"net worth is inversely proportional to GPA"
- Thread starter OS
- Start date
<< According to my prof, a fair number of EEs from our department went on to be millionaires. Here's the kicker, he says generally speaking, the lower that person's GPA was in college, the more they are worth today. :Q >>
Oh shiznit...u mean i'm going to be a millionaire??
-Ed
- Oct 11, 1999
- 15,581
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<< Oh shiznit...u mean i'm going to be a millionaire?? >>
Well, apparently you have a better chance than a straight A student. We actually had a short discussion about this and the prof's hypothesis is that C students were more realistically equipped to take risks and to accept failure. Realistically, one can't make it really big without tripping a few times along the way.
Which sucks because I've spent most of my life slaving away for classes of some sort. When I hit college I started thinking to myself, education is a sham, I should drop out. Too bad I hadn't.
i'm not too surprised... the bookworms probably aren't as good at stuff like business and crap. and i think there's a limit as to how much you can make as an engineer before you have to move into management to make more.
Uh oh, I guess this means I should stop working so hard at school.
Oh wait, I never worked hard at school.
Oh wait, I never worked hard at school.
<<
Well, apparently you have a better chance than a straight A student. We actually had a short discussion about this and the prof's hypothesis is that C students were more realistically equipped to take risks and to accept failure. Realistically, one can't make it really big without tripping a few times along the way.
>>
Thats the best news I've heard all day!
<< Uh oh, I guess this means I should stop working so hard at school. Oh wait, I never worked hard at school.
>>werd up!! HAHAHAHA
for all you guys out there thinking of dropping school don't!
this discussion is very good, for the fact that it tells us even lower gpa students can come out successful. I agree with this wholeheartedly and i've been telling this to my g/f and she's like...then why you going to school for...blah blah blah..
I simply told her, for the networking of people around us. The more we know of each other as people, we have reference to the world.
this discussion is very good, for the fact that it tells us even lower gpa students can come out successful. I agree with this wholeheartedly and i've been telling this to my g/f and she's like...then why you going to school for...blah blah blah..
I simply told her, for the networking of people around us. The more we know of each other as people, we have reference to the world.
This goes along with the fact that people such as bill gates and larry ellison, as well as many other famous, rich people dropped out of college.
A few points:
1) Getting a degree is pretty important, no matter what. For all the "millionaire dropouts" there are hundreds of good old fashioned working-at-mcdonalds dropouts.
2) It's not necessarily untrue, but the statistic itself has less to do with gpa than it does with personality type or situation. For instance, a lot of people with low gpas are either unchallenged/uninterested, working their way through school, busy doing "something else" instead of going to class, etc.
3) Of my group of friends in college, I easily had the lowest gpa, and I do make more than the rest of them. However, the friend with the 2nd lowest gpa probably has the _lowest_ paying job, and another friend with a very high gpa makes almost as much as I do.
So.. hmm.. .ok, I guess my conclusion is that there is no correlation between gpa and net worth. The good news to that is that just because you have a low gpa it doesn't mean you won't get a good job and be successful. The flip side, of course - is that just because you have a high gpa doesn't mean anything either.
PS: I interviewed a dozen college students a few months ago for a job... there were some people with 2.5 gpas who were very well qualified, but a couple people with 3.7-4.0s that had absolutely no business leaving college with their degree. I mean, they had no clue. That's a shame.
1) Getting a degree is pretty important, no matter what. For all the "millionaire dropouts" there are hundreds of good old fashioned working-at-mcdonalds dropouts.
2) It's not necessarily untrue, but the statistic itself has less to do with gpa than it does with personality type or situation. For instance, a lot of people with low gpas are either unchallenged/uninterested, working their way through school, busy doing "something else" instead of going to class, etc.
3) Of my group of friends in college, I easily had the lowest gpa, and I do make more than the rest of them. However, the friend with the 2nd lowest gpa probably has the _lowest_ paying job, and another friend with a very high gpa makes almost as much as I do.
So.. hmm.. .ok, I guess my conclusion is that there is no correlation between gpa and net worth. The good news to that is that just because you have a low gpa it doesn't mean you won't get a good job and be successful. The flip side, of course - is that just because you have a high gpa doesn't mean anything either.
