Low undergrad GPA, no extracurriculars and experience?

May 2021 7 8 Report

Low undergrad GPA, no extracurriculars and experience?

I'm currently a Biology in my junior year of college. I'd like to go to grad school and earn a masters but I don't think that will happen. I've messed up my undergrad was lazy a lot and have a 2.4 overall gpa and only about a 2.1 in my major related classes. I also have no experience in research or internship and no references of any kind. I have one year left. Do you believe I can turn things around?

Education & Reference / Higher Education (University +)

Chuckles

Even if you have 4.0 grades from here on, your GPA would just barely become the minimum for grad school. As a 3.0 is the passing grade in grad school if you cannot prove you can sustain that, they will not admit you.

You have to do the math yourself. Do you think you can get nothing but 4.0 grades from today going forward?

AlexPalmer

Like Lili said, you'll need to pick up relevant experience post-graduation. In reality, GPA is not a great predictor of how well you will do as a graduate student since many programs emphasize research, not taking classes, but it is still important because it can obviously proxy for other things like work ethic. You could also try and take additional classes at a CC after you graduate to pad your resume.

ibu guru

Graduate school is off the table. You've been too lazy too long, and lack any potential for grad school. Your grades stink, & you haven't done anything else, either. One year is nowhere near enough to turn this around to grad school levels.

You MUST turn this around immediately, and start performing, learning & doing something of some use to you & to prospective employers. Otherwise, you have no realistic hopes of any sort of job, either. Frankly, at this point, even trying to complete requirements to graduate with some sort of minimally acceptable GPA is at risk. Your performance is borderline even to earn a bachelor's - and that's not worth much to begin with, even if your GPA was over 3.0.

Anonymous

You are probably not going to get into any graduate program right out of college. You should take a few years off and work. A stellar senior year will help, but your GPA otherwise is so mediocre that you just won't look much like grad school material. Who's going to write recommendations for you? And who's going to take you on for research or an internship when other, higher-performing students are available?

However, the further away you are from a bad undergraduate record, the better, especially if you can come up with some sort of job or volunteer work that will help communicate your real interest in Biology. It might also help if you took some classes over, maybe as night classes, and did better in them.