What is your college GPA?
 

Although GPA is definitely not a factual indicator of someones intelligence (in my opinion), I am curious as to where the rest of GFF stands in the college grading world. Do you think your GPA is a good indicator of your intelligence? Why or why not? What college do you attend? The poll is anonymous incase you want to keep your GPA private and just talk about whether its a good indicator of intelligence or not.

My GPA is about a 3.44 combined from a community college and BYU. Sometimes I feel like this number is a poor indicator of intelligence, I don't feel I deserve a GPA even this high. I try to find the easy way out of everything...

I am in the 3.0 - 3.2 range. I could be a lot higher but once a slacker, always a slacker.

Is GPA an indicator of intelligence? Not necessarily. I believe its more an indicator of work ethic and drive than intelligence, but that's just me.

lol... if you're in 3.0-3.2... why did you vote 4.0?

He didn't vote for 4.0. I voted for 4.0 because that's my GPA right now.

I think that a GPA is a pretty good indicator of intelligence, because if you don't have any kind of work-ethic you must be some kind of dumbass.

Ah thank you, sorry for pinning that on you RainMan. Wanna vote? :D

I graduated with a 3.2 GPA. I probably could have gotten higher if I actually gave a shit about my gen-ed classes, but alas, I was far too busy with classes that were relevant to my future to bother trying very hard.

I agree to a certain extent. I may have had a 3.2, but I'd say I have better work ethic than most of the chumps I know, especially when it's related to my field. If it's film-related work, I am motivated beyond belief. If it's something I don't care about, like Spanish, or anything else I'm not interested in, I tend to not care and not try as hard.

Gee, thanks. :rolleyes: When you take a kid on the lazy side, put him in school and fail to challenge him, you end up with a very poor college student. Yeah, that's right, I blame society. Personally, I'd rather be smart than be a hard worker.

Three years of engineering school has taught me one thing: I have to do something I enjoy. The common thread in all the advice I've been given lately has been that if you do what you love, you'll be successful. Maybe you think you're smart because you work hard, but I think I've figured a few things out long before most people do--when it's already too late.

Well, off to art school, I hope they don't mind my mediocre GPA. =p

If you're not being challenged in college, then it's nobody's fault but your own for choosing the wrong place to attend.

I wound up with a 3.63 at Carnegie Mellon doing my Materials Science & Engineering degree. I had around a 3.8 in my Materials Science classes, a little higher in my gen-ed classes (since they're so much easier), and around a 3.1 for my math/physics classes (figures I had to choose a minor in one of my worst subjects, haha).

Starting my first quarter here at grad school where I just need to keep a 3.0, but that still might be a struggle since these are definitely the hardest classes I've ever had.

2.967 in Astrophysics. So close to that 3.0

I'm in the 3.90-3.99 range. My school assigns slightly lower points for the "A-" grade, so two of those caused by GPA to be where it's at now. I'm working on a Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree, and it's been a rigorous few years so far. I had a 4.0 in my General Education classes, and a 3.9 in my pre-nursing courses.

GPA? Why can't we just use %? Oh and I have a 1... Seems like I'm the dumbest here.

I had a 4.0 in grad school and a 3.79 for undergrad. I really don't like GPAs because each school is different and it depends mostly on luck, really, and which instructors and classes you pick. Like some schools don't use the plus and minus system, and some instructors are jerks and openly admit to never giving out As on principle. One person's 3.0 could be like another person's 3.5. Sure, GPA often is an indicator of how much a person has blown off studying, but because schools and even classes within each school have different grading systems, I don't think it's fair to say someone who has, for instance, a 3.0 isn't trying hard enough.

I went to two colleges-one for my associates, the other for my bachelors.

The first college (for my associates) was just super easy. It felt like a step between high school (although in some ways easier than high school) and the second college I went to. Since I rarely studied, I wound up with A's and B's, so something like a 3.5 GPA.

