It turns out your GPA matters, after all.

Forbes reports.

Do Employers Care About College Grades?

The short answer: Yes.

At the end of my son’s freshman year at UCLA, his grades are not what I would have hoped. I won’t print his average here but suffice to say it’s not a 4.0. He did get an A in a history course but his performance in two required science classes was sub-par. This summer he’s making good money teaching tennis at a local camp where he’s worked before, a job where academic performance doesn’t matter. But what about next summer or the summer after that, when he may try to land a paying internship at a consulting firm or ad agency? More important, what effect will his GPA have on his job prospects post-graduation?

I talked to career services directors at four schools—New York University, Brandeis, Rochester Institute of Technology and Purdue—and they all agree: Employers do care about grades. Students shouldn’t think that just because they’ve mounted the admissions hurdle, they can slack off in class. To be sure, many small employers won’t expect to see a GPA on a résumé, but most large companies will. According to a 2013 survey of more than 200 employers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 67% of companies said they screened candidates by their GPA. NACE, A Bethlehem, PA non¬profit, links college placement offices with employers. Its members tend to be big companies with an average of 7,500 people on the payroll, including Kellogg, Procter & Gamble and Bank of America.

I also checked in with Dan Black, the director of recruiting for the Americas at professional services giant Ernst & Young, which hires thousands of new U.S. grads every year. He says, absolutely, he expects to see a GPA on a résumé. “Grades certainly do matter when we’re recruiting students,” he says. “It’s really one of the only indications we have of a student’s technical ability or competence to do the job.”


 
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