Career : Internship Vs Cgpa...

Relevant Internships are more valuable than GPA.

This is something that no one will tell you while you’re in school. Not your professors, advisors, and surely not your parents.

What parent wants their child to have poor grades? None of them.

But parents are perfectly fine with having a child with great grades and no job.

In this article, I show and prove to you why your parents, friends, professors, and society is wrong for thinking that internship and job experience isn’t as important as grades.

Let me start off by telling you a story.

I tell this story soooo often because it directly proves my point of internships being more valuable than good grades.

“I was waiting in a room to be summoned for my interview. The position was a Software Engineering internship that “claimed” they only hired juniors.

At the time, I was a sophomore with a semi-decent GPA (I won’t tell you what it is, but it was below 3.3) and one internship.

There was another student I was sitting next to who was interviewing for the same position. We attended the same university, but he was a junior.

Since we were sitting next to each other, he decided to strike up a conversation with me. I’m not much of a conversationalist, so he did most of the talking.

We started talking about our least favorite professors. Then somewhere along the lines, it got to the point where he was mentioning how he had a 3.9.

I made sure to stay quiet then knowing my GPA was way lower than his.

He also let it slip that he hadn’t had ever had an internship before.

A few moments later, I was summoned for my interview and I never saw him again . . .

Until I saw him on campus about 2 months later.

It was then that he told me he didn’t get the internship. However, I did get the internship position, but I just told him that I hadn’t heard back from yet.”

So . . . why do you think I got the internship position and he didn’t?

He was a year ahead of me and he had way better grades than me.

I’m hoping that you’re now realizing that the answer to the question was that I had actual work experience and he didn’t.

He had 1 internship to his 0.

Now, along with that story, I am going to offer you more reasons why you should focus on internships more than grades.

Employers Value Internships More Than Grades

Yes, it’s important to focus on grades.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t. BUT . . .

Your GPA and transcript don’t provide any value to companies.

Good grades only tell companies that you’ve done well in your classes and have basic knowledge of your field.

I say basic because it takes years of experience to gather the real knowledge.

You know what good grades DON’T tell companies:

Areas you’re skilled in
Qualities that make you unique
Leadership capabilities
Your personality and your passion
Etc.
Your work experience, on the other hand, tells employers all of that, and more. Which is why it is the main bulk of of your resume and why they hire you.