Question about grades and working for the govt...

[golonghorns]

Since we will generally be paid on a GS scale...starting at a GS-9 which is equivalent to a Master's degree....do our graduate schools grade really matter then? I know grades mattered a lot in undergrad...but is it true they don't really matter much in grad school, in particular working for the govt? What do you guys think?

[pizzatime]

Grades do matter. If you receive any type of merit financial aid you most likely have to keep a certain GPA. Also every program I applied to required grad students to maintain a ~3.0 GPA overall.

[greendiplomat]

pizzatime, I think the question was more with regards to employment.

As indicated by the salary scales, I'm take it that GPA doesn't really matter in terms of what salary you start with, but I'm assuming a high GPA would make it more likely for you to land the job in the first place.

[Cornell07]

At Yale's grad program, quite oddly, our grades are: Fail, Pass, High Pass, Honors -- which ROUGHLY correspond to F, C, B, A but even that is highly imperfect as it is up to the professor's discretion, so HP can equal an A- in some classes. To graduate you need all high pass, two honors, and an extra honors to counterbalance each pass. Ultimately, this means that we don't have formal GPA's.