In my second college though, I really boned up. I don't know what happened, other than I guess the fear of failing, so I studied non-stop (to the point that my <b> parents </b> of all people were telling me to relax). As a result, I pulled off all A's, and a 4.0 GPA there.

I think GPA's depend on a lot of factors. The courses, professors, university/college, what's needed for an 'A', 'B', etc. There would be some classes that would require an insane amount of work/intelligence to get an A. Others felt like if you just kept your eyes awake in class, you'd be fine.

However, a GPA is not the be-all, end-all. Common-sense, the ability to use the skills you picked up in college to learn other things, experience, and so forth are also important. THe last one (in terms of the real world) I was lacking which really can hurt if a person were to look for a job related to their field.

My GPA's like a 3. See, my sophomore year I reached critical mass in sheer arrogance. I decided that professors couldn't really teach me anything, so I would just read the books at home and not attend. Of course, I don't do homework on principal, which includes reading books while not attending classes. I barely passed the first semester, got an awesome .6 the second semester. Although I did pass all the necessary classes, despite not attending anything after mid-terms. That brought the GPA down a bit.

The next semester I decided to just attend every class and do every assignment. I still didn't study. 4.0.

GPA isn't a measure of intelligence, it's a measure of your work ethic.

I used to have a 3.7 GPA at my old college down in Florida.

When I transferred back up to Michigan, they took all of my courses okay but none of the grades or academic standing, and I wound up with a "GPA transfer reset" of 2.0.

Almost three semesters later and I'm still working on bringing that up to a decent level. After my first semester of A's and B's I worked it up to a 2.7. Not very good considering that employers shun hiring student interns with low GPAs. So I kept plugging away and finally got it up above 3.1, a decent level considering what my GPA has been through.

Currently I think my overall GPA is somewhere around 3.18 because of the reset, but my per-semester GPA's are usually in the 3.6 area.

So if we are to believe this poll, 45% of everyone attending College has a 3.9GPA or higher. While I do believe that some people on this forum would hold such a mark, 45% is a little hard to believe.
(with 20 voters btw)

I got my Bachelor of Arts degree and finished out with a 2.92 GPA. Kinda fucked up my first couple years, thinking I'd be a Business major.

45%? I don't know how you did your math... but I do agree with you, it seems a little too high... it could be that the smart people are more willing to submit their GPA...

I had to check my resume since it's been so long, but I graduated with a 2.851 (Bachelor of Fine Arts, Journalism major). It was totally a work ethic issue. My high school history teacher told us that when he was in college, he had a choice between working his butt off and having no life to get a 4.0, or to take it easy and get a little less. I liked that philosophy, and given my career path, places that are hiring don't look at your GPA, only your degree and where you got it from. As far as I know, my GPA hasn't held me back any.

There's a huge difference between having work ethic and having the care to use it. GPA is not a very good indicator of intelligence for just that. Just because I can date regularly, party regularly, hold down two part time jobs and one full time and still make it to them on-time with the abilities necessary to perform well intact...

Well, that doesn't mean I necessarily want to, does it? Fuck no, I'd rather spend time flying around in my place, blowing shit up and skirts off.

Yeah, it's probably that people with higher GPAs are more willing to display it. Or as an elitist forum, we tend to keep a fairly intelligent population. Or, there's a lot of liars. Maybe all three.

Semester GPAs are pretty good usually, but my overall GPA is barely above a 3. It's a reminder of my shameful freshman year when I failed more than half of my classes. It was pretty humbling, because I thought I was smart shit in high school.

Matt, I've never heard of a GPA "reset", but I feel for you. That seems totally unfair, but it's good to hear that you're working through it.

At 20 votes
20% *4* claimed to have a 3.9-3.99
15% *3* claimed to have a 4.0

So 35%, typo/screwup in my previous post.

That being said like it was brought up, it is probably a combination of those with higher marks being more willing to flaunt it, and also perhaps a few flat out lying about it.

It kinda depends. A super-high GPA, especially in harder subject areas, probably means all time was spent studying, not doing extracurricular stuff. That's not necessarily true all the time, but neither is it vice-versa.

