Check out this heartwarming tale of a Republican staffer who tried to retroactively get his GPA adjusted by hackers—he got caught, his pathetic attempts to cheat publicly aired, and now he has been fired.
The really sad thing is that GPAs aren’t that big a deal. They make a difference if you are trying to get into a post-bac academic program, but seriously…we all know you can be a dithering incompetent at school and get into business and government.
Oh, and the university this bozo wanted to hack? Texas Christian. Icing on the cake.
Well, no; the really pathetic thing is what a fool he looked while trying to solicit ‘a hacker’ for the job, and how meekly he jumped through the hoops they set up for him (are computers really so arcane to people that “I need a photo of a squirrel” doesn’t ring any alarm bells?)
What about ExxonMobil? Its fine for the Valdez spill in Prince William Sound Alaska has not yet been paid … but they just got it halved.
I love the comment from Congressman Rehberg’s chief of staff, Erik Iverson: “Todd’s a good person who made a real big mistake…” I’m sure in both Rehberg’s and Iverson’s eyes Shriber’s “big mistake” was in getting caught, not in trying to create his own reality.
I was particularly amused at the part about the rot-26 encryption. (rot-13 is a cipher where the letters are shifted 13 characters up the alphabet. e.g., A->N, B->O, P->C.)
I wouldn’t worry too much about our pal Todd. I hear he’s about to pick up several trunks containing the sum of 42 million US dollars from a security company in Nigeria – well, as soon as he sends the legal fees through Western Union.
He’ll be set for life!
($DEITY, this guy’s a moron!)
They make a difference on graduate school? No kidding. In my case I’m damned because my undergrad school is JWU but my GPA is pretty damned good.
So I won’t be bribing someone to change my poor GPA.
I’m curious, since my GPA is presently in the high-C range, how much I need to bring it up in order to be eligible for graduate Biology programs. Let’s assume that I’m going to do stunningly well on my GRE’s and that I can in fact bring it up (I can; I’m taking a few easy-A classes this semester and a couple more in the summer). The question is, how low can you go?
Cheaters generally prosper. It is rare for any employer to actually fact-check a resume or job application. What are the people at HR doing? Getting rules and policies changed to protect their own careers and boost their own earnings, while giving themselves enough meaningless busywork to make them look very busy and keep their operations impenetrable.
I’m not a biology person, but here’s some general advice for graduate programs.
It’s generally a good idea to focus on finding some professors who can write you good letters of recommendation — those can make up for mediocre grades or exam scores. Also, some graduate programs are interested more in your within-major GPA than your overall GPA, for whatever that’s worth.
Does anyone know if a good GPA in a another graduate program will offset a low undergraduate GPA when trying to get a second masters degree? I graduated with a 2.75 GPA as an undergrad (which isn’t really high enough to get me into top tier graduate programs in my field) but I have a 3.75 GPA for my Master’s Degree (in library science). If I now wanted to try a program related to my undergraduate major would my Library Science GPA help me at all?
Good recommendations and high GREs forgive a lot.
Davis:
It’s generally a good idea to focus on finding some professors who can write you good letters of recommendation…
This advice is good for anyone, regardless of grades. There are lots of schools that turn down people with straight A’s in undergrad. My grades and GRE helped me not at all.
J:
The question is, how low can you go?
Admission comittees tend to look highly on an upward curve in acheivement. That said, I don’t think there are many good graduate programs in the habit of accepting people with less than, say, a B+ average, in any major. You should think carefully about attending a school that does not offer a stipand – actually, don’t think – if they don’t offer to pay, forget it.
If you are not offered a place at (an acceptable) grad school, you can improve your CV by doing some research assistant work for a year or two. If you have a respected professor in your corner, chances are you can get some work in your field or perhaps in some related bio-medical field. You may have to travel, accept low pay, and/or do some not-very-stimulating tasks, but the truth is that your practical acheivements will overshadow whatever youthful indiscretions led to the lowering of your GPA.
