Is it permissible or appropriate to round one’s GPA on a resume or unofficial transcript to be distributed at OCI?
Our career services office says to display GPAs to the nearest hundredth, and my GPA is a 3.495. Thus, if I round it I can list it as a 3.50, which could help with some of the more grade-focuesed firms coming to OCI. When recruiters are culling through hundreds of resumes, a 3.4x might get tossed while a 3.50 gets kept for further review. Just curious as to what you all think.
Absolutely round it up. Especially if your career services office explicitly tells you it is ok to do so.
I think rounding up is risky at best, but if your CSO indicates it is o.k. I would prob go with it. I was specifically warned not to round up with percentile rank by my CSO (not that I did this). E.g. top 20.3% shouldn’t say they are in top 20%. I guess that is fairly obvious, but I imagine it could be painful for someone especially if they were incredibly close to a recognized cut-off. Just putting the exact number would prob be best in that case IMO.
Another note on rounding: my current CSO said to put the exact (full) number with GPA, but I think I would go with what your office tells you. I would prob get it in writing (email) if possible though if they are going to approve a round-up from 3.495 to 3.5 (even though it is almost exactly the same GPA).
My school told us you always round down. But I suppose just listen to your school.
Yeah, this is more what I’ve heard, or at least just put the exact number. But I still stand by what I said earlier as well.
Putting 3.50 is disingenuous as it implies an exact amount. If you’re rounding up put a 3.5.
OP here.
That’s kind of my issue. The CSO guide clearly says “round to the nearest hundredth, not to the tenth.” I’m not really that concerned about getting in trouble with CSO, but more about employers thinking I was being deceptive.
If your GPA is reported to three places, report it to three places. A 3.495 is not a 3.500 or a 3.50 or a 3.5. I find that misleading.
My career counselor also explicitly insisted that I change my resume from 3.XXX on my resume to 3.XX despite the fact that our official transcripts go to three places. I have to say, I don’t understand the reasoning. Since my last digit is a 1, I had no trouble complying for the mere sake of uniformity with the 3.XX undergrad gpa on my resume. But I always wondered how people would handle it in tougher situations, which is exactly what you seem to be in.
My gut would be just use three places.
+1. Mine told us we could put the exact amount out to 3 digits, but that if we wanted to go with fewer digits, it was inappropriate to round up.
TITCR
Why should he care what his school tells him to do, they don’t have his interests at heart they have their own. It’s not like this is an ethical issue. Put 3.5
Why would you even take the miniscule risk of some firm getting your actual transcript, comparing it with your resume, and then wondering WTF?
I can’t believe your school tells you to round up. That’s how they probably roll on the USNews data sheet, employment statistics, and salary data, too.
I suppose that to be a big timer at whatever you do, you have to start small.
edit: Did not mean to post anon.
Why would they wonder WTF? This is 4th grade math, 3.495 rounds up to 3.50.
Check with your school. My school’s rules state explicitly that your gpa should be truncated and never rounded up, and this seems like a good rule to follow in general. To me, putting 3.50 or 3.5 when you didn’t actually reach the 3.5000000 level is being disingenuous. I don’t think it’s worth the risk of trying to squeeze out that last 0.01 or 0.005 on your gpa because you don’t know how the person reviewing it is going to react when comparing it to your transcript, and if they react negatively, you’ll almost certainly get thrown in the ‘no’ pile.
If this is really such a huge issue just put 3.495; of the three possible choices 3.49 is clearly the stupidest.
And I want to reiterate that pursuing your personal job search according to your school’s arbitrary rules seems like a pretty pathetic strategy. Of course, those who do so probably end up with a cush job in the CSO.
Call career services, ask their opinion on your situation, do what they say. /thread.
If your CSO tells you to round up to the nearest hundredth, I would put 3.50. 3.5 is more misleading and they have your transcript to doublecheck. Just make sure your CSO really does say that and has it in writing. Our CSO also tells us we may round up to the nearest hundredth, but may not round at all in putting our class percentage. The class percentage hurts since I just missed a significant cut-off.
If you follow their advice and it turns out to have been bad, guess who’s not gonna be there to take the blame or bail you out?
3.50 is proper if you follow significant figures rounding rules: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures#Rounding
That said, I would not round up. The benefit of having a 3.5x in there instead of a 3.4x is outweighed by the chance that someone is turned off by your rounding. While I would not care much I would not like to see deceptive rounding, even if it is mathematically proper.
Clearly multiple schools differ. 3.50 or 3.495 is proper. I would put 3.495. If you catch any crap about it just say that you like to be precise.