How much do school grades matter in your country?

[Deathknightish]

My parents always said "if you want a good job, you need good grades".

Well, as an adult I can say that it's not quite the truth. I had good grades in elementary school, but in high school I got a case of getting fucking tired of school, so I had a lot of IG (That would be F for you Americans) when I graduated. Life still sorted itself out for me, though. Today I've worked for 7 years as a final layout artist in a translation bureau, and last year I was moved to our project manager department because our new owners shut down half of our graphics and design department. I'm happy with my salary (around 3000 dollars a month), and each year I get somewhere between 1-200 dollars as a raise. I'm happy with my life.

Grades matter if you want to get into university, but unlike what my parents told me, no employer even looks at your grades here. Every place I've been to, they have either just taken a quick glance, or not even bothered to open my folder where I have copies of my school grades.

How important are school grades in your country?

[Unholyground]

Well I know it is less important now than it has ever been because knowledge and information are at our fingertips. Even most post secondary education facilities do not care about your grades as long as you have the $$. Most jobs don't even care about high-school anymore, plus it is very easy to fake a high-school diploma anyways.

[Daedius]

How else are you suppose to gauge someone on understanding a subject?

I'm not a fan of exams, because anyone can cram and ace a test... and forget it all within a week. I'd prefer continual assessments.

[Saltysquidoon]

No job anywhere ever looks at highschool marks.

TAFE (which is trade school) doesn't look at grades just highschool completion.

There are minimum cut-offs to get into specific uni courses in Australia (although they're basically too low for everything but medicine and law and far far too high for medicine and law).

Graduate positions will probably look at your marks if you're trying to work at a top tier firm or the best hospital or placed with the best academic. But that's more going to boil down to where you've done placement and/or nepotism.

So yeah after you first job post-university no one looks at your marks ever again.

[Jotaux]

Last two years of high school mattered to get into a university. After university no one has ever asked for my grades

[Shadowferal]

Jobs don't look at grades here
But they do want to know if you graduated high school.

[eschatological]

Grades matter less and less as you go on.

High school grades are only good for one thing - getting into a prestigious university.

Once you get to that university, the name means more than anything, as long as you graduate. I know people who killed themselves for college grades to get "cum laude" or "summa cum laude" and it means very little.

I went to a pretty good law school which has produced Senators and Representatives (and in one case, a Secretary of State), and all people see is the name, and say, "Oh, you went to X? Okay, good enough."


I should also point out - you need to work less for "average" grades the higher you go. I don't know a single person who got below a C average in law school, which is weird, because C should.....be the average. I guess law school has a high enough turnover of people who WOULD fail that just drop out before it reaches that level.

[Katchii]

Aside from qualifying to get into a college or university with high GPA requirements, they mean almost nothing.

[Dezerte]

So I'm also from Sweden. I work with teaching and currently doing university to earn a degree - and while a degree is generally not necessary to work as a teacher it does come with benefits like higher salaries.

[Unholyground]

Jobs don't look at grades here
But they do want to know if you graduated high school.

Which is pretty easy to fake depending what decade you graduated.

- - - Updated - - -

Aside from qualifying to get into a college or university with high GPA requirements, they mean almost nothing.

Only high end schools, if you have the money for the courses the vast majority of colleges and universities don't care what your grades are. It is all a money racket anyways.

[Einsz]

Nobody cares about your grades as long as it's not F which means you need to repeat a year. Uni spots are based on national exam, then once you start working nobody cares about your uni grades as long as you have diploma. Some career paths have national exam to earn you right of work in the field such as medicine and residency spots are based on that. Person with highest score gets 1st specialization spot pick etc (there is also a lot of corruption with it how to bypass the system but lets not focus on that)

[Katchii]

Only high end schools, if you have the money for the courses the vast majority of colleges and universities don't care what your grades are. It is all a money racket anyways.

I did say Colleges or Universities with high GPA requirements.

[Unholyground]

I did say Colleges or Universities with high GPA requirements.

Gotcha, but if you are rich and make a donation to those schools you also still get in regardless.

[Katchii]

Gotcha, but if you are rich and make a donation to those schools you also still get in regardless.

Not necessarily, but I'm sure it gets you a leg up.

The vast majority of people don't have that kind of money though so it's a moot point in those situations.

[Unholyground]

Not necessarily, but I'm sure it gets you a leg up.

The vast majority of people don't have that kind of money though so it's a moot point in those situations.

Oh definitely.

[Strawberry]

If I ever could give an advice to the young me, it would be:

1) Study university
2) Invest in Bitcoin in 2009/2010. HODL until 2017!´

Sure, you don't need 1 with 2, but a university degree is great to have. At least to brag about it.
As someone mentioned, no one cares about university grades, just your diploma.

[Shadowferal]

As long as you can read and write the English language, basic math and can vocally communicate well..
That will get one in most entry-level jobs.

[Zuben]

At the latter side of ninth grade you'll apply to different high schools by order of desire (unless you opt for vocational school, of which I know nothing about). Whether or not you get accepted is decided by your middle-school grade average and how well you do with a potential entrance exam/interview (not every school has them). For example, I didn't get into my first pick because my grade average was just shy of what the school required and there was no entrance exam nor interview, but I did get into my second pick, which did have an exam and interview. My very last pick was a school with no exams/interviews and their requirement for grade average was so low it was seen as the high school option for absolute dumdums (it got shut down later on). Had I spent my high school years there I don't think I'd have fared as well in life as I did.

That's about the only point where subject grades matter. Higher education is all about entrance exams and your grades from matriculation exams. That's at least how it was back in my day, I think I heard some murmur about things changing somehow in 2010's.

As to how much higher education grades matter for job hunting I don't know, I dropped out myself and got into a proper career through apprenticeship.

[monkfailz]

Growing up in an Asian-American family household. I think it is still very true that Asian parents are the most strict with their children. They want their children to succeed even if it means pushing them as hard as they can with strict school schedules, learning piano or any musical instrument at an early age. Asian parents want their children to come home with all As on their report card.

That being said...

How much do school grades matter in my country of the United States?

I think in the early ages (elementary and middle school) they may matter quite a bit.

But as you grow up and enter high school and college, you may start to think that grades may not be that important. There have been certain people in history who never went to college/university who still became successful. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Mark Zuckerberg, and Oprah Winfrey all dropped out of college. Ellen DeGeneres is one of the most successful comedians and hosts in Hollywood history enrolled in the University of New Orleans, but dropped out after only one semester.

If you work hard, you can be successful at anything in life regardless of your grades. At least that's how I was raised. And I think this is true to most, if not all, of America.

[vindicatorx]

I mean it has some impact on your ability to get into a university but it's still possible to get into a decent one.