How To Get an Internship with a Low GPA

College is a difficult time for most students. There is a lot of pressure socially and academically to perform your best.

Sometimes students fall behind and they adopt the framework of C’s get degrees.

I, among many of my friends in the Computer Science Program at Virginia Tech, decided to roll with this mindset and graduate with a 2.3 GPA.

Thes school thing was never my strong suit but I managed to get by and still get an internship every summer and find part-time software engineering work each semester too.

This article is here to guide those students that have low GPAs and are stuck trying to get an internship or start a company. I will walk you through the steps to turn your GPA around and learn how to prioritize your classes.

School is not about what you learn; it is how you learn how to learn

The sooner you can grasp this concept the sooner you can begin to focus on the things that matter the most to you during your time in college.

Mapping out what you want to learn and get from college is like setting expectations in a relationship.

You don’t want to overcommit or you will drain yourself.

You want to empower yourself with the possibility with graduating and feeling successful and starting that company.

Study Your Syllabus

Understand the minimum and maximum amount of work you need to put in to get the grade you want. Set a goal and read the syllabus

Study the syllabus front to back. Syllabus day is not just an ease into class, it is day 1 of the course. It is the most important day of the semester.

Understanding the syllabus and finding loopholes and how everything is graded is very critical.

In most computer science classes your assignments and projects are worth more than your tests.

Your assignments are worth 75% of your grade and the three tests you have are worth 25%.

For example, if you get 65% on all your exams that is a guaranteed 91 (75 + 16) in the class.

If you got a 50% on all your exams that is a guaranteed 87.5 ( 75 + 12.5).

Now that you have an idea of the grades you need, you can fluctuate as the semester goes on an access what grades you would need on each of your assignments as well. The above calculations assume a grade way higher than a C but serve as an example of how stressless a class can be if you learn to use a syllabus properly.

Now it might feel wrong to approach your classes this way but there are times when you have to make tradeoffs in the business world and spending your time in places that do not have high reward is a wasted opportunity cost.

Build a relationship with your professor

It is important that within the first week you are on a first name basis with your professor.

The easiest thing to do is approach them after you have digested the syllabus, preferably by next class, and ask them any questions about it, tell them why you are excited about their class, or just say, hi… my name is John.

Establishing a relationship with your professor is important because it will give you wiggle room on your assignments if you make mistakes, and grading on your tests will be less harsh. They may even allow you to re-submit answers for extra credit or do bonus assignments that other students do not get the chance to do.

Outside of assignments, having relationships with your professors is very important to building rapport within your school.

Say you want an internship and they need recommendations or references you will have them at your disposal.

Take advantage of your TA

Your TA is just as important as your professor. The class TA can help you get those 5–10 extra points on your assignment that you would have missed or help you solve those problems you have been struggling on.

Picking their brain is important because it will help prepare you for the test.

Use your TA for much more than just getting help on assignments.

Understand their point of view on problems and realize that they have been helping the professor and class for multiple semesters. They have seen the same students get stuck in the same places.

Having an external resource you can go to will save you so much time and in the business world time is $$$.

Studying with online content

One thing my older brother taught me was to prepare for each lecture. The way in which I did this was through finding the course content for the chapter I was on and searching for online content that existed already so I could get ahead of the curve. If you already know what you are going to learn in class that day, sitting in class is like a review rather than a chore.

Sitting in class you won’t have to give your full attention and you can focus on the side projects or business you are trying to start during that time.

Of course, anytime a student asks a question make sure you listen because they may be stuck at the same point at which you are, otherwise, continue on pretending you are paying attention.

Some of you may ask, why even go to class if I am not going to pay attention.

That brings us to our next step.

Attendance / Routine

When building a company or living a successful, happy life, the most important thing is routine.

Ask any successful co-founder and they will give you a detailed breakdown of every morning or night routine they have in place to ensure they focus and get the most value out of their time during the day.

If the only thing you learn from this article is to go to class! Never miss a class. Building a routine is so important that it will follow you for the rest of your life.

Even if your peers are getting straight As and missing class, you will be on top of the game the rest of your life.

Even though it may seem like you are cheating the system, it is important to not miss a day, to not miss a second on your routine.

This will build reliability and confidence in your ability to execute.

The best way to ensure you make it to class is to try and schedule all your classes on the same day. This will give you the maximum amount of time without interruptions on the other days.

It may be hard to sit through 6 hours of classes a day but the payoff for the days is you do not have class is well worth it.

You are the sum of the five people you spend the most time with

College is about learning how to learn, and more importantly who you know.

We talked about establishing a relationship with your professor and now it is time to establish a relationship with your peers.

This is why going to class is important because you can choose who you sit next to, who you goof off with, who you share notes with, and who you work together with on the assignments.

Building rapport with a core group of classmates and friends outside of partying and normal socializing will give you a foundation of people you can lean on when you cannot solve a problem or need to study for a test.

Also, these people will soon turn into your potential business partners or people willing to start side projects with you.

It is best to be authentic with these people because you do not want to come across as using them or being needy.

Make sure you focus on the value you can bring them and figure out how you can stand out.

Turn these people into your closest friends and the magic will happen.

Side projects

Side projects are your bread and butter. They are the reason we are setting up all the previous steps and getting you in position to have the most amount of time left at your disposal during school.

Side projects are going to get you all the interviews you could possibly want. They will give you all the experience you need to succeed in any job you have during or after college. The time spent and skills learned during these projects outweighs any classwork or assignment you will endeavor during your time in college.

Cs get degrees only works if you put all your time, energy and effort in your side projects.

Turning your side projects into a business is even more impressive. Learning how to do market research, get customers, iterate, and build are all things you will need for your full-time job or even running your own company outside of college.

Most people advise against dropping out of college to run a business and I believe the same. If you cannot maintain a college degree and understand the importance of routine then you will fail regardless of what you pursue.

Struggling to find ideas for a side project? Refer to this article I wrote on how to come up with project ideas.

How to start a side project

Entrepreneurship club

If your school does not have one… start one and become the president.

Having leadership skills is critical to running any business or being an employee at a company.

If you are not the president, befriend him/her and work together. Go to them for feedback on all your projects and find out ways on how you can contribute and get involved.

This can be the greatest source of how to find the right people to work with.

The relationships you build inside of this club will continue after college and will leave you with an endless supply of connections further down the road.

Plus, you can tell them all about your “Cs get degrees” strategy and help them find more time to spend on their projects.

I will update this and post part 2, including the following;

• Hackathons
• Interviews
• Resume / Career Fairs
• Stand out

Thank you for reading thus far.

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