J.:
I’ve been on the graduate admissions committee of a fairly decent biology department for over a decade. If you can bring your GPA up above 3.0, and your biology grades for the last couple years of your transcript are mostly As and Bs, and you’ve got good research experience, and your application essay isn’t too naive and flaky, you should be able to get into a fairly good graduate program. If you don’t get into someplace good, work as a technician for a couple of years, take one biology class a semester as a continuing education student and get As (if you can find a technician job at a university, they might pay the tuition), then apply again.
If your GPA is low because of low biology grades, concentrate on getting some As in biology courses–that’s more important than raising your overall GPA with some easy art appreciation and western civ classes. And be sure to get as much research experience as you can–without it, you’ll have a hard time getting into a graduate program, no matter how good your GPA is.
Some schools pay a lot of attention to GRE scores. The scores are very poor predictors of success in grad school, so the sensible programs ignore them.
Texas Christian University (TCU) is affiliated, rather loosely now, with the Disciples of Christ. It’s a very non-fundamentalist school from a very non-fundamentalist sect — and a school with religious affiliations that teaches evolution in biology (and everywhere else necessary).
As usual, the misdeeds of one kid shouldn’t reflect on the great work in biology, geology, business, and other areas, done by thousands of others.
Okay, so I take offense that you can be a dithering idiot and get into business and government. I do not totally dispute this, but we (my company) are very selective in hiring very smart people. We have made a few errors and corrected those rather quickly. Of course, I do believe acedemia is a tougher road (on average – there are some sad examples of professors too.)
So I have always been curious, where do all those idiots end up – there are not many out in the world I see.
George asked: “So I have always been curious, where do all those idiots end up – there are not many out in the world I see.”
Idiots aren’t necessarily stupid. In fact, some can be quite clever, and their cleverness helps them hide their lack of sense. Some of them are able to climb the ladder to high (and high-paying) positions in business and politics. You can probably think of some clever idiots who make the news.
J Daley, you’ve received some good advice. I was in your position a while ago, but did just fine in grad school (some work experience and a knack for the GREs helped me get in), received a PhD and have been gainfully employed ever since. I would add a couple of things: have a good idea what kind of program you want to enter and why, and come up with a couple of sentences to explain the GPA. Um…and I did get jobs in industry (R&D) and now government – now to those of you dissing government jobs, keep those grant applications coming. ;)
There are no good Republicans.
“I’m curious, since my GPA is presently in the high-C range, how much I need to bring it up in order to be eligible for graduate Biology programs. Let’s assume that I’m going to do stunningly well on my GRE’s and that I can in fact bring it up (I can; I’m taking a few easy-A classes this semester and a couple more in the summer). The question is, how low can you go?”
Well I lived close enough to one Grad School I wanted to go to, I was told by the professor who checked me out that I had a wide distribution of grades.
No, ultimately he didn’t take me on. But he did say my UG grades reminded him of his own. My grades weren’t terrible, but they weren’t first rate either. I wound up doing my PhD at Johns Hopkins.
Moral of the story, GPA aren’t as important for research work as it is for medical school. A good GRE score is helpful. Good grades in your intended field of study are helpful as are Good letters of Rec. What they really want to know is are you truly interested and do you have some drive?
Without that, you’re lost regardless of how good your grades are.
Only if you have a father who’s rich enough to donate so much that you can be considered a legacy. Or if you have unusually good bullshitting skills.
It depends on the university – not necessarily its quality, but its level of strictness about minimum requirements. That in turn depends on things completely outside your control, like whether there’s an admin person who automatically rejects every application with a GPA under 3.3 or a GRE under 1300.
But echoing what everyone else said, get your major GPA up. Also, I know Berkeley officially pays more attention to 3rd- and 4th-year GPA, so I presume if you got a 2.8 in your first two years and a 3.9 in the next three semesters, you can try weaving an explanation into your statement of purpose to emphasize the fact that beginning in junior year you were a top notch student.