Expressjet/ASA GPA for interview?
 

Quick question that I couldn't find in a search, is there a minimum GPA required to get hired at XJT/ASA? Someone had mentioned this at one point to me and I wasn't sure if it was true. I'm a current veteran finishing my BS from ERAU online and was curious if a 2.9 was "acceptable" for them.

Thanks!

One of the recruiters told me the minimum was 2.5. You should be okay with a 2.9...even if it is from Riddle.:D

Ok, thanks! Any reason why a hard deck for GPA? It doesn't make much sense to me at least.

If I was hiring people, I would want a hard deck. Or would you hire people with a 1.5 or lower GPA? Just saying...;)

What if you didn't even go to college? I've got several buddies that work at both that didn't go to college. I interviewed there too and no one asked about my gpa. I do know that if you put some college or graduated from college on your app that they'll want transcripts. If there is a hard number I haven't seen it published and my buddies are clueless as to if they do or not. 2.9 is pretty good. Close to an all B average.

George Bush had a 2.0 and he became president twice.

Don't let them fool you. Plenty of people there with out degrees .... Plenty !

It's all about supply and demand , when they need it they ll take kids while attending pre school. Like any other airline...

J/K but you get the point.

Good luck

A lot of intelligent people never went to college. IMO if you cant pull a 2.5 in college you really just wasted your time and money. They are looking at the whole picture when they hire someone. If I bombed in college I would seriously debate on not listing it as it would make me look worse then a person who had never gone to school. A 2.9 isn't a bad average and I dont think they will give you any gripes about that.

Some people worked 3 jobs to get through college. I didn't graduate with a 2.5, but does that make me less intelligent than someone with a 4.0 in Art History? Look at the whole package not some meaningless number that tells nothing of the person. It's like hours in the logbook.......

The fact that you didn't go college should be taken into consideration as well. Like others have said, it's not only supply and demand but also, these things such as GPA make up part of the big picture. Personally, all things being equal, I'll take someone with a 2.9 rather than a 1.5.

True, but even a marginally intelligent person should have no trouble getting above a 2.5. Below a 2.5 and I feel effort is the most likely culprit.

A high GPA won't help you but a low GPA will hurt you early on in your career.

A 4.0 and 3 bucks gets you a plane cup of coffee at Starbucks

I had less than a 2.5 but I worked 3 jobs an averaged 60 hours week. I still have debt but I paid my way through college. If I went back now and didn't have to worry about money I'm sure I'd get a much higher gpa.

Explains everything.

I agree. Looking at the whole package in your situation would probably also entail looking at what college you attended and what classes you took. I hope this doesn't come back to hurt you. Hindsight is 20/20 and you'll probably never know if this was the case but if your gpa does end up hurting your chances, it might have been more intelligent to lower the school load in order to get at least a 2.5. It's unfortunate in a way that interviews are so subjective, good luck.

No worries I'll prolly end up going back to school for a second degree. Feels weird not being in school.

Bottom line...without a degree your options are very limited in the 121 world...Those guys are regionals without degrees have little chance of moving to something better... fair? probably not... reality...yes.

I feel for you but you have to play the game in order to get hired. It isn't a meaningless number. It raises a huge red flag for most recruiters that either the person doesn't have time management skills, learns slower then others, or can't deal with the bureaucracy of college. College isn't meant to have people working three jobs and going to school full time. If your grades suffered then you should have taken fewer classes. If you needed to graduate ASAP then your stuck with the reality that that number will be looked at for at least the next 10 yrs.

If you realize that your gpa is your weak point then you need to tell them that you worked three jobs to pay for flying and I would still expect them to hold it against you. You need to fill the rest of your resume with some impressing stuff. Volunteer, gold seal instructor, take a few graduate level courses at a cheap school (and get A's), learn another language etc... make it a small blip on your record vs the last big indicator they have to judge you on.

The good thing is only airlines seem to care about the grades. I don't really plan/want to go to a major to be honest, so it will be nice to not have to worry about it being looked down upon.

God, I recall when I interviewed at ASA back in the mid 90's... the interview was made up of "what's your favorite airplane?" .. and "most of our pilots wind up at Delta in 3 years"..

now they want GPA?

For now until the "pilot shortage" happens.

I'll keep an eye out for the flying pigs then....

What kinds of other jobs have you been looking at which leads you to believe that no one else cares about grades? I think that you might be leading yourself down this road of thinking that is the case. Sure there are jobs out there that aren't going to care what grades you made in college or even if you went to college; but to say that the airlines are the *only* employers to care about grades is very shortsighted.

As for your comment about not wanting/planning to go the majors, why is that? You would certainly be in the minority again if you are a young airline pilot planning a long term career in the airlines and NOT really want to go to the majors. Are you thinking that your past history will keep you from going to the majors someday?

USMCFLYR

Not only that, but some time ago there was a USAF heavy pilot with a ton of experience to include instructor duty (whatever they call that in the AF - IP/EP, etc...), but he was worrying about high school GPA I think it was.

I can't imagine an employer looking at someone who has achieved what that person had achieved in the many years since high school and still use it as a metric. I've tried to tell some young kids just recently though that school could be fun and games right up until high school and then it got serious. That GPA will follow you around for a long time and can be a door opener or a door closer. It is an easier life without opportunities being taken away from you before you get a chance to prove yourself because you decided that you were different from the rest of the world and didn't need to take certain things seriously. IMO.