I did a whole bunch of stuff in college, between having a full-time job, joining several organizations and serving on the "boards" of most of those, and even being the chairman of the Relay for Life three years in a row.

Yeah, my GPA suffered for it a little (that and my first semester in college ruined it too, but for different and slightly hazy reasons), but I like to think I gained a whole lot more by participating in those activities.

4.0 going into my master's/phD program. Lord knows what it's at now. They keep paying for me to go abroad, so I assume they're happy with my work.

3.3ish in my senior year (undergrad degree). Screw all you smart people. Especially you, Deni. >=|

I go to a football school.

That is absolutely true. I think I have a 3.5 right now... I used to have a 3.7-3.8 but it went down thanks to a couple of insanely harsh teachers that never gave out A's. I put the same amount of work and effort in, but it all depends on luck & and what instructors I end up with.

I have no idea, our education system is completely different. What's the GPA if you get mainly As but a couple of Bs?

My GPA was about 3.4 when I graduated college. Time (and lots of study) will tell how my law school GPA will fair.

I personally think that GPA provides mainly a measurement of a person's work ethic. Their might be a correlation between intelligence and GPA, but I don't think it's a hard-and-fast rule. For instance, if it were a true indicator of intelligence, that would mean that my intelligence jumped dramatically between my senior year of high school (a scatter of grades averaging a C) and my first year of college (3.9 GPA) with my intelligence then stagnating after that to the 3.4 range. That just seems absurd.

I think grades in some sorts of classes do actually test a bit of intelligence instead of study habits and work ethic. Think of all those times you've had tests that didn't actually test you on any material covered in the class, but instead asked about other things that you had to really think about to see how it connected (I'm looking at you every goddamned physics class I've taken). Studying a ton for those classes never really helped much, it was all about how you could figure out the tricks and be able to grasp material from past classes (anyone can cram for a test, it's a lot more difficult to retain knowledge from year to year).

I think it was 3.54 or something close to that the last I checked. I don't expect that to remain after this semester.:(

Maybe this will help you and anyone else needing a hand calculating their GPA: GPA calculator. It should help if they measure "hours" the same over there as over here.

2.85 or so here (BS Geophysics). I put in tons of study time despite my multiple jobs... However, some classes still just outright kicked my ass, regardless of the time invested. It just seemed *impossible* for me to have done better than I did, given the knowledge at-hand. (ie: "Oh well this problem had a trick from a very advanced version. Someone got it so I'm gonna count it." And some dude with Pi on his shirt nearby would look pleased with himself) But I tell you, I worked my ass off so I could break 3.00 (which was nice to have on a resume; 3.00+), but I never pulled it off. I'd always hit a snag and it pissed me off.

The other folks getting my degree were either around where I was gradepoint-wise or they were making a spotless 4.0 because they were god damn geniuses. Seemed like NOBODY out of my group was in the 3.0-3.9 range...

From my experience, GPA is a combination of time invested as well as intelligence. Then it breaks down to professor tendencies and the class itself (higher level classes like 400-level tend to be more forgiving than basic ones). This one dude I went to college with was easily the smartest dude in Saudi Arabia in his graduating high school class (or whatever you call it over there). He *MASTERED* English in two years, enough to where he could detect and deliver his own sarcasm.

The guy waited until the night before doing homework and never cracked a book to study for tests (his roomie made note of this. Both of them were Geop). That guy made a 4.0 every semester with complete and utter ease. College was like a game to him =( There was an older dude (30ish or so) that busted his ass and did almost as well as Ali (the genius). He went to MIT pretty easily, whilst Ali went back to Saudi to work off his contract with Aramco.

It was scary. He could've easily gone to Cal-Tech or MIT without even breaking a sweat. You should've seen him do a Rubik's cube x_x

If I see someone with a 2.0 or so, I'll judge them on the spot. Either smart and lazy, dumb as hell, or dumb and lazy. Once someone breaks the 2.5 mark, I find myself unable to judge. So many profs at A&M were too god damn different. One would give loads of partial for a student who was trying earnestly, whereas the other would take 20 points off in the blink of an eye.

