How important are grades/GPA for pursuing mechanical engineering?

Hi Gloria,

From a general prospective a good grades is extremely important. Having a great GPA doesn't mean you are smarter than your peers but to employers it mean you are competitive and will do what it takes to be successful. It's a leadership trait...

Top companies will look at your GPA as a metric of success they want to hire leaders not followers. If you can have a combination of great grades and being involved to other activities such as clubs and volunteering trust me you will amongst top candidates for recruiters.

Hi! I would say to give you the best shot - you should shoot for a 3.5 or higher. You will be competing with people who have 4.0 GPA's and when we chose a summer intern we considered 3.5 and 4.0 about the same.. noting that we wanted a person with a personality and other interests. If you go below 3 then you may want to consider taking some classes over.

Hi Gloria!

Unless you are trying to get into a very elite engineering school, your grades likely don't need to be exceptional but do, as you said, need to be kept high. Many schools list on their websites a general "Class profile" that will give you a good idea of about how well you need to do academically to be admitted. Some engineering schools do have stricter requirements for admission than the requirements for the university as a whole, and in some situations you may be admitted to the university but waitlisted or not immediately admitted into the engineering program. This is absolutely ok. You'd get the chance to be a rockstar your first semester/year, knock out some gen-eds (in this situation, be sure to know if there are any particular gen-eds required by the engineering program and make sure to follow those so you don't get behind!) and then request to be admitted based on your first year of performance. Chances are, you're doing fine and you'll be admitted right away if you have generally high grades.

I have known good engineers who did not get good grades in college. Their ability to understand the equipment was good. Common sense and a basic understanding of engineering principles were what allowed them to succeed. They did not work in a design area, rather they worked with existing equipment