USMCFLYR

Pt. 91 gigs that I can't go to due to my low time. Using the regionals to get in and then right the heck out.

I have come to the conclusion that you have nothing intelligent to ever add to the conversation. G.W. graduated from Yale and Harvard. No matter what his grades were, he still graduated from the 2 most prestigious schools in the world. I'm sure you're thinking that since your GPA was higher, you are better than him. Your justification is shenanigans.

No, but i'm better than you.

Of course you are :rolleyes:

http://photobucket.com/redirect?url=...is-obvious.jpg

I graduated ERAU Daytona in 09 with a 3.8 and a decent "whole package". I landed 4 interviews out of applying to over 700 positions (applying to anything and everything). It was my flight experience that got me the interviews.

As far as I'm concerned, this degree hasn't done a thing for me yet.. well maybe financial responsibility from a past mistake. I'm still somewhat optimistic about some payoff in the future though.

Actually it was more like a 2.75, which is higher than what John Kerry and Al Gore graduated with. And we can't compare it to the current president since he won't release his records.

So you are really saying that going to Riddle did little to nothing to advance your flying career, as you could have gotten your ratings elsewhere. But what you did get from attending Riddle is an enormous amount of debt. What's your payoff you will get for your lifetime of debt to student loans? a career at the regionals?

My GPA wasnt the best in college . I was working for a horse trainer at a racetrack in the east training horses from 5 am to 10am then going to college full time and my grades showed it . I really do not think that a high GPA is the holy grail when applying at a regional . I got 5 job offers after 6 interviews over my aviation career .Ialso did not interview at 2 places that offered me interviews All were aware of my GPA .

So if you've got 2 applicants. One has 8000 hrs, ATP, couple of types and a 2.2 GPA from 13 years ago. The other is a wet ink commercial with a 3.8 and graduated 5 months ago.

Who are you going to hire?

I interviewed at ASA last year and got asked about my GPA. FWIW, I thought it was a stupid question to ask someone who's been out in the real world for over a decade.

Becoming a pilot requires vocational not professional training. You don't need to go to college and get a degree in golf course management to fly airplanes. Embry Riddle is an over priced joke. What an idiotic idea of shelling out 200k between the degree and ratings just so you can qualify to one day make 18k at a crap bag regional. You would be better off smoking pot all day and becoming a plumber. I know this because my plumber friend makes more than I do and he gets to smoke all the pot he wants.

I remember back when I was in high school,(early 1990's) the guidence counciler came to our class to show us charts on college grad pay vs high school only grad pay. The point of that pow wow was to convince everyone we must all go to college or become janitors. College was much less expensive then. It seems to me that too many people that didn't need to go to college went anyway. Many people that couldn't afford college financed themselves to the hilt with increasingly compliant banks help and went anyway.

My personal theory is this created two major problems. First, an increasing number of people paying for college (many with borrowed money) caused tuition to skyrocket. Why wouldn't it? If you are charging X amount and you get an increase in business no matter how much you increase prices year after year then you would be crazy not to keep jacking up prices.

The second problem created was the cheapening of a college diploma due to a couple of factors. It is my opinion that with private and public colleges competing for big piles of student cash that sometimes the curriculum gets watered down and standards get lowered. After all kicking out less qualified students doesn't pay the bills does it. Then there is the fact that there are many people whom graduate with useless degrees they have no intention of using professionally just because they thought they ought to go to school. Now you have increased the number of college grads in the marketplace needlessly. Jobs like being a pilot for example become more expensive to compete for because now a guy whom has all the neccesary vocational training and experience to be a pilot is competeing against people who wasted money on a African American studies degree then went to flight school when he realized he would never get a job in his degree field. Enough morons with useless degrees put here apps on a recruiters desk and viola, having any old diploma becomes the norm.

Cost of entry into the airline business has skyrocketed and the payoff has plummeted. In my opinion the juice isn't worth the squeeze anymore in this vocation. I am sure the market will sort it out eventually though.

I was denied an interview earlier this year with a 2.4 gpa. College was 7 years ago for me.....7 years. I had a full time job and flying all the way through, and since have worked in the industry for 5 years. I also had 3 internal recs.

I was a little irked but hey a rule is a rule. I was hired elsewhere and it is working out.

Are you sure the reason was your GPA and not something else? Dis they send you a letter sating "We would love to hire you, but your GPA was too low."?

I spoke with someone invloved in the process that I met through one of my internals recs.

What airline?

Affirmative. Not exactly payoff from attending ERAU, but having a degree in general. Most of my flying was off campus, and I was a local living at home, so I got off pretty easy with debt... and girls.

I'd only recommend ERAU for someone transferring in with an AA degree and then joining ROTC and getting a degree in something other than Aeronautics.

I admit I didn't do my homework before jumping into this industry, but as rough as things are, I still wouldn't do anything else. Nightmares of the food industry make me thankful for what I'm doing today.

Good enough.
No more posts in this vein please.

USMCFLYR

Then you haven't applied to a job yet that requires a degree.
I'm sure that somewhere in your aviation career that you are going to apply to a operator that requires you have a college degree. If that ONE job is a career destination, then it will have been worth it. Now expand that to ANY job, inside or outside of aviation, that requires a college degree and you have overcome that obstacle once again.
Now the fact that you went to what many consider an extremely overpriced 'aviation' college and spent many times the amount that you could have gotten a degree for with a variety of other institutions is a problem that you'll have to deal with while making a living and loan payments.

USMCFLYR