Well, the semester is wrapping up, and looks as though I’ll be lucky to squeak by with a 2.5. It won’t make much of a dent in my cumulative GPA, but I’m worried now that future employers and grad school will look at my 1.5 or 2.0 in Immunology, laugh, and say, “And YOU want to be an infectious disease epidemiologist?!” My classes were awful, the tests were impossible, the professors sucked, but I know I definitely could have sucked it up and studied more. Aaaargh.
Are employers/ grad schools forgiving of senioritis, or am I screwed? Someone please come and reassure me that they did horribly in their senior year science classes and still got the job of their dreams. Please?
I don’t know how much this holds true in the health field, but most employers don’t look at your transcript. They may contact the school for one, but it’s much more likely that they’re merely confirming that you attended that school and graduated from it, but don’t take the time to look at your exact track record.
It’s much more likely that they’ll hire or not hire you based on how you present yourself first in your resume/cover letter/references to get the interview, and VERY heavily in how you present yourself in an interview. The rest is just numbers, and employers hire people, not numbers.
If you’re very worried or have trouble being hired full-time right away, pursue an internship in the field. Generally, a company will hire an intern they’re familiar with into a full-time position over an outsider.
Well, since I’m about nine years into a short, temporary break from school…
Seriously, I’m not aware of any employers that actually look at anything other than the school, major, GPA, and maybe special programs that you went through. Usually they don’t even actually get the full transcript, much less have the person making the hiring decision read through it.
Really all you need to worry about is your cumulative GPA, but also your “major” GPA is important; so for med school, all your science classes really count. For example, I got my MBA, so in getting into biz school, the most important thing was my GPA for the business only classes (which was a 4.0). :eek:
I’m confused?!?! Are you in college? If so, have you not been accepted to med school yet?
I’m not going to med school - I’m a microbiology major and I plan to get an M. P. H. in epidemiology sometime within the next few years. If I can get into grad school.
You’ll be fine as long as you get a good job that RELATES to epidemiology. And no, the job doesn’t care what your specific class grades were - they just want to make sure you actually graduated.
Um, my future boss looked at my transcript and asked why I’d made a C in my 2nd level COBOL class. I was going for a COBOL programming position. I told him the truth: I was getting married that semester. I did go back and retake that class and got a B, and I made an A in my 3rd level COBOL class, FWIW.
I got the job, though, and six years later, I’m still doing it.
Go talk to your advisor. If you don’t have one, get one. He/she can ease your mind and help you a lot with applying to graduate school. (assuming your advisor is not Professor Immunology)