No hyphen in Caltech. >_>

Deal with it! =V

3.526 as an undergrad, though it probably would have been higher if I didn't work all through college (two jobs my first two years). Had a 3.5 through 3 semesters of grad school, and I currently have NaN in law school.

3.19 here.

Ugh, I try to keep up with my classes, but some of them are excruciatingly difficult to catch up on. For example, my psychology class didn't have any homework assignments or the like, so missing even the slightest detail on a test question put the test-taker in a life-or-death situation. I was lucky to pass that class with a C considering that the questions cover every tiny detail in the course material.

Luckily, the A's in my other classes balance out the C's so far. I'm somewhat satisfied with my GPA.

Right now, I have a 2.93 as a sophomore at Georgia Tech. I still have while to go because I just switched majors this semester from Electrical Engineering to Computer Science, so I'm a little behind in a school where most students stay for 5 years to complete a degree.

My goal is to hit the 3.5 mark since I plan on attending grad school. Considering the fact I'm helping people with higher-level CS classes than the ones I'm in right now, I'm pretty certain that my issue up to now has simply been a lack of interest in my previous major. If this semester goes well enough, I'll break the 3.0 barrier by this Spring and be well on my way.

Funnily enough, 3.0 at Tech is Dean's List. While I don't believe it's really warranted, it's really nice to say you hit Dean's List for a semester to people who don't know any better. I guess it also acts as an indicator of the difficulty the school is known for.

As far as GPA being an indicator of intelligence goes, I think several factors come into play such as the interest level in a topic, the luck of the draw when choosing a professor, and a student's work ethic from that point on. I know several people who are forced to take a particular major, or else their parents will pull them out of school entirely. It really saddens me.

Thanks for that!

It came out as 4.0...but I know i'm not that intelligent and I didn't quite understand the hours part. What's all that about?

3.85 at the moment. That's because my first semester I got hit with a C in Intro Statistics (funny... I'm doubling in statistics), so that immediately brought my GPA down to a 3.5ish and every single semester after that is just raising it slowly and painfully. It's tough to see a 2 calculated in the 18 hours you take your first semester.

But I know some people with 4.0s and they just cruise by taking the easiest classes. I think it highly depends on your major and what kind of classes you take. If you're electrical engineering, I can doubt seeing 4.0s across the board.

I've had different GPAs at different steps along the way.

First was the Westfield State College (hay sass!) Math degree I have. I finished WSC with a 2.76 GPA. It's low thanks to switching majors, once, kinda twice, and jackass professors that think they wrote the book on the subject and expect you to know just as much as they do because it's so easy for them.

Then I started my pre-professional courses to get into pharmacy school. I nailed that stuff with a 3.85 GPA, stuff including organic chemistry and microbiology.

Now I'm in pharmacy school, and I got scared when they told us "you're not gonna get As, and you probably won't get a ton of Bs either". Right now I got an A, 2 Bs, and 3 Cs (which from what I hear really isn't that bad) for a 2.56 GPA (roughly). Hey, all I need is a 2.2 to stay off academic probation!

Bonus: I did a GPA printout which I put in my attachment.

I was a fucking asshole in college. I entered as a history and lit major in my freshman year and earned a 3.8 during my first year. During my second year, I changed majors to chemistry and swiftly dropped down to an even 3 because the classes were hard as hell. After that I decided "fuck this" and went back into history and lit to bring my GPA back up. This would have been fine but I ended up taking some classes with some really horrible teachers and I failed three courses in one semester (mostly due to attendance, which I never held in high regard). After that I was down to a 2.6 or something and on academic probation. After that I went down to part-time and brought myself back up to a 3.1 or something.

I don't regret a thing because I quickly found out that my degree didn't really fucking matter when I started looking for work. You don't need a degree to fix copying machines or bullshit with assholes on the phone. Plus, all my half-assed school behaviors gave me all kinds of time to become a better musician. I also made the good decision of going to a state school and saving a lot of money that most of my peers are still paying off 5-6 years later.

