Finance jobs with my GPA?

In real world, no one cares about you GPA

Only in the world of the humanities is a 3.3 GPA pretty crappy.

I think your wrong. A lot of company's look at GPA heavily. There were many recruiting at my school that wouldn't even consider students under 3.5. That's not to say you won't be able to find a job, I'm just saying for recruiting purposes it's important to them.

Noah Tall wrote:

In real world, no one cares about you GPA

While this is true for someone with a work history, it's not true for new grads, especially for the case of on-campus recruiting of college grads.

It's common for companies to prescreen on-campus candidates based on GPA. The screens are typically based on thresholds. No company is going to care about the difference between a 3.2 and a 3.4, but many care about the difference between a 2.4 and a 3.4, and some care about the difference between 3.2 and 3.6. Hiring a candidate you don't know out of school is a gamble. All other things being equal, there's less risk hiring a high GPA student than a low GPA student.

If you really do attend a top 10-15 school, then a 3.3-3.5 GPA should be solid enough to get interviews at many places, maybe not at the top few, but you will get solid interviews. Once you get the interview though, your GPA goes out the window and it is all up to you.

Whoever said that GPA doesn't matter probably hasn't tried to get a finance job out college recently. GPA matters immensely when applying places where you have no connections. I will agree though that after several years out of college your GPA probably carries no weight, unless you want to go to grad school to get a degree in economics or some other social science.

Just make sure you do internships during the summer. Economics and history are good subjects. Take as much math as you can in case you want to go for a higher degree. Math also makes you look smarter, as most Americans are bad at it/don't have the patience for it. Go for a math minor.

I was in your exact same position, except the 3.3 was fall of my senior year. It didn't matter - I got the job I wanted (financial consulting at a name brand firm). Of course, I had very strong work experience and a few other unique things on my resume, and my gpa was high enough to show that I was a serious student.

The name of your school and your work experience are what really matter to the vast majority of people I know in finance. Honestly, if it comes down to working harder in your classes to add .2 to your gpa or having a good school year internship (in addition to one in the summer), go with the real work experience. Of course, a higher gpa is never a bad thing, just don't prioritize it at the expense of other parts of your application.

If you don't go to a top 20 school, then gpa takes on increasing importance for a lot of recruiters. In fact, if you don't go to a top 20 school, your application may well not even be read. It isn't totally fair, as there are perfectly qualified people from every school, but when you're looking through hundreds of applications, its the quickest, and generally, most reliable way to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Good luck, and its never too early to start looking for internships.

For some of the big financial firms GPA does matter. My wife works for Goldman Sachs and they wanted her high school GPA and college GPA and requested her transcripts for both college and high school. Also there are many hedge funds that take only top notch students. So study hard and keep in mind it will pay off in the long run.

If by "finance jobs" you mean investment banking then you will probably have to boost your GPA to land interviews, especially if you have your eyes fixed on a bulge bracket position. Might be a different story if your major was chemical or electrical engineering or something known to be exceptionally difficult. For humanities subjects though, the cut off is usually around 3.5 depending on school (some slack for Harvard, Wharton, MIT or Stanford). This all assumes that you are at a "target" school (the Ivies, MIT, Caltech, U of Chicago, Stanford, Williams, Amhert, Swarthmore), or at least a "semi-target" (Northwestern, Georgetown, Duke, Cal (Haas, or engineering), Michigan (Ross, or engineering), UVa (McIntire), Carnegie Mellon, and a few others).

You can componsate for a lower GPA by networking your butt off though, or by targeting middle market or "boutique" firms. That will be a bit tougher, and will take a little more in the way of balls because it will probably involve cold calling, but its a good way in for people with lower GPAs (by IB standards). Other options to consider would be private wealth management/private banking groups at the major banks (generally less competative), or corporate finance roles with F500 companies. Try to avoid back office jobs, even at a major BB like Goldman, because once your in the back office it is very hard to move to the front office without going back for an MBA.

Good luck.