GPA is a terrible baseline for judging students.

For years, GPA has been the baseline for determining if a student will be successful or not. It is an outdated metric that really doesn’t have any use in the real world. Unfortunately, this metric is a large part of whether or not you’ll get considered for a job. No, GPA will not land you the job, but it will get your foot in the door. That means the employer is shutting the door on many qualified candidates because they don’t have a good GPA.

So, let’s take a look at when the GPA was first started. It was a beautiful spring evening when the professors at Harvard starting using the GPA in 1897. I’ll write that again, in case you missed it, when they started using the GPA it was in 1897, can you believe that? A little over 100 years ago we used the GPA to measure how well a student was doing in their classes.

That was a completely different age! That was when Charles H. Duell was the Commissioner of US patent office in 1899. Mr. Deull’s most famous quote was “everything that can be invented has been invented.” They didn’t even have cars in 1899, or anything useful for that matter.

Charles was wrong about that and we are wrong for still using the GPA. So I would say that is strike one, that we are still using an outdated and useless method for judging students ability.

What does the GPA even measure? Can you see someone's personality? Can you see how much experience they had in a certain field? Can you see their problem-solving skills? Can it see how much you were involved with organizations? Can you see how creative the student is? Can you see how well they will fit in at your company? I don’t think it measures any of those things. It does measure how well you did in school. The last time I checked, being in school and being in the real world are two completely different things. GPA’s inability to measure anything important leads us to strike two.

Also, back when they invented GPA the main goal in education was memorization, it was the knowledge is power era. Now, all you need to know is where to find the information and you’re golden. So the grades were based off of how well you memorized something for your test coming up. Another weird thing, 100 years later, that is still the way universities are set up, teaching information. The most important things you can learn is the things you can’t find in a book. Like, how to have a conversation with people, how to solve a problem your business is having, or what will be the best path to take for your company. You’re not going to find the answers to any of those questions by looking in a book. Which leads us to strike three.

Looks like you’re out GPA (Sorry for the terrible pun). So GPA sucks, what to use now? NuGrad has come up with a solution. We are calling it NuGrade, it measure students in three different categories personality, experience, and fit to the company. We are focused on finding the best students at every university to find their perfect job.

Personality — Finding what personality type they are and finding who they will work best with. Also, seeing what motivates them, their characteristics, and just what type of person they are.

Experience — This is what they have been involved in outside of class. All of their organizations and clubs they have been apart of. Being apart of an organization is a lot like being apart of a company. They both tend to do the same things. They solve problems, try to keep moral up, plan events, and strive for greatness. They get to test out the waters before they jump in the pool. They find out what they like and don’t like and get to expand their network all at the same time.

Fit — One of the most important things is to find the proper fit between the company and the student. It’s not about finding the best person it’s about finding the right person. Example, Lebron James is arguably one of the best players in basketball right now, that is his perfect fit. Now say you put him in a different sport, like tennis. He wouldn’t be the best, I would bet a lot of money that I could beat him at tennis. He would no longer be the best, he would suck. Now, switch the sport with companies and Lebron James with students and you get the same problem as Lebron playing tennis. You have to find the best fit, that’s the only thing that matters when you are hiring.

There are different ways to measure how successful students will be. You just can’t do what has always been done and expect a different result.