Right now a 4.0, but I'm also only halfway done with my first semester...If I get an A- in history, I'll have a 3.96. Must be summa cum laude (3.9-4.0 by graduation)...must be...

I graduated with my Bachelors of Science from McGill University with a 3.8something. I worked a decent amount, but I probably could have pulled off closer to a 4.0 had I been more focused. I don't really care though, it got me into med school and now everything is Pass/Fail. I love it.

Cumming laudely is better than only cumming laudely summatimes.

ba dum ch

....:erm:

4.47 overall GPA is what I got here in Canada. It means nothing to me though. The professor was just easy-going and for the first time in my life I was interested in studying a college program. My high school GPA on the other hand is as brutal as getting your tongue stuck on ice. High school lacked subjects of my interest. Fuck it.

I think a GPA reflects your overall stregnth in a field of study.
Your natural bent takes you in certain directions. This is why I am an art major not math.
Now if youre just lazy there is no hope to show how smart you are.

at the moment my gpa is 3,21, though it's pretty normal to get more than 3 in International Relations if you keep updated with news everyday. I rate my brain as B, no matter how much I struggle, I always get the less result compared to my friend who I think, are having the A-brain quality.

I don't really give a damn about that though, GPA is not everything and only passport of popularity (shamelessly said, I'm bit popular as the overestimated he-who-knows-all college classmate, don't people google everyday?)

But I'm pretty balanced between study and social activity though, I joined the student council and had pretty nice due to involvement in lot of research and activity. I cherished everytime passed during my college because I know, I would miss them :)

Oh Your SO Smart!
 

I wanted to post this because it is related to some of the issues of measuring Intelligence when it comes to Identifying peoples level of "Smartness" in correlation to GPA.

HOW does everyone feel when people tell you that your smart or not so smart. do you feel like things comes easy to you BECAUSE your simply gifted and born "smart"? OR the other way you feel your not "smart" enough so why should you keep trying?

OR

(this is how I feel about it) You don't like it when people label you as being SMART because you do a good/great job on something? It's like people assume that all that it took to do all that good/great job was because I have a better advantage than other people because I'M JUST SMART?

NO, The term "your Smart" I think is only appropriate if people understand that the work that it took to achieve the desired results was because of what Was put into it (THE HARD WORK), that's the smart part....not the idea that someone achieve their goals just because they can't help it, and born that way. :eye:

It's about what you put into whatever you want to do with your life. The hard work and dedication and faith in yourself that really measure your "smarts":D

What does Everyone else think?

I currently have a 3.82, though I haven't started my _real_ classes yet. We'll have to see where it goes after this semester, which is the first semester where I have relatively real classes that are somewhat related to my major. (Computer Engineering + Computer Science).

Though I will admit, I'm not nearly as social as most people are here. I just have a small group of friends that I hang out with and know well. I don't really go to parties (because a) I don't drink, and b) parties suck when you know nobody.) but I don't really stay in my room and study 24/7 either. (Actually, I really never have to study, maybe if I really needed a good grade on something.)

3.15... i can struggle a little bit, but biochemistry beats my brain to death. I am a Biomedical Science major with a Business Minor. The business helps keep my sanity. Sometimes I can get in the mood to study and other times I really don't want to look at anything! Imagine that. I enjoy higher learning, but there are some times when it burns me out

Im currently running a 71.25 avg in Biochem right now. Hate that fn class.

I think GPA is a good indicator of how much book smarts a person might have. There are people with GPAs of 4.0s, because all they do is study, study, study ("work hard")! But some (not all) of these people lack common sense, which I think is another measure of intelligence--think I'm going on a tangent here.... I only say this because I've seen this at my school and on the job, where people have done great in their classes, but have difficulty on applying what they learned, or they can't think out of the box, because they just follow a set of rules that they follow in their text books that they used on text book problems.

Maybe, it's just my university, but I've seen this a lot.