2013-02-11, 10:35 PM
Narwhal Wrote:GPA and experience aren't mutually exclusive. Internships ask for your GPA and opportunities are based a large part in how well you are able to balance school work and still do well enough to impress professors. A large part of this is also how good your people skills are in sum of balancing school work and doing a healthy amount of outside of school related activities other than purely job hunting. Also, don't do something unrelated just to set yourself apart like go to Zimbabwe to take Organic Chemistry or play as a flutist in some downtown junk band, anything you need to consider twice to think whether or not it would be resume relevant is more than likely irrelevant to HR and the people looking at your resume.
Your counterexamples are literally crap.
Studying abroad to take Organic Chemistry can actually be important to employers because it shows them that you relocated for a whole semester, away from your friends and family. Playing as a flutist really has no relevance and sounds like you just pulled it out of your ass.
Your GPA helps, I won't deny that, but it's not something you should worry incessantly over. I know people with 3.4's getting jobs over those with 4.0's merely because they did something productive and different with their summers.