the performance through senior years more important.
At least in the first year of university, I truly believe that it is the best time to make friends, meet different people, ask lots of questions and explore dreams and possibilities. I do hear lots of regrets from myself and colleagues about it and I wish that first engineering students won’t repeat the same mistake.
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