[Q] College degree alone not enough? - Page 4

I find the chances of any company giving 2 craps about you joining (for example) the asianstudent association at your uni, or an acapella group at your univeristy, or whatever, to be pretty low. They don't want a diverse group of people, they want people who are proven to be hard working, qualified, knowledgeable, and the way you show that is by doing work and doing research in your field or interning in your field, not by doing these fun activities unfortunately.

On November 15 2010 13:54 crazeman wrote:


This is probably true but when you come out of college with nothing on your resume, it's better than nothing. "President of <asian club>" sounds decent even though the club probably doesn't do shit. I'd take any working experience/internships over this though.

Also weirdly enough, I once had a interview where the interviewer went to the same school I did and was involved with the same asian club. we ended up talking a little about the club's yearly event to break the ice. That was probably a one in a million chance though

On November 15 2010 03:42 MaRiNe23 wrote:
Yea, i mentioned this earlier but this is more of the standard GPA I hear from aerospace and industrial and other engineers at my school all the time.

Also in regards to the rest of your post, which do you think has more weight?: having a job or volunteering? or do they both have the same weight?

On November 16 2010 02:38 kainzero wrote:

Yeah, but those are other engineering students, not professional engineers. Why would you compare yourself to those guys?
All the high GPA people I knew were set after graduation. All the low GPA people I knew struggled to find a job if they didn't have an internship beforehand.
Seriously, most people in college are absolutely clueless in how to use it to their advantage. Don't be one of them. I was. High GPA matters, and people who don't have it are scrubs. Do you want to be a scrub too?

Obviously you want to do something that challenges you and you can't make that kind of assumption based on whether it's paid or not. Do you want someone who makes $8/hr sweeping the floors at McDonald's, or do you want a volunteer who helps organize a sci-fi convention serving 20000 people with a budget of $20 million? Do you want someone who does paid research for the university, or the Asian Club President whose tasks consist purely of organizing parties?