Why You Shouldn’t Want a 4.0 GPA

When I got to college, everybody who had already been there, done that had some advice. They said things such as “Make the most of it!”, “Time goes by so fast”, “It will be over before you know it” and things of that nature. This advice was quite often followed up with a statement like “Man, I wish I would have done more, I really didn’t realize exactly how fast time would go”. I heard regret after regret. When you are 19, you think you know everything, you really do. I decided to actually listen to these elders for once though and I couldn’t be happier that I did.

Ambitious and hard-working students typically come to college with the goal of having a great GPA. It’s a great goal to have, it’s an indication of how much you worked your butt off for four years, it’s easy to compare to others, and it’s easy to get excited about.

A great GPA comes with diminishing returns on investment.

There is one giant, huge, catastrophic problem with a high GPA though. Going back to the one economics class I have taken in my entire life, I learned that there is this thing called “Diminishing Returns” and it pretty much says that the more you do of one thing, you get to a point where spending more time doing that doesn’t really help you out all that much.

Right now, think about how much work it would take to get a 3.6 GPA and how much work it would take to get a 4.0 GPA. For many students, it would take double to triple the amount of time to get a 4.0 vs. a 3.6 GPA. If you work for that 4.0 GPA, you can count on spending an extra 10-25 hours a week studying than if you had settled for a 3.6.

The benefits of spending those extra hours to get a 4.0 GPA

Yes, there are certainly benefits. You definitely have a better shot at getting scholarships and grad school is in the future, having your GPA as close to a 4.0 can make a difference for you. Other benefits? Well.. You can contact me if you know of any, I haven’t really seen any others. I am purposefully omitting “get a better job” here and I will tell you why below.

What you can do with an extra 10-25 hours a week and a 3.6 GPA

An extra 10-25 hours a week should seem like a lot of time because it is. It’s enough time to join a student club or organization and really, you could even join several student organizations and even have a couple leadership roles within those. It’s enough time to start getting work experience through part time jobs around campus and it’s enough time to start volunteering with organizations you are passionate about. It could even be enough time to start a business, it’s quite liberating really.

In the End..

So looking at the big picture, the whole point of college is to get a fantastic job, right? Think about a resume with a 4.0 and not much else compared to a resume with a 3.6 GPA filled with all kinds of extra-curricular involvement, leadership, and work experiences. The person with a 3.6 will get the better job, it’s a no-brainer for most people but yet hundreds of thousands of students are pulling their hair out right this second trying to get that 4.0 and say they are too busy to get involved. You aren’t too busy, you just need to re-prioritize a bit. If you look at what companies care about most, they want you to have a GPA over 3.0 and then they want to see what else you did with your college career. After 3.0, the returns of having a high GPA quickly diminish and by a 4.0, the extra hours you spend studying are virtually wasted in the long run because they aren’t helping you get a job or do anything that will actually be remembered after college.

I am involved and still have a really high GPA

If that’s you, congratulations, you are extremely bright and work really, really hard. You aren’t off the hook though because I think you can do more. You need to push yourself more. Get a part time job, take on a leadership role, start something. If you have a really high GPA, clearly you have the work ethic needed to be great. After the 3.0-3.5 range, you are wasting your time studying though. It’s not going to get you anywhere a 3.5 couldn’t get you and doing other things with your time will get you amazing places a high GPA couldn’t.

My personal experiences with this

I have never cared too much about my GPA. I learned first semester that for every engineering job I could possibly want, all I needed was a 3.0 GPA. Companies told me that after you meet the GPA requirement, they look at what else you have done. Once I had established a GPA above a 3.0, I spent all my other efforts getting as involved as I could. Throughout the past 3 years, I have became the president of our engineering student council, co-chaired one of the largest collegiate career fairs in the nation, served as the student chair for one of the largest engineering outreach in the state of Iowa, started multiple businesses and am working for the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing. After my freshman year, I have never got a scholarship from the university, not one. And to be honest, I am perfectly OK with that, the money from my internships more than makes up the difference while giving me amazing work experiences and life skills that no scholarship could offer.

Long Story Short

Don’t spend so much time focusing on your GPA that you don’t have time to get involved in other things outside the classroom. The other things are what get you jobs and make your life not full of regret. Once you have a GPA in the 3.0-3.5 range, reduce the time spent on classes and increase the time spent living life and getting involved.