CS sophomore here. By the time I apply for internships ( summer of junior year ) my GPA will probably land around 3.4. Not terrible, but not the ~3.7+ I see thrown around as "safe" for top tech. Also I study at UNCC which is not considered a target school for those internship programs, but it is considered a good public school in NC.
What I do have:
- ~3 years of paid dev experience. Got my first job senior year of high school as a frontend dev (React/TypeScript) at a German company and stayed through my second year of college. ( I worked night shifts, it was an absolute nightmare but I did it for the money and experience mostly )
- Worked across the stack by the end: started frontend, transitioned into backend (Node.js, PostgreSQL).
- Shipped a side project that has around 1,000 users.
How much does GPA actually matter at places like Google, Meta, Microsoft, etc. once you have real industry experience on the resume? Is the 3.4 going to auto-filter me, or does the work history carry enough weight to get past the resume screen?
Anyone with similar stats who's been through the process would love to hear how it played out for you.
( also not sure if its of any good, but I got letters of recommendations from some senior staff engineers, they really liked to work with me so before I left I asked them for some letters. And I have a family relative working at google at the moment so I will probably get a referral from him. )