PS: I interviewed a dozen college students a few months ago for a job... there were some people with 2.5 gpas who were very well qualified, but a couple people with 3.7-4.0s that had absolutely no business leaving college with their degree. I mean, they had no clue. That's a shame.
You generally don't become a millionaire in engineering unless you move out of the pure engineer role and do some sort of business (management comes to mind) role along w/ the engineering role. And typically speaking, really smart people (especially engineers) tend to have less of a grasp on the social/communicative skills required for business. There are exceptions, but generally, that tends to be true.
Out in the real world for the majority of the jobs out there is all people skills, people skills, & people skills. Bookworms tend not to have these skills since they spend so much time studying.
decent discussion for once around here... i just dropped in to say that because it doesnt happen that often...
SaltBoy
Diamond Member
- Aug 13, 2001
- 8,975
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<< Out in the real world for the majority of the jobs out there is all people skills, people skills, & people skills. Bookworms tend not to have these skills since they spend so much time studying. >>
Bingo -- you win the prize!
I imagine some of the "C" students were the type that were intelligent and brilliant but spent much of their time socializing and becoming acquainted with other people. You can be smart, but if you are socially inept (where's that thread, again?) you won't be getting the big bucks.
I see we are into gross generalizations in here. I can guarantee you that there is a positive correlation between gpa and salary, perhaps not a very strong one, but it is there. People such as Bill Gates or anyone else who drops out of school and makes millions are statistical outliers and if you think that dropping out of school or having a low gpa means you are automatically successful, you're an idiot.
I wouldn't say smart people don't move into management because they are all socially backwards or any such tripe, more like they actually enjoy engineering or science and would rather do that than manage.
I wouldn't say smart people don't move into management because they are all socially backwards or any such tripe, more like they actually enjoy engineering or science and would rather do that than manage.
It's been my experience that, the smartest of the students are *not* the best students, not even close. In high school, some of the more brilliant students were low B, maybe C students.
But, as capn said, dropping out of school doesn't mean you'll be successful. That's absurd. Largely, those that are intelligent yet don't make great grades are simply bored, or have many other things in their life that they're passionate about and take precedence.
But, as capn said, dropping out of school doesn't mean you'll be successful. That's absurd. Largely, those that are intelligent yet don't make great grades are simply bored, or have many other things in their life that they're passionate about and take precedence.
Once you control for level of schooling, the 'quality' of the school (I won't get into a religious debate about how to define it, but let's assume that Stanford is a 'better' school than Ray's College-O-Rama), and perhaps the major (engineer vs. whatever) then GPA and future earnings potential are probably not that tightly linked, and may be negative in some cases.
But, man oh man, do those controls count.
But, man oh man, do those controls count.
UNCjigga
Lifer
- Dec 12, 2000
- 25,627
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Think about it this way: all the 3.5-4.0 students have their life handed to them on a silver platter. Its nice, but its all laid out for them. They have a set path to follow and they just coast along.
The f**knuts like me (2.5 GPA) have to struggle to get a job, struggle to get a raise, etc. We're the ones who are finding things out "the hard way", but we're getting seasoned too. We're getting our "street smarts". Right now I'm a consultant making minimum wage in a startup firm that could go under any minute (well, just signed a $35k deal yesterday so I'm okay!) Face it, living on the edge is a LOT more difficult than following a set path handed down by some Big 5 firm. We're enterprising, entrepreneurial people who are developing more of a "take charge" attitude. We're the sh1t!
The f**knuts like me (2.5 GPA) have to struggle to get a job, struggle to get a raise, etc. We're the ones who are finding things out "the hard way", but we're getting seasoned too. We're getting our "street smarts". Right now I'm a consultant making minimum wage in a startup firm that could go under any minute (well, just signed a $35k deal yesterday so I'm okay!) Face it, living on the edge is a LOT more difficult than following a set path handed down by some Big 5 firm. We're enterprising, entrepreneurial people who are developing more of a "take charge" attitude. We're the sh1t!
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